The following review of the book "JFK And The Unspeakable," by James Douglass, is being reprinted here, verbatim, with my response. John McAdams, the reviewer, is a long-time obfuscator and Warren Commission defender. His politics, naturally, are slightly right of Dick Cheney.
John McAdams: Another "Unspeakably Awful" Book About the JFK Assassination
Source: Washington Decoded website (run by Max Holland) (12-12-09)
James Douglass treads a familiar path in JFK and the Unspeakable. It is yet another book that claims John Kennedy was killed because he had decided to withdraw from Vietnam. Kennedy’s “rejection of Cold War politics was considered treasonous by forces in his own government,” according to Douglass, and supposedly made JFK’s violent removal an urgent necessity.[1]
What makes Douglass’s volume unique is that his argument is dressed up in verbiage unfamiliar to JFK assassination buffs. Most authors of books on the assassination Jwd attempt to cloak their political views, and pretend to arrive at the truth about the assassination after a supposedly objective analysis of the facts. Douglass wears his politics on his sleeve. He is a Catholic “peace activist” and disciple of Thomas Merton, whose observations infuse the book. Self-styled activists like Douglass have a long history of being opposed to the use of military power by the United States, although they don’t seem to mind as much when military power is used by America’s adversaries. And while they employ religious rhetoric to justify and rationalize their unilateral pacifism, their worldview, ultimately, is indistinguishable from that of secular leftists like Oliver Stone (who, not surprisingly, is a big fan of Douglass’s book).
Douglass’s key villain—the “Unspeakable” of his title—turns out to be the same kind of opaque nemesis that Stone is fond of conjuring up. The best identification Douglass can offer is “shadowy intelligence agencies using intermediaries and scapegoats under the cover of ‘plausible deniability,’” and even more vaguely, “an evil whose depth and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe.”[2] How convenient: a culprit who is indescribable. In essence, though, Douglass’s evil-doer is indistinguishable from that bogeyman of vulgar, atheistic, and leftist radicals from the ‘60s: the “military-industrial complex,” except that he adds to the stew the Central Intelligence Agency.
JFK and the Unspeakable is structured so that it develops two parallel but supposedly complementary narratives: Kennedy’s statements and actions regarding Vietnam (in public, private, and in policy-making circles), and, simultaneously, the machinations of those who are conspiring to kill Kennedy. Both story lines are chock full of problems and cannot withstand elementary scrutiny. Long before Kennedy ever arrives in Dallas, Texas, and the strands finally come together, the book ceases to be non-fiction and enters the realm of a self-indulgent political fantasy.
The first narrative tries to portray Kennedy as a politician who started out a Cold Warrior, but broke through to a “deeper, more universal humanity” during his brief time in office.[3] This is not as easy to pull off as it might sound, because Douglass knows full well that many of Kennedy’s statements, as late as the morning of his death, were anti-Communist in thrust and substance. Accordingly, Douglass has to fudge and equivocate constantly, as he tries to depict Kennedy as “trapped in the contradiction between the mandate of peace . . . and the continuing Cold War dogmas of his national security state.”[4]
One particular trick Douglass uses is to conceal sources that show Kennedy to be a Cold War liberal. Douglass devotes page after page of analysis to Kennedy’s American University commencement address from June 1963, and the president’s admonition in this speech that “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” Coming eight months after the Cuban missile crisis, the address was an inspiring call for keeping the peace in the hair-trigger nuclear age. But Douglass conspicuously fails to mention some other remarks Kennedy made in the same breath. “It is discouraging to think that [the Soviet Union’s] leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write,” Kennedy noted; moreover, the “Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today.”[5]
There is none of the moral equivalence here, in short, that suffuses Douglass’s view of the Cold War, nor any hint of the idea that America’s military-industrial-intelligence complex was primarily responsible for the superpowers’ nuclear brinksmanship. Indeed, on the morning of November 22, during his breakfast address in Fort Worth, Kennedy hailed that city’s role as an arsenal in the Cold War, though one would not know that from reading Douglass’s book.[6]...
My response:McAdams,
Like all disinformationists and lone nutters, you must ignore a mountain of evidence and an ocean of coincidence to expound your dishonest version of events. You excoriate others' work on the matter in the same way. What you left out of your review of Douglass's book is his stunningly rational and meticulously documented evidence for conspiracy.
McAdams, I do not know what your motives are, but you are an unspeakable monster. Each time you open your mouth or tap on your keyboard, you deliver a right cross to the truth. You want names instead of "military-industrial complex"? How about Curtis Lemay, Lyman Lemnitzer, McGeorge Bundy, D.H. Byrd, Kellogg, Brown and Root, and Bell Helicopter (Michael Paine and Walter Dornberger). You want names instead of vague intelligence operatives? How about Allen Dulles, Dick Bissell, Charles Cabell, Ed Lansdale, and David Atlee Phillips.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
General McHugh Lied; He DID leave JFK's Coffin Unattended
Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, military aide to President Kennedy, always publicly maintained that he never left the dead president's coffin unattended from the time it left Parkland Hospital in Dallas on November 22, 1963, until it arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, DC, that evening. This assertion always made me doubt David Lifton's "body alteration" thesis. Lifton, in 1981, published his book Best Evidence, which asserted that JFK's body had been altered sometime between Dallas and Washington on the day he was murdered, by conspirators who were intent on making it look as if he had been shot from the back instead of the front. This was how, according to Lifton, Lee Harvey Oswald was framed. Lifton had much evidence to support his theory: 1) the wounds as described by the Parkland doctors were not the same wounds described by the Bethesda doctors; in other words, the wounds changed between Dallas and DC; 2) JFK's body arrived in a coffin at Bethesda that was considerably different from the one in which it departed Parkland; 3) James Humes, Bethesda autopsist, stated that "...surgery of the head, namely in the top of the skull..." had been performed before the body arrived at Bethesda; the problem was, no such surgery had been performed by the Dallas doctors. Lifton theorizes that someone got access to the body as it lay aboard Air Force One awaiting departure to Washington after the assassination. This required the coffin containing the president's body be unattended for a period of time. All who were aboard the plane, including Jackie Kennedy, admitted that they were not coffin-side for the entire time the plane idled on the runway at Dallas Love Field...except for one General Godfrey McHugh. McHugh never left his dead president's side, or so he said.
A new book makes McHugh out to be a liar. According to Steven Gillon's just published The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After: LBJ's Pivotal First Day As President, McHugh DID leave the coffin. He furiously roamed around the plane as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field, demanding to know what was causing the delay in takeoff. When the pilot told him they were waiting for the judge to arrive aboard Air Force One to swear in LBJ, McHugh confronted Johnson in the plane's bathroom where the new president was babbling nervously about a worldwide plot. "It's a conspiracy. They're going to kill us all," LBJ sputtered. McHugh was shocked by what he saw, but was oblivious to its real significance. LBJ's erratic behavior might have been a ruse to distract the one person who was most loyal to JFK, thus leaving the coffin unattended for conspirators to highjack the body. What did they do with the body? Lifton thinks they either smuggled it aboard Air Force Two where it was flown to Washington surreptitiously for body alteration at Walter Reed Medical Center...or it was simply hidden aboard Air Force One, and then pirated off the plane when it landed at Andrews AFB. From there it was airlifted by helicopter to Walter Reed. Either way, JFK's wounds, according to the sworn statements of attending physicians who treated him at Parkland and performed the autopsy at Bethesda, changed dramatically between Dallas and DC. Of this there is no question. How did this happen...and why?
As wild as the theory seems, Lifton's book is well worth the read.
A new book makes McHugh out to be a liar. According to Steven Gillon's just published The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After: LBJ's Pivotal First Day As President, McHugh DID leave the coffin. He furiously roamed around the plane as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field, demanding to know what was causing the delay in takeoff. When the pilot told him they were waiting for the judge to arrive aboard Air Force One to swear in LBJ, McHugh confronted Johnson in the plane's bathroom where the new president was babbling nervously about a worldwide plot. "It's a conspiracy. They're going to kill us all," LBJ sputtered. McHugh was shocked by what he saw, but was oblivious to its real significance. LBJ's erratic behavior might have been a ruse to distract the one person who was most loyal to JFK, thus leaving the coffin unattended for conspirators to highjack the body. What did they do with the body? Lifton thinks they either smuggled it aboard Air Force Two where it was flown to Washington surreptitiously for body alteration at Walter Reed Medical Center...or it was simply hidden aboard Air Force One, and then pirated off the plane when it landed at Andrews AFB. From there it was airlifted by helicopter to Walter Reed. Either way, JFK's wounds, according to the sworn statements of attending physicians who treated him at Parkland and performed the autopsy at Bethesda, changed dramatically between Dallas and DC. Of this there is no question. How did this happen...and why?
As wild as the theory seems, Lifton's book is well worth the read.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Keith Law Declares Kansas City Royals MLB Champs for 2009
Defying conventional wisdom, ESPN baseball analyst and statistical expert Keith Law has named the Kansas City Royals as baseball's best team in 2009. "It's not even close; by almost all statistical standards, the Royals lapped the field in 2009."
Reaction in New York, where the Yankees had apparently won the 2009 World Series, was irate. Sports call-in shows were flooded with angry callers demanding to know how Law arrived at his decision. But at least one New York sports talk host, who wished to remain anonymous, agreed with Law. "When you look at KC's LAW RAT (Leveraged and Averaged Win Ratio), there's no comparison. The Royals had a LAW RAT of 19.762; the next closest was the Nationals with 17.118."
Law defended his decision by citing the numbers. "Greinke's WACKY (Win Average Coefficient per Strikeout Yield) was off the charts, the Royals' bullpen's Average Saves In Nine Innings (ASININE) led the league, and their Defensive Uncategorized Errors (DUNCE) score was first in the AL."
When an AP reporter reminded Law that the game was played on the field and not on sabremetician's spread sheets, and that the Yankees had actually won the world championship, Law responded, "The World Series is an invalid determinant of the best team. What you saw was an illusion. The complex variables that go into an assessment of which team is better has nothing to do with vague and amorphous things like a pitcher's stuff, quality at-bats, momentum, fielders' instincts, and managerial decisions. To put it in terms the layman can understand, it's about what players could do...not what they do do."
Meanwhile in Kansas City, the mayor has scheduled a belated victory parade through the downtown district on Tuesday, and Bud Selig is expected to award the Commissioner's trophy to the Royals organization on that occasion.
Law, who has an MBA from Harvard and once worked as a consultant for the Toronto Blue Jays, drew similar ire when he voted Javier Vazquez second on his Cy Young ballot and omitted St. Louis's Chris Carpenter, despite Carpenter's apparent statistical advantage over Vazquez. "Any dope can cite ERA and wins; that's not what determines good pitching. I look at Games Over Ongoing Fielding Yield (GOOFY) average."
When asked who should win the world championship in 2010, Law responded, "Well, right now I'm favoring the Pirates. Their Cosine Rating At Position (CRAP) is astronomical."
Reaction in New York, where the Yankees had apparently won the 2009 World Series, was irate. Sports call-in shows were flooded with angry callers demanding to know how Law arrived at his decision. But at least one New York sports talk host, who wished to remain anonymous, agreed with Law. "When you look at KC's LAW RAT (Leveraged and Averaged Win Ratio), there's no comparison. The Royals had a LAW RAT of 19.762; the next closest was the Nationals with 17.118."
Law defended his decision by citing the numbers. "Greinke's WACKY (Win Average Coefficient per Strikeout Yield) was off the charts, the Royals' bullpen's Average Saves In Nine Innings (ASININE) led the league, and their Defensive Uncategorized Errors (DUNCE) score was first in the AL."
When an AP reporter reminded Law that the game was played on the field and not on sabremetician's spread sheets, and that the Yankees had actually won the world championship, Law responded, "The World Series is an invalid determinant of the best team. What you saw was an illusion. The complex variables that go into an assessment of which team is better has nothing to do with vague and amorphous things like a pitcher's stuff, quality at-bats, momentum, fielders' instincts, and managerial decisions. To put it in terms the layman can understand, it's about what players could do...not what they do do."
Meanwhile in Kansas City, the mayor has scheduled a belated victory parade through the downtown district on Tuesday, and Bud Selig is expected to award the Commissioner's trophy to the Royals organization on that occasion.
Law, who has an MBA from Harvard and once worked as a consultant for the Toronto Blue Jays, drew similar ire when he voted Javier Vazquez second on his Cy Young ballot and omitted St. Louis's Chris Carpenter, despite Carpenter's apparent statistical advantage over Vazquez. "Any dope can cite ERA and wins; that's not what determines good pitching. I look at Games Over Ongoing Fielding Yield (GOOFY) average."
When asked who should win the world championship in 2010, Law responded, "Well, right now I'm favoring the Pirates. Their Cosine Rating At Position (CRAP) is astronomical."
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
"Amelia" Lacks Excitement; How Is That Possible?
Part of the allure of the Amelia Earhart story is the mystery of how it ended. World-renowned as the first successful female aviator, she attempted to circle the globe in 1937, but her flight vanished somewhere over (or in?) the Pacific Ocean just as she was about to finish the last leg of her journey. I love bios, especially those with a good mystery attached, so I entered the theater drooling with anticipation. I left the theatre needing a poke in the ribs from my wife to stay awake. How did this happen? One can lay the blame on director Mira Nair's unimaginative direction, Hilary Swank's acting, and a script that does not even attempt to speculate on what became of Amelia's last flight.
Hilary Swank's impersonation of Earhart is dead-on (no pun intended). She looks, acts, and speaks like the real Amelia...so much so that I was diverted by it several times during the film. I mean, I thought I was watching a resurrection of Earhart rather than an interpretation of her life. In other words, Swank's mechanics are impeccable, but they dominate the performance to the point that the viewer comes away wondering what Earhart was really like. Somehow Swank did not capture the elan and verve of Earhart. There was no soul in the machine.
Nair makes the same mistake. She touches all the bases of Earhart's life without hitting a home run. All the dates, times, names, and places are accurate, but it adds up to not much more than a National Geographic special. I didn't feel anything for the characters and their plights.
But all this could have be redeemed by a boffo ending. They couldn't screw that up, right? Earhart's fate has been the subject of innumerable theories and wild conjecture for over 70 years. Hundreds of books, articles, and essays have been written about her death. All of them trying to solve the mystery in an original way. There was no dearth of material from which the director and writer could choose. Some say Amelia and Fred Noonan (her co-pilot) landed safely on a remote Pacific island and lived there for years. Some say the Japanese captured and tortured and imprisoned them during World War II. Some say the flight just vanished into thin air, a victim of a South Pacific/Bermuda triangle. Whatever happened, no trace of the plane was ever found despite a massive search. So how did the film deal with all this? It ignored it entirely. The movie ends without an ending. Amelia is running low on fuel and people look worried, but no conclusion is drawn. Credits come up, and hopes crash.
Like the life and last flight of its eponymous heroine, "Amelia" is unfinished business.
Hilary Swank's impersonation of Earhart is dead-on (no pun intended). She looks, acts, and speaks like the real Amelia...so much so that I was diverted by it several times during the film. I mean, I thought I was watching a resurrection of Earhart rather than an interpretation of her life. In other words, Swank's mechanics are impeccable, but they dominate the performance to the point that the viewer comes away wondering what Earhart was really like. Somehow Swank did not capture the elan and verve of Earhart. There was no soul in the machine.
Nair makes the same mistake. She touches all the bases of Earhart's life without hitting a home run. All the dates, times, names, and places are accurate, but it adds up to not much more than a National Geographic special. I didn't feel anything for the characters and their plights.
But all this could have be redeemed by a boffo ending. They couldn't screw that up, right? Earhart's fate has been the subject of innumerable theories and wild conjecture for over 70 years. Hundreds of books, articles, and essays have been written about her death. All of them trying to solve the mystery in an original way. There was no dearth of material from which the director and writer could choose. Some say Amelia and Fred Noonan (her co-pilot) landed safely on a remote Pacific island and lived there for years. Some say the Japanese captured and tortured and imprisoned them during World War II. Some say the flight just vanished into thin air, a victim of a South Pacific/Bermuda triangle. Whatever happened, no trace of the plane was ever found despite a massive search. So how did the film deal with all this? It ignored it entirely. The movie ends without an ending. Amelia is running low on fuel and people look worried, but no conclusion is drawn. Credits come up, and hopes crash.
Like the life and last flight of its eponymous heroine, "Amelia" is unfinished business.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Op-Ed News Article Names Traitors in JFK Cabinet Who Plotted To Have Him Killed
I am re-printing below an article posted recently on Op-Ed News (an online opinion mag to which I've contributed several times). It was written by Alen Salerian, MD, a Washington-based physician, author, and historian, who has been practicing psychiatry and psychopharmacology for 35 years. He is the former chief psychiatrist of the FBI's mobile psychiatric unit. He has authored numerous articles on behavior, government integrity, neurobiology, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology in various publications.
The topic of the article posted below is the JFK assassination, and Dr. Salerian's assertions and hypotheses are stunning. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the assassination, but Dr. Salerian has new evidence based on his reading of Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect, published a few years ago. In Retrospect was McNamara's mea culpa for his sins committed as Defense Secretary under JFK and LBJ. Dr. Salerian contends McNamara is asking forgiveness not only for the colossal blunder of Vietnam, but also (in veiled, coded language) for the assassination of JFK. I have read McNamara's book and found it to be much too little, much too late, to be an acceptable path to his redemption. But I was unable to make the same inferences that Salerian has. Salerian uses other source documents with which I am very familiar to build his case for a high-level coup d'etat, hatched by CIA operatives and traitors--McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert McNamara among them--within the Kennedy administration...culminating in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The lesson for me was this: beware of those in the JFK cabinet who stayed on to serve LBJ after the bullets flew in Dealey Plaza. Here's the article:
"...he [McNamara] is the first modern statesman who openly acknowledges his errors and takes responsibility for them. This is a first in history and it is a very good thing for humanity.
"I want to bypass all the drama, all the phony diplomatic rhetoric, the thinly veiled transparency of obsessive minds and to leap over all the artificialities to embrace and celebrate McNamara's unique gift to humanity.
"It is my hypothesis that Bundy, McNamara, Allen Dulles (the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency), General Curtis LeMay (Air Force chief of staff), Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and possibly a few others engineered a coup d'état to wage war in Vietnam. It is also my hypothesis that President Kennedy's death was just the collateral damage of war and so was the disappearance of over a thousand people after the assassination.
"Why do common sense, reason, and statistics suggest that all the following pieces perfectly fit together for a complex design to make a coup d'état a success? They are all very rare or extraordinary firsts in history. For instance, the president, the vice president, and virtually the entire Cabinet were away from Washington on the day of the coup (2). The president was in Texas along with the vice president, and the Cabinet were on their way to Tokyo. By now, we know that the Secret Service was grossly negligent before, during, and after the ambush (3). We also know that all of the images of the president's death captured by photos and videos are not authentic (3). The president's autopsy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital is a sham, as are the X-rays and the autopsy photos (3,4). This is astonishing for Bethesda, the flagship of all the best the military can provide for medical care.
"On the day of the ambush, the phones in Washington, D.C., the press phones, and the Cabinet airplane communication all ceased to function (2). The only two people in Washington from the president's team were Bundy and McNamara, and they happened to be the architects of the new war opposed by President Kennedy but endorsed by the new President, LBJ (2). Bundy and McNamara were at the Pentagon precisely at the time the presidential limousine approached Dealey Plaza (1).
"Both Bundy and McNamara lied about small details of the assassination repeatedly and unnecessarily, in some ways inviting special attention to their own behavior. McNamara said for 90 minutes he was not aware of the president's assassination, although he was at the Pentagon, the epicenter of reaction to national emergencies (1). Strangely, he was chairing a routine budget meeting, which he did not interrupt. Even a month later when information emerged that several communication systems were sabotaged, McNamara never evinced curiousity about the origin of all these mishaps.
"None of these, of course, individually make McNamara or Bundy a suspect, yet collectively they click and suggest they were not random events. There are other more fundamental developments that can actually solve the puzzle. Most important, Kennedy had opposed the war in Vietnam and had issued specific orders through National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated November 21, 1963, to end the war (1,2). This was to begin with the withdrawal of '1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.' (2). His orders were precise and unequivocal. But upon his death, not only were his orders reversed, but then the war expanded at an eventual cost of 58,000 American lives.
"President Kennedy was the author of NSAM 263 ending the war. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, authorized NSAM 273 overriding the intent of 263 (1,2).
"If, despite the evidence, one might possibly be dubious of McNamara's role, there can be little doubt of Bundy's involvement. Bundy, according to Army General Maxwell Taylor, a trusted confidante of both John and Robert Kennedy, was the number one responsible party for the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs (2). On April 16, 1961, on D-day at 9:30 p.m., Bundy would cancel President Kennedy's orders for air strikes against Cuban targets (2). Bundy's reversal would be determined to be the most crucial error contributing to the debacle. At the end of the Cuban study group, General Taylor's conclusion declared that Bundy's blunder was the main cause of failure (2). Bundy himself would offer his resignation, which Kennedy declined.
"Bundy's blunders—if that is how we wish to characterize them—would continue. He single-handedly managed to create an epochal cable on August 24, 1963, authorizing a coup against the leader of South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem (1,2). At first, the dispatch of the cable appeared to be a mere accident. Bundy pointed the finger at his young assistants Michael Forrestal and Roger Hilsman (1,2). Kennedy was furious, of course. 'This shit must stop!' he shouted at Forrestal. The young Bundy assistant took the brunt of Kennedy's fury and offered his resignation (4). Once again, Kennedy declined. But the question is: how could Bundy, the nation's top gun on national security, be unaware of such a pivotal message? How could a young national security aide, without the knowledge or approval of his boss, send a historical paradigm-shifting cable to authorize a covert coup d'état in Vietnam? Bundy's response? It's a bad idea, he said, to make major policy decisions on weekends.
"The error of August 24 could not be fully appreciated if it had not been preceded by a similar occurrence during the Bay of Pigs. Bundy's absence was eerily similar to the disappearance of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, during the crucial days of the Bay of Pigs. Bundy's tricks with the October 29th meeting are well recorded with his admission that, in fact, he had given Henry Cabot Lodge, the ambassador to Vietnam, a green light for a coup d'état despite presidential orders against such an act (4).
"The coup did occur, not only toppling the government but also taking the lives of President Diem and his younger brother and adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu (2,4). This was yet another blow to President Kennedy's personal instructions. He had sent his personal friend as his emissary to Vietnam to negotiate Diem's peaceful exit out of Vietnam. Understandably, when the news arrived at the White House, a sickened and ashen president in visible distress quickly left the conference room (2,4). The conclusion seem inescapable that he had realized someone had been betrayed him, although he did not know who, why, or how. It might have been his gut feeling telling him that something horrendous was going on, yet he could not let himself think his most important aide and his chief military adviser was the mole.
"A modern Brutus betraying democracy. Bundy's jokes were telling. When the Diem brothers' murders surfaced with their hands tied behind their backs and bullets lodged in their necks, he commented, 'This is not the preferred way to commit suicide.' Bundy was at the White House Situation Room chatting with Lucien Conein, the CIA station chief in Saigon who was at the command center of the coup d'état with bags full of dollars for the triumphant generals (2,4). Did Conein and Bundy team up on November 22nd when Conein was on Houston Street and Bundy at the White House Situation Room? We know however, they were there (2,4). What did Bundy do at the White House situation room? Was he organizing Operation Big Lift[1] or was he running the ambush from the Situation Room?
"And why was Conein's smile published all over the world with the presidential limousine slowly approaching the death zone on Elm Street (5)?
"Was this a Dulles or Bundy genius to boldly inform the world who makes the big decisions in Texas by not concealing the face of the CIA station chief, recently returned from facilitating a coup in Vietnam only three weeks earlier?
"Perhaps it is nothing more sublime yet devastating than deception by a trusted man that makes us understand JFK's failure to suspect the virulence of Bundy, a brilliant virtuoso of deceit. Some historians and behavior experts may wrongly blame Kennedy for letting his guard down to trust a compulsive liar like Bundy. Or worse for not firing Bundy after the Bay of Pigs.
"And here comes the creative genius of Allen Dulles, the most likely architect of the big strategy. During the Bay of Pigs, Dulles made himself the conspicuous target for the blunder, the obvious villain by disappearing for several days to lure the Kennedy brothers to an elegant trap (2,4).
"What is remarkable is that Dulles's success rested on its blunt openness of his obvious responsibility for the military fiasco. He virtually produced the evidence making him the fall guy to steer any careful scrutiny away from Bundy and Bundy's defining error correctly diagnosed by General Maxwell Taylor—that is, the error or calling off the all-important air strikes, thereby ensuring a rout by Cuban forces.
"The President took the bait, so did his brother Bobby. If Dulles had designed a simple plan for future spies, his strategy should be recorded as a classic in the annals of grand deceptions. Whereas democracy, human life, and progress depend on trust and transparency, Dulles and his organization had a different premise.
"Some modern thinkers share the opinion that diplomacy always relies on deception. Consider, for instance, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's masterly use of the sitting duck of Pearl Harbor to unleash the American might.
"The danger that arises with such a comparison is a dismissal of trust and hierarchy. Roosevelt was always in charge. His admirals and code breakers did not set up Roosevelt to declare war on Japan. Roosevelt was the chief architect, unlike Dulles, who was sabotaging his boss, the commander in chief.
"Let us for a moment digress and consider one other and possibly crucial act by Dulles during his service under President Eisenhower.
"Among the researchers who uncovered Dulles's sabotage of impending talks between Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev are James Douglass and Fletcher Prouty (2,4). Thanks to their meticulous documentation we now know that indeed the U2 incident with Francis Gary Powers landing on Soviet soil and canceling the talks between the two leaders was another rare Dulles gift to world politics (2,4). Prouty, a patriotic man, tactfully and methodically presents the evidence leading no doubt that Eisenhower's order for no flights was openly violated with the U2 mission (2,4).
"The revelation of Dulles's strategy sheds new light on JFK's failure to recognize Bundy's combustible presence at the White House.
"On September 21, 1996, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. eulogized Bundy with an article published in George, He wrote, 'Born a privileged Republican he has become a liberal Democrat, and a single tragic error seriously compromising his full potential as a statesman.'
"In that respect, Schlesinger just joined a distinguished group of people who never understood Bundy's sick brain. The cheating had a deep, slow, unmistakable ascent in Bundy's life leading to Dealey Plaza.
"Though the principle element is deception, the early signs are well concealed under a mixture of dry humor, intelligence, and surprise. The entire magical powers of Bundy can be surmised in how naturally Bundy cycled his triangular package of deception.
"This observation, of course, is made possible only with a bird's eye view of history from a distant site and angle and aided by an abundance of key information.
Once again Bundy's center of gravity is deception. Consider:
Bundy enters Yale without completing the entrance exam (6). With a cute and imaginative excuse, he refuses to write a mandatory essay.
- Bundy enters the Army by cheating the eye exam—memorizing the eye chart (6).
- Bundy teaches government at Harvard without ever taking a government course (6).
- Bundy becomes a Harvard dean without ever earning a Ph.D. (6).
"Such gross, open violations of boundaries are regularly and flauntingly illustrated in Bundy's pre–White House life he had mistakenly confused as daring brilliance instead of a dysfunctional brain juxtaposing his poor control of chaotic emotions and drives.
"Who is Bundy? What kind of a man would engage in such deception after reaching such a privileged position of trust, power, and influence?
"He was a broken mind with an internally roaring fury at all the Kennedys and what they represented, and his viruliferous rage destroyed so many Southeast Asian people, families, farms, forests, peasants, businessmen, enemy fighters, and more without any mercy, sorrow, or remorse—not even with his death in 1996.
"Once Bundy's deception emerges and his emotional, historical, political roots to Dulles and their frenzied, coordinated demolition of the Kennedy White House are discovered, the giant sketch of the coup d'état is visible and not so mysterious or hypothetical. You do not have to be a student of the complexity theory to marvel at the painstaking labor and extensive design that put so many diverse and dissonant pieces together that paved the road to Dealey Plaza.
"And that brings us full circle to subject of this article: Robert Strange McNamara. Why is McNamara great? History and countless researchers and ordinary citizens inspired by diverse factors have unearthed crucial pieces to the JFK puzzle. May it not be possible that as more time has passed since the assassination and with more evidence the puzzle has finally been solved?
McNamara reports only the facts. He does not openly point his finger at anyone. But he does establish the foundation of the giant puzzle. He had every reason to imitate the other three and forever take the truth to his grave as Bundy, Dulles, and Johnson did. There is, of course, some reason to indicate that LBJ did his reasonable share to leave a paper trail behind.
"LBJ was not in Honolulu, on Oahu, on November 20, 1963, possibly the most important gathering for the coup. Ostensibly, the conference was chaired by McNamara to review the political, economic, and military status in Vietnam (4). The conference was attended by key military and government leaders, including virtually the entire Cabinet. In point of fact, the end result of the conference was to torpedo NSAM 263, the document ordering U.S. troops out of Vietnam (1,2).
"In In Retrospect, McNamara's measured, careful tone reviewing the events preceding the Vietnam War meticulously introduces the important history-defining revelations. Through his stated words, as well as beautifully presented omissions, he recapitulates an important section of American history. His chain of logic, recording history by color-coding the essential truths, then gently dropping absent cues is simply magnificent.
"In the comforting illumination of his fatherly wisdom, one suddenly makes sense of so many seemingly impossible mishaps that occurred before, during, and after the ambush. McNamara makes a point of explaining what is essential and what occurred. He makes a point of specific details such as his learning the news at the Pentagon at 2 p.m., almost 90 full minutes after the president was shot (1). He reminds us gently that he is with Bundy at the Pentagon (1). Equally gently, he tells us that he continues with the meeting, a fairly routine budget discussion. He is equally tactful in pointing out that the August 24, 1963 cable was a mistake, but the mistake was not caused by the young assistant Hilsman or Forrestal and it was unquestionably Bundy's fault (1). In essence, this is McNamara's way of exposing Bundy and Bundy's successful sabotage of JFK's Vietnam strategy. He makes a very clear point of establishing the truth that Kennedy's position on Vietnam and the difference between National Security Action Memorandum 263 and 273. He therefore establishes the truth at the expense of the Pentagon Papers and their manifold misrepresentations: JFK had given clear and absolute orders to exit Vietnam.
"Most importantly, without using highly precise descriptions of actions that would be defined as 'treason' or 'sabotage,' McNamara would record history. On page 69, he is most precise. This is where McNamara reveals how Hilsman on September 27, 1963, via Michael Forrestal, sent a handwritten note to Lodge. The content of this letter is a clear violation of JFK's specific orders. Hence, McNamara exposes the treachery by Hilsman, Forrestal and of course, because Bundy is their boss, Bundy. McNamara skillfully disengages himself from the decisions made in Honolulu on November 20, 1963. On page 85, he makes a reference to Honolulu where he says, 'I remember nothing specific about Honolulu, but I remember and I know who remembers Honolulu well - Bundy.' This is McNamara's way of saying Bundy was responsible for the fateful decisions, most likely a reference to the coup d'état and assassination that was finalized in Honolulu.
"It is impossible not to inhale McNamara's wisdom or not marvel at his healing voice and the core message that he conveys: 'We should march forward wiser and more humble after Vietnam and after the loss of a great American president with a beautiful and realistic peaceful vision of the world.'
"I say thank you, Mr. McNamara, and that is why I nominate him for a peace award."
The topic of the article posted below is the JFK assassination, and Dr. Salerian's assertions and hypotheses are stunning. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the assassination, but Dr. Salerian has new evidence based on his reading of Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect, published a few years ago. In Retrospect was McNamara's mea culpa for his sins committed as Defense Secretary under JFK and LBJ. Dr. Salerian contends McNamara is asking forgiveness not only for the colossal blunder of Vietnam, but also (in veiled, coded language) for the assassination of JFK. I have read McNamara's book and found it to be much too little, much too late, to be an acceptable path to his redemption. But I was unable to make the same inferences that Salerian has. Salerian uses other source documents with which I am very familiar to build his case for a high-level coup d'etat, hatched by CIA operatives and traitors--McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson, and Robert McNamara among them--within the Kennedy administration...culminating in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The lesson for me was this: beware of those in the JFK cabinet who stayed on to serve LBJ after the bullets flew in Dealey Plaza. Here's the article:
"...he [McNamara] is the first modern statesman who openly acknowledges his errors and takes responsibility for them. This is a first in history and it is a very good thing for humanity.
"I want to bypass all the drama, all the phony diplomatic rhetoric, the thinly veiled transparency of obsessive minds and to leap over all the artificialities to embrace and celebrate McNamara's unique gift to humanity.
"It is my hypothesis that Bundy, McNamara, Allen Dulles (the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency), General Curtis LeMay (Air Force chief of staff), Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and possibly a few others engineered a coup d'état to wage war in Vietnam. It is also my hypothesis that President Kennedy's death was just the collateral damage of war and so was the disappearance of over a thousand people after the assassination.
"Why do common sense, reason, and statistics suggest that all the following pieces perfectly fit together for a complex design to make a coup d'état a success? They are all very rare or extraordinary firsts in history. For instance, the president, the vice president, and virtually the entire Cabinet were away from Washington on the day of the coup (2). The president was in Texas along with the vice president, and the Cabinet were on their way to Tokyo. By now, we know that the Secret Service was grossly negligent before, during, and after the ambush (3). We also know that all of the images of the president's death captured by photos and videos are not authentic (3). The president's autopsy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital is a sham, as are the X-rays and the autopsy photos (3,4). This is astonishing for Bethesda, the flagship of all the best the military can provide for medical care.
"On the day of the ambush, the phones in Washington, D.C., the press phones, and the Cabinet airplane communication all ceased to function (2). The only two people in Washington from the president's team were Bundy and McNamara, and they happened to be the architects of the new war opposed by President Kennedy but endorsed by the new President, LBJ (2). Bundy and McNamara were at the Pentagon precisely at the time the presidential limousine approached Dealey Plaza (1).
"Both Bundy and McNamara lied about small details of the assassination repeatedly and unnecessarily, in some ways inviting special attention to their own behavior. McNamara said for 90 minutes he was not aware of the president's assassination, although he was at the Pentagon, the epicenter of reaction to national emergencies (1). Strangely, he was chairing a routine budget meeting, which he did not interrupt. Even a month later when information emerged that several communication systems were sabotaged, McNamara never evinced curiousity about the origin of all these mishaps.
"None of these, of course, individually make McNamara or Bundy a suspect, yet collectively they click and suggest they were not random events. There are other more fundamental developments that can actually solve the puzzle. Most important, Kennedy had opposed the war in Vietnam and had issued specific orders through National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated November 21, 1963, to end the war (1,2). This was to begin with the withdrawal of '1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.' (2). His orders were precise and unequivocal. But upon his death, not only were his orders reversed, but then the war expanded at an eventual cost of 58,000 American lives.
"President Kennedy was the author of NSAM 263 ending the war. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, authorized NSAM 273 overriding the intent of 263 (1,2).
"If, despite the evidence, one might possibly be dubious of McNamara's role, there can be little doubt of Bundy's involvement. Bundy, according to Army General Maxwell Taylor, a trusted confidante of both John and Robert Kennedy, was the number one responsible party for the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs (2). On April 16, 1961, on D-day at 9:30 p.m., Bundy would cancel President Kennedy's orders for air strikes against Cuban targets (2). Bundy's reversal would be determined to be the most crucial error contributing to the debacle. At the end of the Cuban study group, General Taylor's conclusion declared that Bundy's blunder was the main cause of failure (2). Bundy himself would offer his resignation, which Kennedy declined.
"Bundy's blunders—if that is how we wish to characterize them—would continue. He single-handedly managed to create an epochal cable on August 24, 1963, authorizing a coup against the leader of South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem (1,2). At first, the dispatch of the cable appeared to be a mere accident. Bundy pointed the finger at his young assistants Michael Forrestal and Roger Hilsman (1,2). Kennedy was furious, of course. 'This shit must stop!' he shouted at Forrestal. The young Bundy assistant took the brunt of Kennedy's fury and offered his resignation (4). Once again, Kennedy declined. But the question is: how could Bundy, the nation's top gun on national security, be unaware of such a pivotal message? How could a young national security aide, without the knowledge or approval of his boss, send a historical paradigm-shifting cable to authorize a covert coup d'état in Vietnam? Bundy's response? It's a bad idea, he said, to make major policy decisions on weekends.
"The error of August 24 could not be fully appreciated if it had not been preceded by a similar occurrence during the Bay of Pigs. Bundy's absence was eerily similar to the disappearance of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, during the crucial days of the Bay of Pigs. Bundy's tricks with the October 29th meeting are well recorded with his admission that, in fact, he had given Henry Cabot Lodge, the ambassador to Vietnam, a green light for a coup d'état despite presidential orders against such an act (4).
"The coup did occur, not only toppling the government but also taking the lives of President Diem and his younger brother and adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu (2,4). This was yet another blow to President Kennedy's personal instructions. He had sent his personal friend as his emissary to Vietnam to negotiate Diem's peaceful exit out of Vietnam. Understandably, when the news arrived at the White House, a sickened and ashen president in visible distress quickly left the conference room (2,4). The conclusion seem inescapable that he had realized someone had been betrayed him, although he did not know who, why, or how. It might have been his gut feeling telling him that something horrendous was going on, yet he could not let himself think his most important aide and his chief military adviser was the mole.
"A modern Brutus betraying democracy. Bundy's jokes were telling. When the Diem brothers' murders surfaced with their hands tied behind their backs and bullets lodged in their necks, he commented, 'This is not the preferred way to commit suicide.' Bundy was at the White House Situation Room chatting with Lucien Conein, the CIA station chief in Saigon who was at the command center of the coup d'état with bags full of dollars for the triumphant generals (2,4). Did Conein and Bundy team up on November 22nd when Conein was on Houston Street and Bundy at the White House Situation Room? We know however, they were there (2,4). What did Bundy do at the White House situation room? Was he organizing Operation Big Lift[1] or was he running the ambush from the Situation Room?
"And why was Conein's smile published all over the world with the presidential limousine slowly approaching the death zone on Elm Street (5)?
"Was this a Dulles or Bundy genius to boldly inform the world who makes the big decisions in Texas by not concealing the face of the CIA station chief, recently returned from facilitating a coup in Vietnam only three weeks earlier?
"Perhaps it is nothing more sublime yet devastating than deception by a trusted man that makes us understand JFK's failure to suspect the virulence of Bundy, a brilliant virtuoso of deceit. Some historians and behavior experts may wrongly blame Kennedy for letting his guard down to trust a compulsive liar like Bundy. Or worse for not firing Bundy after the Bay of Pigs.
"And here comes the creative genius of Allen Dulles, the most likely architect of the big strategy. During the Bay of Pigs, Dulles made himself the conspicuous target for the blunder, the obvious villain by disappearing for several days to lure the Kennedy brothers to an elegant trap (2,4).
"What is remarkable is that Dulles's success rested on its blunt openness of his obvious responsibility for the military fiasco. He virtually produced the evidence making him the fall guy to steer any careful scrutiny away from Bundy and Bundy's defining error correctly diagnosed by General Maxwell Taylor—that is, the error or calling off the all-important air strikes, thereby ensuring a rout by Cuban forces.
"The President took the bait, so did his brother Bobby. If Dulles had designed a simple plan for future spies, his strategy should be recorded as a classic in the annals of grand deceptions. Whereas democracy, human life, and progress depend on trust and transparency, Dulles and his organization had a different premise.
"Some modern thinkers share the opinion that diplomacy always relies on deception. Consider, for instance, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's masterly use of the sitting duck of Pearl Harbor to unleash the American might.
"The danger that arises with such a comparison is a dismissal of trust and hierarchy. Roosevelt was always in charge. His admirals and code breakers did not set up Roosevelt to declare war on Japan. Roosevelt was the chief architect, unlike Dulles, who was sabotaging his boss, the commander in chief.
"Let us for a moment digress and consider one other and possibly crucial act by Dulles during his service under President Eisenhower.
"Among the researchers who uncovered Dulles's sabotage of impending talks between Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev are James Douglass and Fletcher Prouty (2,4). Thanks to their meticulous documentation we now know that indeed the U2 incident with Francis Gary Powers landing on Soviet soil and canceling the talks between the two leaders was another rare Dulles gift to world politics (2,4). Prouty, a patriotic man, tactfully and methodically presents the evidence leading no doubt that Eisenhower's order for no flights was openly violated with the U2 mission (2,4).
"The revelation of Dulles's strategy sheds new light on JFK's failure to recognize Bundy's combustible presence at the White House.
"On September 21, 1996, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. eulogized Bundy with an article published in George, He wrote, 'Born a privileged Republican he has become a liberal Democrat, and a single tragic error seriously compromising his full potential as a statesman.'
"In that respect, Schlesinger just joined a distinguished group of people who never understood Bundy's sick brain. The cheating had a deep, slow, unmistakable ascent in Bundy's life leading to Dealey Plaza.
"Though the principle element is deception, the early signs are well concealed under a mixture of dry humor, intelligence, and surprise. The entire magical powers of Bundy can be surmised in how naturally Bundy cycled his triangular package of deception.
"This observation, of course, is made possible only with a bird's eye view of history from a distant site and angle and aided by an abundance of key information.
Once again Bundy's center of gravity is deception. Consider:
Bundy enters Yale without completing the entrance exam (6). With a cute and imaginative excuse, he refuses to write a mandatory essay.
- Bundy enters the Army by cheating the eye exam—memorizing the eye chart (6).
- Bundy teaches government at Harvard without ever taking a government course (6).
- Bundy becomes a Harvard dean without ever earning a Ph.D. (6).
"Such gross, open violations of boundaries are regularly and flauntingly illustrated in Bundy's pre–White House life he had mistakenly confused as daring brilliance instead of a dysfunctional brain juxtaposing his poor control of chaotic emotions and drives.
"Who is Bundy? What kind of a man would engage in such deception after reaching such a privileged position of trust, power, and influence?
"He was a broken mind with an internally roaring fury at all the Kennedys and what they represented, and his viruliferous rage destroyed so many Southeast Asian people, families, farms, forests, peasants, businessmen, enemy fighters, and more without any mercy, sorrow, or remorse—not even with his death in 1996.
"Once Bundy's deception emerges and his emotional, historical, political roots to Dulles and their frenzied, coordinated demolition of the Kennedy White House are discovered, the giant sketch of the coup d'état is visible and not so mysterious or hypothetical. You do not have to be a student of the complexity theory to marvel at the painstaking labor and extensive design that put so many diverse and dissonant pieces together that paved the road to Dealey Plaza.
"And that brings us full circle to subject of this article: Robert Strange McNamara. Why is McNamara great? History and countless researchers and ordinary citizens inspired by diverse factors have unearthed crucial pieces to the JFK puzzle. May it not be possible that as more time has passed since the assassination and with more evidence the puzzle has finally been solved?
McNamara reports only the facts. He does not openly point his finger at anyone. But he does establish the foundation of the giant puzzle. He had every reason to imitate the other three and forever take the truth to his grave as Bundy, Dulles, and Johnson did. There is, of course, some reason to indicate that LBJ did his reasonable share to leave a paper trail behind.
"LBJ was not in Honolulu, on Oahu, on November 20, 1963, possibly the most important gathering for the coup. Ostensibly, the conference was chaired by McNamara to review the political, economic, and military status in Vietnam (4). The conference was attended by key military and government leaders, including virtually the entire Cabinet. In point of fact, the end result of the conference was to torpedo NSAM 263, the document ordering U.S. troops out of Vietnam (1,2).
"In In Retrospect, McNamara's measured, careful tone reviewing the events preceding the Vietnam War meticulously introduces the important history-defining revelations. Through his stated words, as well as beautifully presented omissions, he recapitulates an important section of American history. His chain of logic, recording history by color-coding the essential truths, then gently dropping absent cues is simply magnificent.
"In the comforting illumination of his fatherly wisdom, one suddenly makes sense of so many seemingly impossible mishaps that occurred before, during, and after the ambush. McNamara makes a point of explaining what is essential and what occurred. He makes a point of specific details such as his learning the news at the Pentagon at 2 p.m., almost 90 full minutes after the president was shot (1). He reminds us gently that he is with Bundy at the Pentagon (1). Equally gently, he tells us that he continues with the meeting, a fairly routine budget discussion. He is equally tactful in pointing out that the August 24, 1963 cable was a mistake, but the mistake was not caused by the young assistant Hilsman or Forrestal and it was unquestionably Bundy's fault (1). In essence, this is McNamara's way of exposing Bundy and Bundy's successful sabotage of JFK's Vietnam strategy. He makes a very clear point of establishing the truth that Kennedy's position on Vietnam and the difference between National Security Action Memorandum 263 and 273. He therefore establishes the truth at the expense of the Pentagon Papers and their manifold misrepresentations: JFK had given clear and absolute orders to exit Vietnam.
"Most importantly, without using highly precise descriptions of actions that would be defined as 'treason' or 'sabotage,' McNamara would record history. On page 69, he is most precise. This is where McNamara reveals how Hilsman on September 27, 1963, via Michael Forrestal, sent a handwritten note to Lodge. The content of this letter is a clear violation of JFK's specific orders. Hence, McNamara exposes the treachery by Hilsman, Forrestal and of course, because Bundy is their boss, Bundy. McNamara skillfully disengages himself from the decisions made in Honolulu on November 20, 1963. On page 85, he makes a reference to Honolulu where he says, 'I remember nothing specific about Honolulu, but I remember and I know who remembers Honolulu well - Bundy.' This is McNamara's way of saying Bundy was responsible for the fateful decisions, most likely a reference to the coup d'état and assassination that was finalized in Honolulu.
"It is impossible not to inhale McNamara's wisdom or not marvel at his healing voice and the core message that he conveys: 'We should march forward wiser and more humble after Vietnam and after the loss of a great American president with a beautiful and realistic peaceful vision of the world.'
"I say thank you, Mr. McNamara, and that is why I nominate him for a peace award."
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Book Signing Event--Collinsville Holiday Arts Festival
I'll be signing copies of my book, Murder Of An American Nazi, at the Authors Corner in the Community Room of the Collinsville, Illinois, Public Library. The event is part of the Collinsville Holiday Arts Festival, and it will take place from 12 noon till 8 pm on both Dec. 4 and 5, 2009.
The Collinsville Public Library is located at 408 West Main Street in downtown Collinsville. Eleven other St. Louis area authors will be participating. It's an eclectic group covering a wide spectrum of genres, so there will be plenty of good books from which to choose.
For more information, you can contact Barbara Rhodes at http://www.collinsvillelibrary.org/ or call (618) 344-1112.
The Collinsville Public Library is located at 408 West Main Street in downtown Collinsville. Eleven other St. Louis area authors will be participating. It's an eclectic group covering a wide spectrum of genres, so there will be plenty of good books from which to choose.
For more information, you can contact Barbara Rhodes at http://www.collinsvillelibrary.org/ or call (618) 344-1112.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Mr. President, Remember The Lesson Of Jack Kennedy: Don't Let The Warmongers Box You In
The United States is, once again, at the precipice of all-out war, and, if the Pentagon, the Republicans, and the military-industrial monolith have their way, Afghanistan may become another Iraq or Vietnam. One can only hope that President Obama knows his history and will refuse to repeat its mistakes. For he alone, like Jack Kennedy in the early 1960s, stands in the way of the forces of unrepentant, bloodthirsty aggression. The Pentagon and the warmongers think they have him boxed in, with cries for escalation in Afghanistan. They have even dragged out that soulless solicitor of Halliburton business--Dick Cheney--to do their bidding. But, if history tells us anything, expanding the war against an entrenched, indigenous, terrain-savvy tribe like the Taliban is futile. The body counts, the bombings, and the price tag will skyrocket, but the conflict will never be resolved.
The cries of the hawks are all too familiar. In the early 1960s, the military, the CIA, and the right-wing politicians wanted to invade Cuba, nuke Russia, and wipe out the communists in southeast Asia. Kennedy resisted, and that sealed his fate. Maxwell Taylor once said, "At one point, President Kennedy was the only one who DIDN'T want to send ground troops into Vietnam." History absolved his stance. Vietnam turned out to be a bloody, expensive waste.
Will Obama have the same courage his long-ago predecessor summoned up? And if he does, will the forces of evil put a target on his back?
This is why we elected him...to avoid the same blunders that got us into Iraq and Vietnam. Hard as it is to admit, the only resolution to this mess is diplomacy and negotiation, even when it involves a group as repugnant as the Taliban. After all, as Jack Kennedy once said about America's dire enemy in his day, "...we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal."
The cries of the hawks are all too familiar. In the early 1960s, the military, the CIA, and the right-wing politicians wanted to invade Cuba, nuke Russia, and wipe out the communists in southeast Asia. Kennedy resisted, and that sealed his fate. Maxwell Taylor once said, "At one point, President Kennedy was the only one who DIDN'T want to send ground troops into Vietnam." History absolved his stance. Vietnam turned out to be a bloody, expensive waste.
Will Obama have the same courage his long-ago predecessor summoned up? And if he does, will the forces of evil put a target on his back?
This is why we elected him...to avoid the same blunders that got us into Iraq and Vietnam. Hard as it is to admit, the only resolution to this mess is diplomacy and negotiation, even when it involves a group as repugnant as the Taliban. After all, as Jack Kennedy once said about America's dire enemy in his day, "...we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal."
Thursday, October 8, 2009
"Red Sheep" Shocked, Dismayed By Cardinals Performance. They Haven't Been Paying Attention.
For years, local media hacks and management shills have been tirelessly promoting St. Louis Cardinals fans as baseball's best. Let me tell you something...it ain't so. I live here in Cardinal land, have even attended a few games. These fans are passive, uncritical, and slavishly obsequious. They attend games not to live and die with their team, question the manager's moves, scream at umpires, or heckle visiting teams...they go to have a summer night out with their neighbors. Baseball games in St. Louis are social events, times to catch up with their pals and drink a Bud or two under the stars. The game itself is just background noise, like a CD playing at a neighborhood barbecue.
Sitting behind me in the right-field loge seats at the last game I attended were two families, small kids and all, gossiping, playing word games, people watching, letting the youngsters run wild, and, in general, being oblivious to the game. Not one of them could have told you the score, the inning, the pitcher, even the opponent.
These same fans (I call them Red Sheep or Crimson Lemmings) took no notice when the Cardinals ended this regular season losing 14 of their last 21 games. All they knew was that the Cardinals won the NL Central and were going to the playoffs. Little was made of the sloppy defense, the god-awful relief pitching, the lack of timely hitting, Albert Pujols' slump, and all sorts of other dark omens.
So now that the Birds have laid an enormous egg in Game 1 of the playoffs, losing 5-3 to the LA Dodgers, the Red Sheep are livid. They are now suddenly and furiously spewing their anger and shock on chat forums, sports talk shows, and blogs. If only they'd been paying attention, they would have seen this coming. Here are the warning signs they missed, and here is what the embarrassingly uncritical St. Louis media glossed over:
Albert Pujols' career is in decline. He is now, according to some, in his mid-30s, a time when baseball skills erode. Albert has not hit a home run since Sept. 9, the longest drought of his career. His slump began after he participated in the home run derby at the All-Star game, an event which has ruined many power strokes. (Bobby Abreu has never been the same since winning it several years ago.) Albert is so confused and inept at the plate that he can barely hit a loud foul ball. Why Joe Torre is intentionally walking a virtually sure out is beyond me.
Matt Holliday, the team's heralded acquisition from Oakland, has not homered since Sept. 11. He and Pujols together have one home run in 156 at-bats.
Cardinal relief pitching is horrible, especially Kyle McClellan. McClellan single-handedly blew Adam Wainwright's 20th victory a week ago. He surrendered five runs in about three minutes. His ERA in September was near 50, and he has little control over his fastball. Last night he hit a batter, walked a man, gave up a hit, and...oh Christ, he's just terrible.
The offense can't get a big hit with runners on base. In game one of the NLDS they stranded 14 runners. 14!! The last of those were left on base by Rick Ankiel, aka the human strikeout machine. Ankiel has struck out five times more often than he has walked this year. That is sub-human futility.
Boy are the Crimson Lemmings going to be pissed off when LA completes the series sweep at Busch Stadium.
Sitting behind me in the right-field loge seats at the last game I attended were two families, small kids and all, gossiping, playing word games, people watching, letting the youngsters run wild, and, in general, being oblivious to the game. Not one of them could have told you the score, the inning, the pitcher, even the opponent.
These same fans (I call them Red Sheep or Crimson Lemmings) took no notice when the Cardinals ended this regular season losing 14 of their last 21 games. All they knew was that the Cardinals won the NL Central and were going to the playoffs. Little was made of the sloppy defense, the god-awful relief pitching, the lack of timely hitting, Albert Pujols' slump, and all sorts of other dark omens.
So now that the Birds have laid an enormous egg in Game 1 of the playoffs, losing 5-3 to the LA Dodgers, the Red Sheep are livid. They are now suddenly and furiously spewing their anger and shock on chat forums, sports talk shows, and blogs. If only they'd been paying attention, they would have seen this coming. Here are the warning signs they missed, and here is what the embarrassingly uncritical St. Louis media glossed over:
Albert Pujols' career is in decline. He is now, according to some, in his mid-30s, a time when baseball skills erode. Albert has not hit a home run since Sept. 9, the longest drought of his career. His slump began after he participated in the home run derby at the All-Star game, an event which has ruined many power strokes. (Bobby Abreu has never been the same since winning it several years ago.) Albert is so confused and inept at the plate that he can barely hit a loud foul ball. Why Joe Torre is intentionally walking a virtually sure out is beyond me.
Matt Holliday, the team's heralded acquisition from Oakland, has not homered since Sept. 11. He and Pujols together have one home run in 156 at-bats.
Cardinal relief pitching is horrible, especially Kyle McClellan. McClellan single-handedly blew Adam Wainwright's 20th victory a week ago. He surrendered five runs in about three minutes. His ERA in September was near 50, and he has little control over his fastball. Last night he hit a batter, walked a man, gave up a hit, and...oh Christ, he's just terrible.
The offense can't get a big hit with runners on base. In game one of the NLDS they stranded 14 runners. 14!! The last of those were left on base by Rick Ankiel, aka the human strikeout machine. Ankiel has struck out five times more often than he has walked this year. That is sub-human futility.
Boy are the Crimson Lemmings going to be pissed off when LA completes the series sweep at Busch Stadium.
Limbaugh To Buy My Football Team? Better Not.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that Rush Limbaugh is part of a group trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. Huh? Limbaugh owning a team in a sport dominated by African-American athletes? I don't see it.
If you don't know Limbaugh, he's that fascist blowhard that your right-wing screwball of a neighbor has blasting on his radio every day. And here are just some of the hateful, racist things Limbaugh has broadcast:
"They ought to give a posthumous medal to James Earl Ray. Godspeed, James."
(To a black listener:) "Take that bone out of your nose and shut up."
"Historians say slavery was a bad thing. Not so. The South was built on slavery...and the streets were sure a lot safer at night then."
"Nelson Mandela was a communist agitator."
(About black pro football players:) "I mean it looks like it's the Bloods vs. Crips without weapons out there."
I know NFL owners are a good old boys network of white, middle-aged conservatives, but do they want the kind of turmoil and divisiveness that Limbaugh brings? I can just hear Limbaugh now after a game where one of his wide receivers drops a game-winning pass (a regular occurrence with the Rams): "I'm going to fire that jungle bunny. Probably had fried chicken grease on his fingers."
If Limbaugh does purchase the Rams, I'll find another team to root for. And I'll be gleeful each time Limbaugh's team loses.
If you don't know Limbaugh, he's that fascist blowhard that your right-wing screwball of a neighbor has blasting on his radio every day. And here are just some of the hateful, racist things Limbaugh has broadcast:
"They ought to give a posthumous medal to James Earl Ray. Godspeed, James."
(To a black listener:) "Take that bone out of your nose and shut up."
"Historians say slavery was a bad thing. Not so. The South was built on slavery...and the streets were sure a lot safer at night then."
"Nelson Mandela was a communist agitator."
(About black pro football players:) "I mean it looks like it's the Bloods vs. Crips without weapons out there."
I know NFL owners are a good old boys network of white, middle-aged conservatives, but do they want the kind of turmoil and divisiveness that Limbaugh brings? I can just hear Limbaugh now after a game where one of his wide receivers drops a game-winning pass (a regular occurrence with the Rams): "I'm going to fire that jungle bunny. Probably had fried chicken grease on his fingers."
If Limbaugh does purchase the Rams, I'll find another team to root for. And I'll be gleeful each time Limbaugh's team loses.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Jon Voight: More Than A Bad Actor, He's An Anti-Health Care NutJob
Scanning for my book trailer on YouTube, I stumbled across something called the Mike Huckabee show on FOX News. The guest was actor Jon Voight, and it turns out that he's a red-faced, closed-minded, self-centered neocon. Who knew? All I knew of him was that he mumbled his lines so badly that they were barely audible in "Heat" (1996), was typecast as a neo-fascist Army general in "The Incredible Hulk" (2005), and hammed it up in "Transformers" (2009). Turns out his politics are as offensive as his acting.
First of all, the Huckabee show is like something out of 1950s TV. The audience is all white, they nod their heads on cue, they gasp when the word "socialism" is mentioned. Just the kind of uncognizant, conformist automatons FOX loves. Huckabee has all the charm of your loony uncle who pulls nickels out of his ears at family gatherings and still laments the fact that FDR got us out of the Great Depression. He smiles approvingly when Voight calls Obama names, the kind of racial code words the Arkansas hillbillies love.
But Voight, of course, has his facts wrong. He said Americans don't want health care reform; they like things just they way there are. Sorry, Midnight Cowboy, 46 million Americans without any health care at all would make you eat those words...and hope you choke on them. Of course, Jonny Boy's rich enough to afford health care, so what does it matter to him. And spittle shot from his mouth when he whined that "Obama's playing the god card. He said god wants Obamacare to pass." No, Jon, you're lying, and, like Huckleberry, you're a hypocrite. The Bible says we are our brother's keeper; thus, it is entirely appropriate to make health care reform a moral issue. After all, aren't Christians morally obligated to help their fellow man in need? What's more needed now than health care for those who are sick?
First of all, the Huckabee show is like something out of 1950s TV. The audience is all white, they nod their heads on cue, they gasp when the word "socialism" is mentioned. Just the kind of uncognizant, conformist automatons FOX loves. Huckabee has all the charm of your loony uncle who pulls nickels out of his ears at family gatherings and still laments the fact that FDR got us out of the Great Depression. He smiles approvingly when Voight calls Obama names, the kind of racial code words the Arkansas hillbillies love.
But Voight, of course, has his facts wrong. He said Americans don't want health care reform; they like things just they way there are. Sorry, Midnight Cowboy, 46 million Americans without any health care at all would make you eat those words...and hope you choke on them. Of course, Jonny Boy's rich enough to afford health care, so what does it matter to him. And spittle shot from his mouth when he whined that "Obama's playing the god card. He said god wants Obamacare to pass." No, Jon, you're lying, and, like Huckleberry, you're a hypocrite. The Bible says we are our brother's keeper; thus, it is entirely appropriate to make health care reform a moral issue. After all, aren't Christians morally obligated to help their fellow man in need? What's more needed now than health care for those who are sick?
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Mainstream Media Play Stupid While Health Care Bullies Sway Opinion
If ever any intelligent, objective citizen needed proof that the American media is a bunch of impotent, corporatized, weak-kneed shills--emasculated by and terrified of the right wing--you need only watch the nightly news or read your local paper. Day after day, mobs of phony anti-health reform vigilantes threaten others at town hall meetings, yet the TV networks, the Associated Press, and major dailies report this as legitimate news (perhaps because Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly sponsor some of these "news" reports?). A serious journalistic investigation, even a half-hearted one, would reveal that most of these "protestors" are paid by the health insurance corporations or their lobbyists. The rest are mindless neanderthals, propagandized by Rush Limbaugh and the usual gang of fascists. But Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charlie Gibson don't see it that way. To them, the hostile mobs are just average Americans exercising their constitutional right to deprive 46 million people of health care.
What's most galling is that the bullies shout down the pro-reformers with lies about "death panels" and "universal vaccinations" and the end of Medicare, and God knows what else. And the media never challenge these lies. It would be like Goebbels claiming that Jews are really descended from rats, and the media, instead of dismissing this outrageous prevarication, reports Goebbels' comments (and the psychopaths it unleashes) as legitimate news. (I guess Huey Long was right when he said, "Fascism will come to America, but we will call it democracy. And a corrupt, complacent press will let it happen.") Meanwhile, polls show that public health care for all, once favored by 80% of Americans, is now dying a slow death. All because a small minority of red-faced extremists and paid propagandists are being facilitated by a brain-dead media.
This is the state of the mainstream media in this country today. Newt Gringich goes on cable talk shows saying we have the best health care system in the world; Sean Hannity repeats this lie on Fox News. Neither are challenged. The fact is, the USA's health care system ranks 37th in the world according to the World Health Organization. Dick Armey goes on "Meet The Press" and asserts that having public health care for all would kill thousands of people. It is never revealed that Armey is a paid lobbyist for the health insurance industry. This is democracy in action; this is your free press at work.
Let's be real. Health insurance corporations have billions available to flood the free market of ideas with lies and distortions, spread by the politicians, news organizations, and lobbyists it owns. Profit will always defeat the welfare of the people, when the people are cowed by fear and misinformed by a media that's "for sale." A friend of mine put it this way, "I don't watch the national news any more. You won't find the truth there."
What's most galling is that the bullies shout down the pro-reformers with lies about "death panels" and "universal vaccinations" and the end of Medicare, and God knows what else. And the media never challenge these lies. It would be like Goebbels claiming that Jews are really descended from rats, and the media, instead of dismissing this outrageous prevarication, reports Goebbels' comments (and the psychopaths it unleashes) as legitimate news. (I guess Huey Long was right when he said, "Fascism will come to America, but we will call it democracy. And a corrupt, complacent press will let it happen.") Meanwhile, polls show that public health care for all, once favored by 80% of Americans, is now dying a slow death. All because a small minority of red-faced extremists and paid propagandists are being facilitated by a brain-dead media.
This is the state of the mainstream media in this country today. Newt Gringich goes on cable talk shows saying we have the best health care system in the world; Sean Hannity repeats this lie on Fox News. Neither are challenged. The fact is, the USA's health care system ranks 37th in the world according to the World Health Organization. Dick Armey goes on "Meet The Press" and asserts that having public health care for all would kill thousands of people. It is never revealed that Armey is a paid lobbyist for the health insurance industry. This is democracy in action; this is your free press at work.
Let's be real. Health insurance corporations have billions available to flood the free market of ideas with lies and distortions, spread by the politicians, news organizations, and lobbyists it owns. Profit will always defeat the welfare of the people, when the people are cowed by fear and misinformed by a media that's "for sale." A friend of mine put it this way, "I don't watch the national news any more. You won't find the truth there."
Saturday, July 18, 2009
I Shed No Tears For Cronkite--CIA Mockingbird Asset
Walter Cronkite's death has caused an outpouring of grief and glowing remembrances from people who did not know the real Cronkite and who are ignorant of their own history. Cronkite, called "the most trusted man in America" during his tenure as CBS Evening News anchor, was quite untrustworthy when it came to uncovering the truth about the biggest news story of the 20th century--the assassination of President Kennedy. Yeah, I've seen the video of his "choked-up" reporting of JFK's death on Nov. 22, 1963, but what I remember most is his 1967 CBS documentary which supported and praised the Warren Commission's work. The Warren Report has since been exposed as a 26-volume pack of lies, but Walter went to his grave defending it. This indefensible lapse in journalistic integrity and fortitude was no accident. Walter was either ordered, or strongy "encouraged," to mislead Americans by his boss, William Paley.
Regular readers of this blog are familiar with Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's subversion of the free press in America. Frank Wisner, who ran the project in the 1940s and 1950s for the Agency, once famously said that the American media was like his own "...personal Wurlitzer; I can play any tune I want on it and America Will follow along." In the 1970s, CIA director William Colby admitted, "The CIA owns assets at every major media outlet in America, TV networks, newspapers, publishing houses, and magazines. In a 1977 Rolling Stone article, Carl Bernstein estimated that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of CIA-friendly assets at all the major TV networks, newspapers and periodicals in America. William Paley, president of CBS, had an especially cozy relationship with the CIA. It began in the 1950s when Allen Dulles was head of the Agency. Dulles and Paley became close friends, and Dulles convinced Paley to broadcast CIA-approved stories, employ CIA "journalists," and provide cover for covert agents on assignment. CBS even provided film clips of stories on foreign nations and their leaders. Many times these clips were not broadcast unless the CIA gave its approval.
The apparatus, then, was in place for the CIA to prevent an honest investigation of its murder of the 35th president of the United States. The Washington Post, the New York Times, Time/Life, ABC, NBC, and CBS all attacked those who dared to criticize the official version of events, and publicized propaganda and false information about how and why JFK was murdered. CBS, in particular, led the charge with Cronkite and Dan Rather out front, heading off any real investigative journalism. Paley ruled over his reporters and his news network with an iron fist. NO way was he going to take on the CIA.
So I say, Walter, you may have been an avuncular sort who played to the camera, but you got the most important story of your lifetime wrong. Because of that, you aided and abetted the falsification of 20th century American history...and for that you will forever be disgraced as a journalist. I'll have to turn off the news this weekend, because the Cronkite tributes gushing from the mouths of the uninformed will make me want to throw up.
Regular readers of this blog are familiar with Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's subversion of the free press in America. Frank Wisner, who ran the project in the 1940s and 1950s for the Agency, once famously said that the American media was like his own "...personal Wurlitzer; I can play any tune I want on it and America Will follow along." In the 1970s, CIA director William Colby admitted, "The CIA owns assets at every major media outlet in America, TV networks, newspapers, publishing houses, and magazines. In a 1977 Rolling Stone article, Carl Bernstein estimated that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of CIA-friendly assets at all the major TV networks, newspapers and periodicals in America. William Paley, president of CBS, had an especially cozy relationship with the CIA. It began in the 1950s when Allen Dulles was head of the Agency. Dulles and Paley became close friends, and Dulles convinced Paley to broadcast CIA-approved stories, employ CIA "journalists," and provide cover for covert agents on assignment. CBS even provided film clips of stories on foreign nations and their leaders. Many times these clips were not broadcast unless the CIA gave its approval.
The apparatus, then, was in place for the CIA to prevent an honest investigation of its murder of the 35th president of the United States. The Washington Post, the New York Times, Time/Life, ABC, NBC, and CBS all attacked those who dared to criticize the official version of events, and publicized propaganda and false information about how and why JFK was murdered. CBS, in particular, led the charge with Cronkite and Dan Rather out front, heading off any real investigative journalism. Paley ruled over his reporters and his news network with an iron fist. NO way was he going to take on the CIA.
So I say, Walter, you may have been an avuncular sort who played to the camera, but you got the most important story of your lifetime wrong. Because of that, you aided and abetted the falsification of 20th century American history...and for that you will forever be disgraced as a journalist. I'll have to turn off the news this weekend, because the Cronkite tributes gushing from the mouths of the uninformed will make me want to throw up.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
My Novel Is Being Serialized; Read Sections For Free
Beginning Monday, July 6, Murder Of An American Nazi will be posted, a chapter at a time, on The Daily Novel's web site. This is where readers can go to access good novels for free. Just click on www.dailynovel.net
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Glad To Have DeRosa; But LaRussa's Micromanaging Will Negate Him
The Cardinals' Front Office actually acquired an in-season impact player. I'm shocked; I never thought this would happen. Mark DeRosa can actually hit for average and power (.270, 11 homers 56 RBI), something our present outfielders are incapable of. He should play every day, but don't hold your breath. Remember, Tony LaGenius is our manager, and if there's one thing he will never resort to it is doing the obvious thing. For, you see, geniuses do not do the obvious. That's why they are geniuses. If it is plain to all that DeRosa should play every day, then you can bet he will not. Because LaGenius knows more than any fan, any player, any manager, any front office person who has ever seen a game of baseball. In fact, I have publicly begged him to bat the pitcher eighth so that he would do what every other manager in the history of the game has always done: bat the pitcher ninth. I figure if he gets the idea that the fans think batting the pitcher eighth is a good idea, he will resort to batting the pitcher ninth. Such is the bizarre conundrum of being a St. Louis Cardinals fan. (By the way, someday, god willing, LaLoser will retire or die, and ownership--Bill DeWallet--will sell, and I will be free to love my team again. After all, this has been my team since 1958; it is more my team than it is LaGenius's or DeWallet's.)
Back to the sweet and sour of having DeRosa. Because DeRosa is a very versatile player, it presents LaGenius with many options. And one thing we do not want is for LaGenius to have too many options, because he invariably thinks and ponders and intellecutalizes himself into the wrong choice. (Baseball is a simple game, but LaLoser insists on making it rocket science.) For instance, in today's game the Twins threw a lefty, Nelson Liriano, so it was a safe bet that DeRosa would be in left field (even though he prefers the infield) because we have a paucity of right-handed-hitting outfielders. (The only other is Ryan Ludwick, so it was a safe bet he would play also, though I sweated this out until game time. Note: this is the same Ryan Ludwick who hit 37 homers last year, drove in 117, batted .300, and made the All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger award...but who has been turned into a platoon player by LaGenius.) This must have been a devastating dilemma to LaGenius, because it meant that he would have to sit either his man-crush/love interest Rick Ankiel (.234, 5 HRs, 25 RBI) or the pitching coach's son, Chris Duncan (no power, no average, no clutch hitting)...or, god forbid, horror of horrors...bench both! Ah...alas, LaGenius chose to play Ankiel, rather than Colby Rasmus, our young phenom who has also been turned into an occasional player. So although Duncan was benched, Ankiel was not.
Let's back up here a minute, and let me explain something. Until the Cardinals acquired DeRosa, they had four outfielders (five if you include Skip Schumaker, whom LaGenius has converted into a mediocre second baseman). They are Ryan Ludwick, Colby Rasmus, Rick Ankiel, and Chris Duncan. It is obvious to me, and all logical Cardinals fans, that Ludwick (for reasons stated above) and Rasmus should be playing every day. Rasmus is only 21, but he can run, hit, field and throw. He has the most potential of any player. Playing him every third game is not going to develop his abilities; he needs to be a part of the everyday lineup. That leaves one outfield position vacant for the remaining two players--Ankiel and Duncan. The logical thing to do would be to play one and sit the other (I don't care which, because they are equally awful...and now that DeRosa has arrived, BOTH of these slugs should ride the bench). But there is a problem with this. Yeah, you guessed it: LaGenius is infatuated with both of them. Let's take them one at a time:
Rick Ankiel--A converted pitcher whose pitching career was ruined by LaLoser (He played head games with Ankiel prior to a playoff game and this began Rick's inclination to regularly throw the ball over the backstop from the pitcher's mound). LaLoser may feel intense guilt over this and thus is compelled to "carry" Ankiel as an outfielder. This despite the fact that Ankiel is a streaky hitter, who has prolonged slumps, never hits for a good average, has little power, and never hits in the clutch (.155 career with the bases loaded, and 0 for 8 with six strikeouts this year). Ankiel wraps the bat around his head and waves it before the arrival of the pitch. His swing is long and loopy, and has a decided uppercut. He invariably hits the bottom of the ball (for a pop-up) or the top of the ball (easy grounder). My son and I laugh as we watch him hit. We scream in unison, "he hit the top of the ball" as we watch yet another weak ground ball roll toward the second baseman; or, "he hit the bottom of the ball" as another lazy Ankiel pop-up drifts towards short right field. If you're a Cardinal fan, he is the LAST GUY you would want in the batter's box of a tie game, ninth inning, bases loaded. He has a fragile psyche (he spent years in therapy from an abusive father), and he folds easily under pressure. However, you should see him hit when the score is 10-1. Screaming line drives. Some say he has a good arm, but as many times as he throws a runner out, he will just as often miss the cutoff man. In short, I am sick of the high-maintenance, no-performance, head-case melodrama that is Rick Ankiel. But LaGenius is not sick of it. He has made us endure it for 10 years, and there is no end in sight. I believe, don't laugh, that LaGenius has a latent homosexual crush on Ankiel. Ankiel is a great athlete (not all great athletes are competent baseball players) and a good-looking guy, and I think, at some level LaGenius is in love with him. How else to explain this obsession with Ankiel? The guilt theory holds only so much water; LaLoser has ruined many careers without a scintilla of guilt. Why this soft spot for Ricky boy?
That brings us to Little Dunc, the son of longtime pitching coach, Dave Duncan. Little Dunc looks, talks, runs and plays baseball with all the acumen and agility of Frankenstein. No, wait, Frankenstein was a better left fielder. As long and loopy as Ankiel's swing is, that's how stiff, labored, and un-athletic Duncan's is. They say, he is playing out of position; first base is his natural home, but we already have one of those (perhaps you've heard of Albert Pujols? Not even LaGenius could justify benching Albert in favor of Lil Dunc...though I am positive the thought has crossed his mind). Then one day Albert was hurt and Lil Dunc got his chance. He dropped an easy popup; so much for the first-base wunderkind. He strikes out often (all curves and changeups fool him); his power has vanished; and he never gets a big hit. So why does LaGenius play him? It's as simple as this--nepotism. LaGenius is fiercely loyal to Duncan, Sr., and this blinds him to all of Little Dunc's shortcomings.
So there you have it. Ankiel and Duncan must play, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There will never be a time when both are benched in the same game, and they WILL NEVER BE TRADED as long as LaLoser is manager. Despite LaLoser's national reputation as a great manager (this endures as the greatest American lie since Oswald acted alone), who bases his decisions on a computer-like recall of stats, proabilities and tendencies, he is nothing more than an impulsive, illogical, manipulative boss who plays favorites and and covets the power he has over others. His lineups are a reflection of his personality--a mishmash of senselessness, contradiction, contrivance and pseudo-intellectualism. And, mark my words, DeRosa's usefulness will be limited by this. Watch and see--the day will come--perhaps tomorrow night when Lincecum, a right hander, pitches against us--when LaGenius will bench DeRosa and play both Ankiel and Duncan instead. After all, it's more than just baseball; it's Tony working out his neuroses, much to the anguish of Cardinal nation.
Back to the sweet and sour of having DeRosa. Because DeRosa is a very versatile player, it presents LaGenius with many options. And one thing we do not want is for LaGenius to have too many options, because he invariably thinks and ponders and intellecutalizes himself into the wrong choice. (Baseball is a simple game, but LaLoser insists on making it rocket science.) For instance, in today's game the Twins threw a lefty, Nelson Liriano, so it was a safe bet that DeRosa would be in left field (even though he prefers the infield) because we have a paucity of right-handed-hitting outfielders. (The only other is Ryan Ludwick, so it was a safe bet he would play also, though I sweated this out until game time. Note: this is the same Ryan Ludwick who hit 37 homers last year, drove in 117, batted .300, and made the All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger award...but who has been turned into a platoon player by LaGenius.) This must have been a devastating dilemma to LaGenius, because it meant that he would have to sit either his man-crush/love interest Rick Ankiel (.234, 5 HRs, 25 RBI) or the pitching coach's son, Chris Duncan (no power, no average, no clutch hitting)...or, god forbid, horror of horrors...bench both! Ah...alas, LaGenius chose to play Ankiel, rather than Colby Rasmus, our young phenom who has also been turned into an occasional player. So although Duncan was benched, Ankiel was not.
Let's back up here a minute, and let me explain something. Until the Cardinals acquired DeRosa, they had four outfielders (five if you include Skip Schumaker, whom LaGenius has converted into a mediocre second baseman). They are Ryan Ludwick, Colby Rasmus, Rick Ankiel, and Chris Duncan. It is obvious to me, and all logical Cardinals fans, that Ludwick (for reasons stated above) and Rasmus should be playing every day. Rasmus is only 21, but he can run, hit, field and throw. He has the most potential of any player. Playing him every third game is not going to develop his abilities; he needs to be a part of the everyday lineup. That leaves one outfield position vacant for the remaining two players--Ankiel and Duncan. The logical thing to do would be to play one and sit the other (I don't care which, because they are equally awful...and now that DeRosa has arrived, BOTH of these slugs should ride the bench). But there is a problem with this. Yeah, you guessed it: LaGenius is infatuated with both of them. Let's take them one at a time:
Rick Ankiel--A converted pitcher whose pitching career was ruined by LaLoser (He played head games with Ankiel prior to a playoff game and this began Rick's inclination to regularly throw the ball over the backstop from the pitcher's mound). LaLoser may feel intense guilt over this and thus is compelled to "carry" Ankiel as an outfielder. This despite the fact that Ankiel is a streaky hitter, who has prolonged slumps, never hits for a good average, has little power, and never hits in the clutch (.155 career with the bases loaded, and 0 for 8 with six strikeouts this year). Ankiel wraps the bat around his head and waves it before the arrival of the pitch. His swing is long and loopy, and has a decided uppercut. He invariably hits the bottom of the ball (for a pop-up) or the top of the ball (easy grounder). My son and I laugh as we watch him hit. We scream in unison, "he hit the top of the ball" as we watch yet another weak ground ball roll toward the second baseman; or, "he hit the bottom of the ball" as another lazy Ankiel pop-up drifts towards short right field. If you're a Cardinal fan, he is the LAST GUY you would want in the batter's box of a tie game, ninth inning, bases loaded. He has a fragile psyche (he spent years in therapy from an abusive father), and he folds easily under pressure. However, you should see him hit when the score is 10-1. Screaming line drives. Some say he has a good arm, but as many times as he throws a runner out, he will just as often miss the cutoff man. In short, I am sick of the high-maintenance, no-performance, head-case melodrama that is Rick Ankiel. But LaGenius is not sick of it. He has made us endure it for 10 years, and there is no end in sight. I believe, don't laugh, that LaGenius has a latent homosexual crush on Ankiel. Ankiel is a great athlete (not all great athletes are competent baseball players) and a good-looking guy, and I think, at some level LaGenius is in love with him. How else to explain this obsession with Ankiel? The guilt theory holds only so much water; LaLoser has ruined many careers without a scintilla of guilt. Why this soft spot for Ricky boy?
That brings us to Little Dunc, the son of longtime pitching coach, Dave Duncan. Little Dunc looks, talks, runs and plays baseball with all the acumen and agility of Frankenstein. No, wait, Frankenstein was a better left fielder. As long and loopy as Ankiel's swing is, that's how stiff, labored, and un-athletic Duncan's is. They say, he is playing out of position; first base is his natural home, but we already have one of those (perhaps you've heard of Albert Pujols? Not even LaGenius could justify benching Albert in favor of Lil Dunc...though I am positive the thought has crossed his mind). Then one day Albert was hurt and Lil Dunc got his chance. He dropped an easy popup; so much for the first-base wunderkind. He strikes out often (all curves and changeups fool him); his power has vanished; and he never gets a big hit. So why does LaGenius play him? It's as simple as this--nepotism. LaGenius is fiercely loyal to Duncan, Sr., and this blinds him to all of Little Dunc's shortcomings.
So there you have it. Ankiel and Duncan must play, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There will never be a time when both are benched in the same game, and they WILL NEVER BE TRADED as long as LaLoser is manager. Despite LaLoser's national reputation as a great manager (this endures as the greatest American lie since Oswald acted alone), who bases his decisions on a computer-like recall of stats, proabilities and tendencies, he is nothing more than an impulsive, illogical, manipulative boss who plays favorites and and covets the power he has over others. His lineups are a reflection of his personality--a mishmash of senselessness, contradiction, contrivance and pseudo-intellectualism. And, mark my words, DeRosa's usefulness will be limited by this. Watch and see--the day will come--perhaps tomorrow night when Lincecum, a right hander, pitches against us--when LaGenius will bench DeRosa and play both Ankiel and Duncan instead. After all, it's more than just baseball; it's Tony working out his neuroses, much to the anguish of Cardinal nation.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
I'll be a guest on a Blog Talk Radio show, 6/25
Grant Lawrence and Judy Lopez, hosts of Dream Catcher Entertainment on Blog Talk radio, have invited me to be a guest on their radio show, Thursday, 6/25, at 8 pm (central time). To access the show, go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/DreamCatcherEntertainment
Scroll down to upcoming episodes and click on my link.
Judy and Grant have told me that we will be discussing my book and various other topics related to history, politics and American culture. I'm sure we'll touch on CIA atrocities, including the JFK Assassination, along the way.
Tune in and/or call in, and join the conversation.
Scroll down to upcoming episodes and click on my link.
Judy and Grant have told me that we will be discussing my book and various other topics related to history, politics and American culture. I'm sure we'll touch on CIA atrocities, including the JFK Assassination, along the way.
Tune in and/or call in, and join the conversation.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
The Sorry, Pathetic Mess That Is My Team--The St. Louis Cardinals
Where to begin with this woeful bunch? The anemic offense (worst in the majors in May)? The sloppy defense? The career minor leaguers who have been forced into action because the owner, Bill Dimwitt, Jr., (friend and supporter of George W. Bush) is too cheap to acquire real baseball players? The fraud of a manager? The red sheep who fill the stands each night? The sycohpantic media who fawn over the team? I have lots of gripes.
I am sick of the melodrama that is Rick Ankiel. The pitcher who used to throw balls over the backstop is now an outfielder who cannot hit, yet Tony LaLoser keeps sending him out there. Ankiel is hitting .220, with no power, and never gets a hit when it really matters. His mental and emotional problems are well-documented, and he wilts when the pressure is on. He's the last guy I want at the plate in the ninth inning of a tie game. Rarely does he make solid contact with the baseball because of his loopy, upper-cut swing. When he's not striking out, he hits the top of the ball (ground out) or the bottom of the ball (pop-up). He is erratic in the outfield and susceptible to injury. He is very high maintenance, and he never comes through in the clutch. So why is he still on the team? The manager has a man-crush on him. Ankiel is one of Tony LaLoser's favorites. As is the pitching coach's son--Chris Duncan.
Duncan plays left field with all the agility of Frankenstein. If butchers were all-star outfielders, this guy would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And, like Ankiel, he cannot hit a curve ball or a chane-up. His swing is stiff and flawed, and opposing pitchers fool him with off-speed stuff constantly. Why is he still on the team? He's another of the manager's favorites; he's the son of LaLoser's long-time pitching coach--Dave Duncan.
The one outfielder who can hit is Ryan Ludwick. Ludwick had 37 homers, 110 RBI, and hit .300 last year. He was voted to the All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger award. So what does Tony LaGenius do with him? Platoons him in April, to the point where Ludwick questions, rightfully, the manager's sanity. This gets Ludwick a one-way ticket to the doghouse. He falls victim to the manager's mind games and now he's an average player. Who benefits? Favored children, Ankiel and Duncan, who have actually played in more games than Ludwick.
Meanwhile, unknowns like Brian Barden, Nick Stavinoha, Joe Thurston, Shane Robinson, Tyler Greene, and Brendan Ryan, all of whom should still be in AAA, get significant playing time. They are the oddest assortment of banjo-hitting slugs I have ever seen. They do not hit for power, average, or if their lives depended on it. Some nights, I swear, I think I am watching the Memphis Redbirds and not the St.Louis Cardinals.
And why do we have no talent in the minors? Because, apparently, the scouting and drafting departments are being run by Moe, Larry, and Curley. In the past 30 years, only two major league-worthy pitchers have been drafted and developed by the organization. One--Danny Haren--was traded away by Walt Jocketty. Jocketty was also responsible for signing Tino Martinez (a bust), Juan Encarnacion (a bigger bust), and Adam Kennedy (the grandaddy of busts). He traded for Mark Mulder (the most worthless ragarm of the three Billy Beane dumped), giving away Haren in the deal.
The current GM, John Mozeliak, is no better. His big signing was Khalil Greene, who is hitting about .200 and now has been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and likely will never play again. Good job researching Khalil's history, Mo.
Overseeing the whole mess is LaRussa, the most overrated manager of all time. How did he get the reputation of a genius? George Will, the creepy political geek who knows as much about baseball as I know about marine biology, once wrote a book in which he called LaLoser a genius. The label stuck, despite all evidence to the contrary. He changes line-ups every night to eradicate performance consistency. He cools off hot hitters (see Ludwick). He makes unfathomable in-game decisions, typically folding under the pressure of a tight game. (In a tie game, ninth inning, at Arizona in April, he sent up Brendan Ryan to pinch hit with the bases loaded instead of Silver Slugger Ryan Ludwick.) He typically destroys the confidence of young pitching talent. He plays favorites. He does not retaliate when his players get hit by pitches. (The one legitimate offensive threat, Albert Pujols, was plunked in the kidneys in a game in May...no retaliation was ordered by LaGenius.)
So how does the team manage to compete? The starting pitching has been pretty good. Especially Carpenter. But give it time...LaGenius will find a way to screw that up too. Meanwhile, red lemmings (aka Cardinal fans) fill the stadium every night, and Dimwitt, pockets full of cash, chortles all the way to the bank.
I am sick of the melodrama that is Rick Ankiel. The pitcher who used to throw balls over the backstop is now an outfielder who cannot hit, yet Tony LaLoser keeps sending him out there. Ankiel is hitting .220, with no power, and never gets a hit when it really matters. His mental and emotional problems are well-documented, and he wilts when the pressure is on. He's the last guy I want at the plate in the ninth inning of a tie game. Rarely does he make solid contact with the baseball because of his loopy, upper-cut swing. When he's not striking out, he hits the top of the ball (ground out) or the bottom of the ball (pop-up). He is erratic in the outfield and susceptible to injury. He is very high maintenance, and he never comes through in the clutch. So why is he still on the team? The manager has a man-crush on him. Ankiel is one of Tony LaLoser's favorites. As is the pitching coach's son--Chris Duncan.
Duncan plays left field with all the agility of Frankenstein. If butchers were all-star outfielders, this guy would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And, like Ankiel, he cannot hit a curve ball or a chane-up. His swing is stiff and flawed, and opposing pitchers fool him with off-speed stuff constantly. Why is he still on the team? He's another of the manager's favorites; he's the son of LaLoser's long-time pitching coach--Dave Duncan.
The one outfielder who can hit is Ryan Ludwick. Ludwick had 37 homers, 110 RBI, and hit .300 last year. He was voted to the All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger award. So what does Tony LaGenius do with him? Platoons him in April, to the point where Ludwick questions, rightfully, the manager's sanity. This gets Ludwick a one-way ticket to the doghouse. He falls victim to the manager's mind games and now he's an average player. Who benefits? Favored children, Ankiel and Duncan, who have actually played in more games than Ludwick.
Meanwhile, unknowns like Brian Barden, Nick Stavinoha, Joe Thurston, Shane Robinson, Tyler Greene, and Brendan Ryan, all of whom should still be in AAA, get significant playing time. They are the oddest assortment of banjo-hitting slugs I have ever seen. They do not hit for power, average, or if their lives depended on it. Some nights, I swear, I think I am watching the Memphis Redbirds and not the St.Louis Cardinals.
And why do we have no talent in the minors? Because, apparently, the scouting and drafting departments are being run by Moe, Larry, and Curley. In the past 30 years, only two major league-worthy pitchers have been drafted and developed by the organization. One--Danny Haren--was traded away by Walt Jocketty. Jocketty was also responsible for signing Tino Martinez (a bust), Juan Encarnacion (a bigger bust), and Adam Kennedy (the grandaddy of busts). He traded for Mark Mulder (the most worthless ragarm of the three Billy Beane dumped), giving away Haren in the deal.
The current GM, John Mozeliak, is no better. His big signing was Khalil Greene, who is hitting about .200 and now has been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and likely will never play again. Good job researching Khalil's history, Mo.
Overseeing the whole mess is LaRussa, the most overrated manager of all time. How did he get the reputation of a genius? George Will, the creepy political geek who knows as much about baseball as I know about marine biology, once wrote a book in which he called LaLoser a genius. The label stuck, despite all evidence to the contrary. He changes line-ups every night to eradicate performance consistency. He cools off hot hitters (see Ludwick). He makes unfathomable in-game decisions, typically folding under the pressure of a tight game. (In a tie game, ninth inning, at Arizona in April, he sent up Brendan Ryan to pinch hit with the bases loaded instead of Silver Slugger Ryan Ludwick.) He typically destroys the confidence of young pitching talent. He plays favorites. He does not retaliate when his players get hit by pitches. (The one legitimate offensive threat, Albert Pujols, was plunked in the kidneys in a game in May...no retaliation was ordered by LaGenius.)
So how does the team manage to compete? The starting pitching has been pretty good. Especially Carpenter. But give it time...LaGenius will find a way to screw that up too. Meanwhile, red lemmings (aka Cardinal fans) fill the stadium every night, and Dimwitt, pockets full of cash, chortles all the way to the bank.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Hypocrisy of Right-Wing Radical Catholics
The recent flap over President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame's commencement again exposes the Catholic ultra-right for what it is--hypocritical, self-righteous, and narrow-minded.
Anti-abortionists showed up red-faced, hell-bent and furious in South Bend over the weekend to protest Obama's visit to that Catholic "sanctuary" Notre Dame. Actually, there were fewer protestors than you might think (the rabid few gave TV cameras their Jerry Springer moment), and Notre Dame (no longer a football factory due to recent losing seasons) accepts students of all faiths, backgrounds, and nationalities. Polls show a large portion of the student body backs Obama and accepts pro-choice dogma. So it was a bunch of lunatic outsiders who invaded South Bend to howl their one-issue message to the world.
Why are these people hypocrites? Because they never protest the war in Iraq, and authentic church dogma is as much anti-war as it is anti-abortion. I respect those Catholics who oppose war as well as abortion; at least, they are consistent. But those who line up on the political right, for one reason and one reason only, to oppose a woman's right to choose, do so with full knowledge that they are endorsing other political policies that fly in the face of the teachings of the Church. Apparently, they do this without the slightest flicker of conscience. For instance, Catholics who supported Bush because of his anti-abortion stance also supported, by proxy, his unholy war, his immoral torture of detainees, his defense contractors' blood profits, his eroding of civil liberties, and his anti-human positions on right-to-privacy and health care issues. These conscienceless Catholics never objected to the Bush atrocities on these fronts...only on abortion. To die on the battlefield, in prison, or because you can't pay for health care is just too bad, but perfectly okay, I guess. Think about it...that means they ascribe to this crazy logic: the end of life matters only before it begins, not after it begins. It must be quite comforting to be a white, suburban, Republican Catholic oblivious to social concerns other than abortion.
Truthfully, anti-abortion hypocrites take their cues from an out-of-touch, hopelessly isolated Roman hierarchy led by a man who once took his place in the ranks of the Hitler youth brigade. Come to think of it, if Hitler were still alive and were an anti-abortion candidate, the Catholic right would swarm to the polls to pull the lever for old Adolf.
Anti-abortionists showed up red-faced, hell-bent and furious in South Bend over the weekend to protest Obama's visit to that Catholic "sanctuary" Notre Dame. Actually, there were fewer protestors than you might think (the rabid few gave TV cameras their Jerry Springer moment), and Notre Dame (no longer a football factory due to recent losing seasons) accepts students of all faiths, backgrounds, and nationalities. Polls show a large portion of the student body backs Obama and accepts pro-choice dogma. So it was a bunch of lunatic outsiders who invaded South Bend to howl their one-issue message to the world.
Why are these people hypocrites? Because they never protest the war in Iraq, and authentic church dogma is as much anti-war as it is anti-abortion. I respect those Catholics who oppose war as well as abortion; at least, they are consistent. But those who line up on the political right, for one reason and one reason only, to oppose a woman's right to choose, do so with full knowledge that they are endorsing other political policies that fly in the face of the teachings of the Church. Apparently, they do this without the slightest flicker of conscience. For instance, Catholics who supported Bush because of his anti-abortion stance also supported, by proxy, his unholy war, his immoral torture of detainees, his defense contractors' blood profits, his eroding of civil liberties, and his anti-human positions on right-to-privacy and health care issues. These conscienceless Catholics never objected to the Bush atrocities on these fronts...only on abortion. To die on the battlefield, in prison, or because you can't pay for health care is just too bad, but perfectly okay, I guess. Think about it...that means they ascribe to this crazy logic: the end of life matters only before it begins, not after it begins. It must be quite comforting to be a white, suburban, Republican Catholic oblivious to social concerns other than abortion.
Truthfully, anti-abortion hypocrites take their cues from an out-of-touch, hopelessly isolated Roman hierarchy led by a man who once took his place in the ranks of the Hitler youth brigade. Come to think of it, if Hitler were still alive and were an anti-abortion candidate, the Catholic right would swarm to the polls to pull the lever for old Adolf.
Tune In To Authors Read show, May 18
I will be a guest on the Authors Read show, hosted by Lillian Brummet, Monday, May 18, at 11:30 am CDT. It's a live web broadcast where authors read excerpts from their novels. The link is:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/AuthorsRead/2009/05/18/Tim-Fleming-Murder-Of-An-American-Nazi-
I am posting the actual excerpt I will be reading below. It is from pages 102-105 of Murder Of An American Nazi:
Marie sailed through high school. She got straight A’s and was voted class valedictorian. She was supposed to deliver the commencement address, but, when school administrators scanned an advance copy of it, Marie was told to either switch topics, or the honor of speaking at the graduation would go to another student. The principal had only to read the title of the address, “The Importance of Fighting Nazi Infiltration of the American Government,” to know that Marie’s speech had to be censored.
-102-
Marie was not surprised by the furor. Neither did she protest. She demurely turned over the valedictorian duties to a fellow student. She cared little about the provincial, narrow-minded obsessions of high school administrators. She was moving on to bigger and better things. She was going to change the world.
Because of her grades and Hannah’s lack of financial wherewithal, Marie won a full scholarship to American University in Washington, DC. She intended to study journalism and history. Her goal was to become an investigative reporter for a major U.S. paper, preferably the Washington Post or the New York Times, whose editorial
positions most reflected her own. She wanted to uncover the truth about her family’s
torturer and murderer, Walter Dornberger, and find out if there had indeed been a systematic recruitment and integration of Nazis into American government, military or intelligence positions and how it was done. Were these Nazis influencing our policy towards the Soviets? Were they exacerbating the Cold War?
She was eager to visit the university and chose to route her summer 1963 trip to St. Louis through Washington, DC. The campus was everything she had hoped it would be, a green oasis amid the monuments and momentousness of the nation’s capital.
She checked out her dormitory and discovered that her roommate was someone named
Julia Munshall. Without knowing it, she had arrived during commencement. JFK was to deliver the commencement address. Marie walked right into the ceremony as if she were with a graduate’s family. She took a seat in the bleachers, and what she heard there inspired her and, at the same time, confused her.
Kennedy’s words seemed to flow from a compartment of the government with which Marie was unfamiliar. She had developed a rather jaded, cynical view of America’s intentions. The government and the military publicly decried fascism, yet they secretly
-103-
harbored the worst of the Nazi criminals. What else was going on in secret? What other terrible truths were they hiding? Why did they seem so intent on letting hatred of the Soviet Union bring them to the brink of nuclear annihilation? Did Kennedy even know what was going on in his own government?
Listening to the speech that day, Marie became convinced that Kennedy was going to turn American militarism and secrecy on its head. What he said made her proud, for the first time, to be an American. He spoke of disarmament and world peace. He spoke of commonalities Americans shared with the communists. He spoke of the beginning of the end of the days of conflict. He mentioned the word “peace” over and over. It flew in the face of everything Marie had come to know about America. Kennedy was really sticking his neck out, she thought. Someone would soon chop it off.
Kennedy said, “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do I seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living.” An end to American military arrogance and domination? Marie was transfixed.
“Total war makes no sense in an age…when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe…we must reexamine our own attitude…every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward—by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War, and toward freedom and peace here at home.”
“He wants Americans to question themselves; he wants us to make nice with the Russians?” Marie thought. “The military will hate this. And how about defense contractors and the war weapons industry, she thought. This is going to be bad for business.”
-104-
What Kennedy said next stunned Marie. No American president had ever uttered such a revolutionary idea, such a radical or far-sighted entreaty, such an enlightened way to view an avowed enemy. “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue…we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage. Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in
common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war…no nation in the history of battle suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes were burned or sacked.”
The Russians had been our allies in World War II; Marie recalled Hannah telling her how the Russians had liberated some of the concentration camps. How had they become our bitter enemies in such a short period?
“…we are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons. In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race…if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
The eloquence, lyricism and profundity of what she’d just heard left Marie limp. The man could deliver a speech like no other. And he could make the listener believe in the country’s future and his ability to get us there. Marie viewed it as a sign that she was in
-105-
the right place at the right time. Like Kennedy, she was determined to make the world a better place. Hope abounded.
___________________________
More than three decades after JFK spoke those words, Don Hayes had a completely different interpretation of what they meant. “He signed his death warrant with that speech,” he told me. “You have no idea how that one shook the halls of the Pentagon and the CIA. And the defense contractors? Are you kidding me? No more billion dollar awards to build fighter jets and weapons and helicopters. No more war profiteering for Brown and Root, Halliburton, Boeing and Bell Textron? An end to the system that had made them all so rich and powerful? No more Red-baiting? World peace? He wasn’t going to let them have Vietnam as their own playground, and they were never going to let Kennedy get away with that. Lemay and Lemnitzer already thought he was a traitor. So did Dulles and half the CIA, including Pfisterr and Dornberger,” spurted a red-faced Don.
“What does this have to do with…” I started.
Don interrupted, “Let me explain it as simply as I can. The same people who killed Kennedy, and then covered it up, were the same people who smuggled Dornberger and hundreds of other Nazis into this country. The same people who overthrew democratic governments. The same people who arranged for war profiteers to get rich. The same people who dosed their own citizens with LSD. The same people who blocked the free press. The same people who conspired with the Mafia to kill Castro, even after Kennedy promised to leave him alone. The same people who contrived to get us into Vietnam. The same people Ike warned us about when he left office. The same people who really ran this country until Kennedy stood up to them. The same people who killed my friend, James Carney.” His anger was so overt, Hayes nearly shouted the last name.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/AuthorsRead/2009/05/18/Tim-Fleming-Murder-Of-An-American-Nazi-
I am posting the actual excerpt I will be reading below. It is from pages 102-105 of Murder Of An American Nazi:
Marie sailed through high school. She got straight A’s and was voted class valedictorian. She was supposed to deliver the commencement address, but, when school administrators scanned an advance copy of it, Marie was told to either switch topics, or the honor of speaking at the graduation would go to another student. The principal had only to read the title of the address, “The Importance of Fighting Nazi Infiltration of the American Government,” to know that Marie’s speech had to be censored.
-102-
Marie was not surprised by the furor. Neither did she protest. She demurely turned over the valedictorian duties to a fellow student. She cared little about the provincial, narrow-minded obsessions of high school administrators. She was moving on to bigger and better things. She was going to change the world.
Because of her grades and Hannah’s lack of financial wherewithal, Marie won a full scholarship to American University in Washington, DC. She intended to study journalism and history. Her goal was to become an investigative reporter for a major U.S. paper, preferably the Washington Post or the New York Times, whose editorial
positions most reflected her own. She wanted to uncover the truth about her family’s
torturer and murderer, Walter Dornberger, and find out if there had indeed been a systematic recruitment and integration of Nazis into American government, military or intelligence positions and how it was done. Were these Nazis influencing our policy towards the Soviets? Were they exacerbating the Cold War?
She was eager to visit the university and chose to route her summer 1963 trip to St. Louis through Washington, DC. The campus was everything she had hoped it would be, a green oasis amid the monuments and momentousness of the nation’s capital.
She checked out her dormitory and discovered that her roommate was someone named
Julia Munshall. Without knowing it, she had arrived during commencement. JFK was to deliver the commencement address. Marie walked right into the ceremony as if she were with a graduate’s family. She took a seat in the bleachers, and what she heard there inspired her and, at the same time, confused her.
Kennedy’s words seemed to flow from a compartment of the government with which Marie was unfamiliar. She had developed a rather jaded, cynical view of America’s intentions. The government and the military publicly decried fascism, yet they secretly
-103-
harbored the worst of the Nazi criminals. What else was going on in secret? What other terrible truths were they hiding? Why did they seem so intent on letting hatred of the Soviet Union bring them to the brink of nuclear annihilation? Did Kennedy even know what was going on in his own government?
Listening to the speech that day, Marie became convinced that Kennedy was going to turn American militarism and secrecy on its head. What he said made her proud, for the first time, to be an American. He spoke of disarmament and world peace. He spoke of commonalities Americans shared with the communists. He spoke of the beginning of the end of the days of conflict. He mentioned the word “peace” over and over. It flew in the face of everything Marie had come to know about America. Kennedy was really sticking his neck out, she thought. Someone would soon chop it off.
Kennedy said, “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do I seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living.” An end to American military arrogance and domination? Marie was transfixed.
“Total war makes no sense in an age…when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe…we must reexamine our own attitude…every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward—by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War, and toward freedom and peace here at home.”
“He wants Americans to question themselves; he wants us to make nice with the Russians?” Marie thought. “The military will hate this. And how about defense contractors and the war weapons industry, she thought. This is going to be bad for business.”
-104-
What Kennedy said next stunned Marie. No American president had ever uttered such a revolutionary idea, such a radical or far-sighted entreaty, such an enlightened way to view an avowed enemy. “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue…we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage. Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in
common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war…no nation in the history of battle suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes were burned or sacked.”
The Russians had been our allies in World War II; Marie recalled Hannah telling her how the Russians had liberated some of the concentration camps. How had they become our bitter enemies in such a short period?
“…we are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons. In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race…if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
The eloquence, lyricism and profundity of what she’d just heard left Marie limp. The man could deliver a speech like no other. And he could make the listener believe in the country’s future and his ability to get us there. Marie viewed it as a sign that she was in
-105-
the right place at the right time. Like Kennedy, she was determined to make the world a better place. Hope abounded.
___________________________
More than three decades after JFK spoke those words, Don Hayes had a completely different interpretation of what they meant. “He signed his death warrant with that speech,” he told me. “You have no idea how that one shook the halls of the Pentagon and the CIA. And the defense contractors? Are you kidding me? No more billion dollar awards to build fighter jets and weapons and helicopters. No more war profiteering for Brown and Root, Halliburton, Boeing and Bell Textron? An end to the system that had made them all so rich and powerful? No more Red-baiting? World peace? He wasn’t going to let them have Vietnam as their own playground, and they were never going to let Kennedy get away with that. Lemay and Lemnitzer already thought he was a traitor. So did Dulles and half the CIA, including Pfisterr and Dornberger,” spurted a red-faced Don.
“What does this have to do with…” I started.
Don interrupted, “Let me explain it as simply as I can. The same people who killed Kennedy, and then covered it up, were the same people who smuggled Dornberger and hundreds of other Nazis into this country. The same people who overthrew democratic governments. The same people who arranged for war profiteers to get rich. The same people who dosed their own citizens with LSD. The same people who blocked the free press. The same people who conspired with the Mafia to kill Castro, even after Kennedy promised to leave him alone. The same people who contrived to get us into Vietnam. The same people Ike warned us about when he left office. The same people who really ran this country until Kennedy stood up to them. The same people who killed my friend, James Carney.” His anger was so overt, Hayes nearly shouted the last name.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Another Good Review for MOAAN
IAG writer Clayton Bye wrote this:
MURDER OF AN AMERICAN NAZI
By Tim Fleming
Eloquent Books, 2008
240 pp., $29.95, Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-606-93401-2
Historical Fiction
Timothy Fleming claims to have spent a lifetime researching the CIA's impact on post-World War II America. His blog, Left of the Looking Glass seems to back up that statement. But it’s his book, MURDER OF AN AMERICAN NAZI, that makes me believe it’s true. Reading like a documentary or a piece of non-fiction, Fleming’s historical novel reveals an America that we’ve all seen hints of but never want to believe could exist. Here is a story full of real world people, events and CIA operations anyone can discover on the net—if they have the right names, places and code names, all of which Fleming gives us. It’s a story about an American shadow government made up of greedy conglomerates, CIA enforcers and Nazi recruits.
Woven throughout the eerie tale is the life of one Marie Hannah Kanermann. Born in Dachau (a
German concentration camp) as it is liberated by the Allies and raised in the U.S. by the friend of her dead mother, Marie grows up fighting the secret government with words and actions.
Both her story and that of America after World War II unfold through the words of a retired cop, Don Hayes, as he tells one of his friends about the murder that never was: the death of ex-Nazi
and CIA operative Walter Dornberger.
German concentration camp) as it is liberated by the Allies and raised in the U.S. by the friend of her dead mother, Marie grows up fighting the secret government with words and actions.
Both her story and that of America after World War II unfold through the words of a retired cop, Don Hayes, as he tells one of his friends about the murder that never was: the death of ex-Nazi
and CIA operative Walter Dornberger.
Impeccably written, Timothy Fleming’s novel feels just too real to be fiction. Perhaps it’s the
sparseness of dialogue. Maybe it’s the fact most of the people mentioned in the book really
existed. Could be that I’ve seen one too many American wars started for falsely stated reasons.
All I can tell you is that if you can wade through the complex strings of accusations laid out in
the first half of the book, you won’t be able to put it down through the second half.
MURDER OF AN AMERICAN NAZI is a book meant to make you think. My opinion is it will
also keep you from sleeping.
sparseness of dialogue. Maybe it’s the fact most of the people mentioned in the book really
existed. Could be that I’ve seen one too many American wars started for falsely stated reasons.
All I can tell you is that if you can wade through the complex strings of accusations laid out in
the first half of the book, you won’t be able to put it down through the second half.
MURDER OF AN AMERICAN NAZI is a book meant to make you think. My opinion is it will
also keep you from sleeping.
Hell of a job, Mr. Fleming.
Copyright © 2009 by Clayton Bye
Thursday, April 30, 2009
My "Book Trailer" Video Can Now Be Seen
"Book Trailers" are the latest things in internet book marketing. Line movie previews you see at a theatre or on DVDs, they tease you with a one-minute glimpse of what the story is about. My publisher created mine, and here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBXjwuBMTqU Let me know what you think.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Introducing Justin Sachs, Fellow Author
10 Qs for Justin Sachs
I’d like to introduce you to Justin Sachs who is the author of a new book, Your Mailbox Is Full and is the founder of the Creating Possibilities Coaching Program in which Justin helps teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, and create balance in all the areas of their life.
1. What do you do?
I work with teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, create balance in their lives, and overcome any obstacles standing in their way of success.
2. Tell us about your new book.
Your Mailbox Is Full is a book for teenagers, that teaches them the tools they need to become successful in school and throughout their lives. They learn things like goal setting, time management, living a healthy lifestyle, and modeling and attracting success.
3. Why did you write it?
When I was 14 years old I went to my first Tony Robbins Seminar and I was in a room full of thousands of adults thinking, “Where’s all the teenagers?” “Why aren’t other youth here getting these powerful tools and strategies?” It was with that realization that I found my passion: Empowering teenagers with life-skills and leadership development tools for success. That’s what my book is all about: Teaching youth the most powerful skills they need to know to create enormous success and fulfillment in life! Now, teenagers don’t have to wait until they are 30 or 40 to get these tools and strategies, they are available to them within Your Mailbox Is Full.
4. What makes you an expert in your field?
After going to Anthony Robbins seminars for 3 years, I began working for his product sales team and non-profit organization at all his events worldwide. I then began working for Mark Victor Hansen, the co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul Series, and learned even more about life-skills, writing a book, and supporting people in bringing possibility into their lives. I then read everything I could get my hands on from The Secret, to Jack Canfield, to Stephen Covey, to Eckart Tolle, among many others. I learned everything I possibly could about personal development and transformation such that I can now create transformation in others!
5. What type of people should read your book?
The book is designed for teenagers and young adults, but parents throughout the country are reading the book and loving every page! The contents of the book are limitless, this is the perfect book for anyone looking to take their lives to the next level, especially youth!
6. Are you on any social networks? Eg. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Yes, on www.Twitter.com/JustinSachs or http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511068642
7. Advice for Teens or Parents of Teens
Follow your passions and never give up on your dreams! If you have a goal, a vision, or a hope for the future, hold on to it, focus on it, and take action to make it happen! You’ll be amazed at how quickly your dreams will manifest themselves when energy is focused on them.
8. Favorite Quote
Every day, every week and every month, you must challenge yourself to continue to grow to new heights and to take your standards to higher and higher levels. ~ Justin Sachs
9. Favorite Theme Park
Walt Disney World of course!!!
10. How can we purchase your book? Learn more about you? Do you have a blog?
My book is available on my website: www.YourMailboxIsFullBook.com To learn more about my coaching services visit www.JustinSachsOnline.com and be sure to check out my new radio show at www.MotivationalMindsRadio.com
I’d like to introduce you to Justin Sachs who is the author of a new book, Your Mailbox Is Full and is the founder of the Creating Possibilities Coaching Program in which Justin helps teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, and create balance in all the areas of their life.
1. What do you do?
I work with teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, create balance in their lives, and overcome any obstacles standing in their way of success.
2. Tell us about your new book.
Your Mailbox Is Full is a book for teenagers, that teaches them the tools they need to become successful in school and throughout their lives. They learn things like goal setting, time management, living a healthy lifestyle, and modeling and attracting success.
3. Why did you write it?
When I was 14 years old I went to my first Tony Robbins Seminar and I was in a room full of thousands of adults thinking, “Where’s all the teenagers?” “Why aren’t other youth here getting these powerful tools and strategies?” It was with that realization that I found my passion: Empowering teenagers with life-skills and leadership development tools for success. That’s what my book is all about: Teaching youth the most powerful skills they need to know to create enormous success and fulfillment in life! Now, teenagers don’t have to wait until they are 30 or 40 to get these tools and strategies, they are available to them within Your Mailbox Is Full.
4. What makes you an expert in your field?
After going to Anthony Robbins seminars for 3 years, I began working for his product sales team and non-profit organization at all his events worldwide. I then began working for Mark Victor Hansen, the co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul Series, and learned even more about life-skills, writing a book, and supporting people in bringing possibility into their lives. I then read everything I could get my hands on from The Secret, to Jack Canfield, to Stephen Covey, to Eckart Tolle, among many others. I learned everything I possibly could about personal development and transformation such that I can now create transformation in others!
5. What type of people should read your book?
The book is designed for teenagers and young adults, but parents throughout the country are reading the book and loving every page! The contents of the book are limitless, this is the perfect book for anyone looking to take their lives to the next level, especially youth!
6. Are you on any social networks? Eg. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Yes, on www.Twitter.com/JustinSachs or http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511068642
7. Advice for Teens or Parents of Teens
Follow your passions and never give up on your dreams! If you have a goal, a vision, or a hope for the future, hold on to it, focus on it, and take action to make it happen! You’ll be amazed at how quickly your dreams will manifest themselves when energy is focused on them.
8. Favorite Quote
Every day, every week and every month, you must challenge yourself to continue to grow to new heights and to take your standards to higher and higher levels. ~ Justin Sachs
9. Favorite Theme Park
Walt Disney World of course!!!
10. How can we purchase your book? Learn more about you? Do you have a blog?
My book is available on my website: www.YourMailboxIsFullBook.com To learn more about my coaching services visit www.JustinSachsOnline.com and be sure to check out my new radio show at www.MotivationalMindsRadio.com
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Glowing Review of My Book...Okay, I'm Bragging
Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine, recently wrote a glowing review of my book for PODBRAM (Publish On Demand Book Reviews And More). Here it is in full:
Murder of An American Naziby Tim Fleming (Eloquent Books / 1-606-93401-5 / 978-1-606-93401-2 / October 2008 / 240 pages / $25.95 hardcover)Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse for PODBRAM.
A third of the way through Murder of an American Nazi, I stopped reading. I didn’t stop because I wasn’t interested. I stopped because I doubted the book was fiction as listed. You see, I’ve heard over the years about the CIA bringing Nazi war criminals to the United States after WWII to help fight Communism. I’ve also read extensively about the CIA flying drugs from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle into the United States where these drugs were sold in America’s inner cities to raise money to buy weapons that went back to Southeast Asia where they were traded for more drugs. Poisoning America was done to fight the spread of Communism. It’s been documented that the CIA even cooperated with the mafia to make this happen. I never connected all of these CIA events together until I read Murder of an American Nazi by Tim Fleming.
Before I continued reading, I sent an e-mail to Fleming asking how much was true.He replied, “... the background history of MOAAN (Murder of an American Nazi) is nearly 100% accurate. People do not realize this is so because our real history has been kept from us. And, yes, your supposition is correct. The CIA is responsible for this. One of its dirtiest covert subterfuges (I get into this later in the book) was Operation Mockingbird: the coercion, recruitment, and training of media assets at newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and TV networks across the country.”
“Frank Wisner who ran Mockingbird in its earliest days once boasted that the operation was like a ‘mighty Wurlitzer ... I can play any tune I want on it and America will follow along.’ Powerful, influential media magnates like Bill Paley (CBS), A.H. Sulzberger (NY Times), the Luces (Time, Newsweek), C.D. Jackson (Life), and Katherine Graham (Washington Post) considered themselves patriots for protecting the CIA from any negative press and disseminating its propaganda. The CIA could not have gotten away with all its dirty tricks had an independent, truth-seeking press been alive and well in the last half of 20th century America.”
Wanting to know more, I asked Fleming about his sources and he replied, “The FOIA (The Freedom of Information Act) has been a godsend to researchers, but the CIA still fights us tooth-and-nail. Many of the released documents are available on-line, but much of the content has been redacted ....”
“Other primary sources for me were The Secret History of the American Empire, by John Perkins; Blowback and The Sorrows of the Empire, by Chalmers Johnson; Best Evidence by David Lifton; The Dark Side of the Moon, by W.W. Norton; JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass; Secret Agenda, by Linda Hunt; The CIA Covenant: Nazis in Washington, by Gregory Douglas; Who Will Tell The People, by William Greider; and too many more to name here. I stumbled onto this topic by reading an article written by a JFK researcher named Mae Brussell years ago. The information is out there, but it requires one to do his homework.”
After Fleming’s second reply, I started reading his book again. Murder of American Nazi, a riveting history that caused me to lose sleep while connecting the dots, reveals who may really rule America and how. It reads more like nonfiction than fiction.You may not want to read this book because you could lose sleep, too. After all, the truth will not set you free.
On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who wants to know the truth and loves what America once stood for (I’m talking about what the Founding Fathers created more than two hundred years ago), buy the book and read it. Warning, if you do, your world may never be the same.
Murder of an American Nazi may also shed light on the war in Iraq: billions of American dollars gone missing during that conflict while Bush was in the White House and the huge profits Halliburton has made from the war.
For sure, if Murder of an American Nazi gains the attention it deserves, the CIA will not be pleased.
See Also: About the AuthorTim Fleming's Authors Den Page
Murder of An American Naziby Tim Fleming (Eloquent Books / 1-606-93401-5 / 978-1-606-93401-2 / October 2008 / 240 pages / $25.95 hardcover)Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse for PODBRAM.
A third of the way through Murder of an American Nazi, I stopped reading. I didn’t stop because I wasn’t interested. I stopped because I doubted the book was fiction as listed. You see, I’ve heard over the years about the CIA bringing Nazi war criminals to the United States after WWII to help fight Communism. I’ve also read extensively about the CIA flying drugs from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle into the United States where these drugs were sold in America’s inner cities to raise money to buy weapons that went back to Southeast Asia where they were traded for more drugs. Poisoning America was done to fight the spread of Communism. It’s been documented that the CIA even cooperated with the mafia to make this happen. I never connected all of these CIA events together until I read Murder of an American Nazi by Tim Fleming.
Before I continued reading, I sent an e-mail to Fleming asking how much was true.He replied, “... the background history of MOAAN (Murder of an American Nazi) is nearly 100% accurate. People do not realize this is so because our real history has been kept from us. And, yes, your supposition is correct. The CIA is responsible for this. One of its dirtiest covert subterfuges (I get into this later in the book) was Operation Mockingbird: the coercion, recruitment, and training of media assets at newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and TV networks across the country.”
“Frank Wisner who ran Mockingbird in its earliest days once boasted that the operation was like a ‘mighty Wurlitzer ... I can play any tune I want on it and America will follow along.’ Powerful, influential media magnates like Bill Paley (CBS), A.H. Sulzberger (NY Times), the Luces (Time, Newsweek), C.D. Jackson (Life), and Katherine Graham (Washington Post) considered themselves patriots for protecting the CIA from any negative press and disseminating its propaganda. The CIA could not have gotten away with all its dirty tricks had an independent, truth-seeking press been alive and well in the last half of 20th century America.”
Wanting to know more, I asked Fleming about his sources and he replied, “The FOIA (The Freedom of Information Act) has been a godsend to researchers, but the CIA still fights us tooth-and-nail. Many of the released documents are available on-line, but much of the content has been redacted ....”
“Other primary sources for me were The Secret History of the American Empire, by John Perkins; Blowback and The Sorrows of the Empire, by Chalmers Johnson; Best Evidence by David Lifton; The Dark Side of the Moon, by W.W. Norton; JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass; Secret Agenda, by Linda Hunt; The CIA Covenant: Nazis in Washington, by Gregory Douglas; Who Will Tell The People, by William Greider; and too many more to name here. I stumbled onto this topic by reading an article written by a JFK researcher named Mae Brussell years ago. The information is out there, but it requires one to do his homework.”
After Fleming’s second reply, I started reading his book again. Murder of American Nazi, a riveting history that caused me to lose sleep while connecting the dots, reveals who may really rule America and how. It reads more like nonfiction than fiction.You may not want to read this book because you could lose sleep, too. After all, the truth will not set you free.
On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who wants to know the truth and loves what America once stood for (I’m talking about what the Founding Fathers created more than two hundred years ago), buy the book and read it. Warning, if you do, your world may never be the same.
Murder of an American Nazi may also shed light on the war in Iraq: billions of American dollars gone missing during that conflict while Bush was in the White House and the huge profits Halliburton has made from the war.
For sure, if Murder of an American Nazi gains the attention it deserves, the CIA will not be pleased.
See Also: About the AuthorTim Fleming's Authors Den Page
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tune In To My Web TV interview on WNBWest's "The Authors Show"
I'll be appearing on "The Authors Show," a Web TV broadcast hosted by Linda Thompson. Each week an author's work is featured, and the author is interviewed. (The show was actually taped at WNBWest studios in Phoenix in February, but is just now airing for the first time.) The show will be available for viewing the entire week of April 5-11. You can access the show anytime next week at www.AuthorsWebTV.com Just click on "The Authors Show." Thanks for watching...and please tell a friend.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Rebuttal To Right-Wing Lone-Nutters Re: JFK Assassination
Recently I got caught up in a futile debate with a bunch of right-wing nut jobs on a neo-fascist discussion board called Haloscan. I am sharing portions of it with you here, to give you an example of how the far right makes it almost impossible to have a sensible, logical search for the truth in the murder of JFK. These fanatical ideologues cling rigidly to their positions regardless of the facts. For example, the most vulgar of the blowhards (who goes by the internet pseudonym Stogie...in homage to Limbaugh?), asserted that there were no technical facts or lucid testimony to prove the case for conspiracy. And in the 45 years since the murder, no one has come forward to expose the conspiracy. Here was my response:
It never ceases to amaze me how invested in proving there was no conspiracy to murder JFK the far right is. Why does it mean so much to you? As far as "technical facts," how do you explain the technical fact that more lead was removed from Connally (in fact, remained in Connally) than was missing from CE 399 (the magic bullet)? I suppose you'll dismiss the eyewitness accounts from Dealey Plaza which indicate shots from the knoll. And what about the Dallas Parkland doctors who saw an ENTRANCE wound in the front of the president's throat and fist-sized EXIT wound at the back of the president's head in the occipital-parietal area. And I suppose the violent backward movement of the president's head was caused by a bullet which did a U-turn in mid-air? I don't have time or space here to educate you; one of the hard facts of the American right is that it will choose to believe what it will despite reason, facts, common sense and absolute proof. Nothing will convince you that Kennedy was murdered by the military-industrial-intelligence complex, not even if Zapruder had filmed Allen Dulles firing a rifle from the grassy knoll. After all, you elected a moronic, criminal, Bible-thumping, sociopathic, daddy's boy twice, despite an abundance of evidence of who he really was. Still, I'll do what I can...Have you heard of a man named D.H. Byrd? Didn't think so. He was a Texas oil millionaire/businessman, financial supporter of LBJ and radical right-wing friend of Hunt, Murchison, Richardson, Bush, Phillips, Mallon, and the right-wing Dallas cabal. Byrd, with the help of his great friend, Curtis LeMay (Air Force chief of staff and profound Kennedy hater), formed the Civil Air Patrol. CAP members included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Bath (drug-running buddy of W), John Liggett, David Ferrie, and others, all of whom were recruited into the CIA. Byrd also owned Ling-Temco-Vought, which built fighter planes. After LBJ became president and started the Vietnam War, Ling-Temco-Vought got a huge defense contract to build fighter planes for the Air Force. Oh, and did I mention, Byrd also owned the Texas School Book Depository building (you've heard of that?). Oswald was steered to the job at the TSBD by his CIA handler, Ruth Paine, the Oswald family landlady. Ruth was married to Michael Paine, engineer at Bell Helicopter of Dallas/Fort Worth, another big Vietnam defense contractor. Bell made a fortune off its Huey helicopters. Michael's boss at Bell was one Walter Dornberger, ex-Nazi V-2 rocket engineer who should have been hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes. He was saved from the hangman's noose by Allen Dulles and the CIA (OSS at the time) in 1946 through Operation Paperclip which evacuated Nazi scientists, doctors, spies, and engineers to the US. (I'm sure you righties have no problem with this; you seem to love a neo-fascist state.) It was Dulles who placed Dornberger with Bell, under the auspices of the CIA and the military-industrial complex. Dulles's mistress, Mary Bancroft, was best friends with Michael Paine's mother. I could go on and on...but I don't know why I bother. What I'm trying to tell you is Kennedy was murdered by people who wanted not only to win the Cold War, by whatever means necessary, but also profit mightily from it. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War. Kennedy, practically alone, stood in the way of the huge military-industrial-intelligence complex taking over America. But I'm sure you, and all other right-wing zealots, hated him for that...and so somehow it is necessary for you to prove that Oswald acted alone. By the way, who were all those people flashing Secret Service credentials in Dealey Plaza right after the shooting? The Secret Service itself admitted it had no one on the ground in the Plaza that day. And why would Dallas policeman Joe M. Smith say he smelled gun powder behind the picket fence and encountered someone flashing Secret Service credentials in that area? And why would Roger Craig say he saw Oswald getting in a Nash Rambler at 12:40 pm when Oswald was supposedly on a bus six blocks away at the time? And on and on...My god you lone nutters sure have to explain away a lot of strange circumstances and expert testimony and appearances of impropriety and incredible timing and stunning coincidences to believe what you do. How do you do it?
From Best Evidence, by David Lifton, pp.61-62: "White House transcript 1327-C makes the debate concerning what Dr. Perry said about the throat wound on November 22 academic. The matter came up three times. Each time, Perry said the throat wound was an entrance."...[Dr. Perry speaking]'There are two...one of the neck and one of the head.""QUESTION: 'Where was the entrance wound? 'DR. PERRY: 'There was an entrance wound in the neck. 'NEXT QUESTION: "Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him? 'DR.PERRY: 'It appeared to be coming at him...the wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat...'"From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story of Dec. 18, 1963, by Richard Dudman, "...the question that suggests itself is: How could the President have been shot in the front, from the back?...Dr. McClelland said, 'It certainly did look like an entrance wound...we are familiar with wounds, we see them everyday--sometimes several a day. This did appear to be an entrance wound.'"
From Best Evidence, pp. 14-15: "Sixty-four known witnesses indicated that shots originated from forward of the motorcade, from the grassy knoll. This amounted to approximately two-thirds of the ninety witnesses whose accounts appeared in the twenty-six volumes...who expressed an opinion as to the source of the shots."
From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 308: "Twenty-one out of twenty-two witnesses at Parkland Hospital--most of them doctors and nurses, trained medical observers--agreed in their earliest statements that JFK's head wound was located in the right rear of his skull, demonstrating a fatal head shot from the front."
From pp. 294-298: "T.F. White was a sixty-year-old, longtime employee of Mack Pate's garage in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. While White worked on an automobile the afternoon of the assassination, he could hear police sirens screaming up and down Davis Street only a block away. He also heard radio reports describing a suspect then thought to be in Oak Cliff. The mehancic looked out the open doors of the garage. He watched as a red 1961 Falcon drove into the parking lot of the El Chico restaurant across the street. The Falcon parked in an odd position after going a few feet into the lot. The driver remained seated in the car. White said later, 'The man appeared to be hiding.'...White walked across the street to investigate. He halted about ten to fifteen yards from the car. He could see the driver was wearing a white t-shirt...[White] paused, took a scrap of paper from his coveralls pocket, and wrote down the Texas license plate number of the car: PP 4537.
"That night, while T.F. White was watching television with his wife, he recognized the Dallas Police Department's prisoner, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the man he had seen in the red Falcon." Wes Wise, a Dallas reporter, heard of White's story and, realizing that the real Oswald had already been arrested by the Dallas police at the time White saw the fake Oswald, decided to investigate. Wise asked White for the license plate number and submitted it to the FBI. The FBI reported that the license was issued to a Carl Amos Mather, 4309 Colgate Street in Dallas. "The FBI also discovered that Carl Amos Mather also did high-security communications work for Collins Radio, a major contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency. Three weeks before Kennedy's assassination, Collins Radio had been identified on the front page of the New York Times as having just deployed a CIA raider ship on an espionage and sabotage mission against Cuba. Collins also held the government contract for installing communications towers in Vietnam. In 1971, Collins Radio would merge with another giant military contractor, Rockwell International. In November 1963, Collins was at the heart of the CIA-military-contracting business for state-of-the-art communications system.
"Carl Mather had represented Collins at Andrews Air Force Base by putting special electronics equipment in Vice-President Lyndon Johnson's Air Force Two plane. Given the authority of his CIA-linked security clearance, Carl Mather refused to speak to the FBI. The FBI instead questioned his wife, Barbara Mather, who stunned them. Her husband, she said, was a good friend of J.D. Tippit. In fact, the Mathers were such close friends of Tippit and his wife that when J.D. was murdered, Marie Tippit phoned them. According to Barbara, Carl and Barbara Mather drove to the Tippit home, where they consoled Marie Tippit on the death of her husband (killed by a man identical to the one seen a few minutes later five blocks away in a car bearing the Mathers' license plate number)."
From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 103: "Abraham Bolden joined the White House Secret Service detail in June 1961 [where] he saw increasing evidence of the president's isolation and danger from the standpoint of security. Most of the Secret Service agents seemed to hate John Kennedy. They joked among themselves that if someone shot at him, they'd get out of the way. The agents' drunken after-hours behavior carried over into lax security for the president...Abraham Bolden spoke up. He complained to his superiors about the president's poor security. They did nothing."
In TV news film footage of the motorcade leaving Love Field, Emory Roberts, Secret Service shift leader in Dallas, can be seen ordering Henry Rybka off the side of the president's car. Rybka throws his hands up in dismay and disgust.In Dealey Plaza, as the shots are fired, Roberts orders his Secret Service agents to stand down. Most could not move quickly anyway because they are hungover from a night spent drinking and carousing at a mob-connected hangout in Dallas.
From page 170 of JFK And The Unspeakable: "Ruth Hyde Paine, Michael's wife and Marina Oswald's caregiver, was the daughter of William Avery Hyde. From October 1964 to August 1967, Hyde was the AID (Agency For International Development) Regional Insurance Advisor for all of Latin America. Hyde's job description was to provide technical assistance from the US State Department to insurance cooperatives being launched in south and central America. A later AID director, former Ohio governor John Gilligan, admitted that 'AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. It was pretty well-known in the agency who they were and what they were up to...The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.'"
Ruth Hyde Paine was also the younger sister of Sylvia Hyde Hoke...[a declassified] CIA Security File memorandum...noted that Sylvia Hoke was identified as a CIA employee."
From Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane, pp. 293-4: "A Novemeber 29, 1963, memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover entitled 'Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963' stated that on November 23, 1963, while Oswald was in police custody and available for interrogation about his affiliation with agencies of the United States government, FBI Special Agent W.T. Forsyth and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency briefed 'Mr. George Bush of the CIA' about potential problems related to the assassination. A source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the Agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine opertions."
From pg. 705 of Best Evidence: "Dr. Jones testified to the Warren Commission that he thought Kennedy was shot from the front, with the bullet exiting the rear of the head."
George H. W. Bush still denies being with the CIA before 1976.From the introduction to Plausible Denial, p. xiii, "It has been clearly evident for years that the American public, and the people of the world, do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy...the evidence is on their side. It is the side of the truth...this truth was borne out in a courtroom on February 6, 1985, in the US District Court for the Southern District in Florida, where as lawyer for the defense in the case Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, [Mark] Lane won a verdict from a jury of our peers that upheld, against a claim of libel, a news story that E. Howard Hunt, a long-time CIA employee, was in Dallas on the day the president was shot. The testimony at that trial gave more credibility to the notion that the CIA was involved in the assassination."From the transcript of that trial (Plausible Denial, pp. 295-297): Lane's direct questioning of witness Marita Lorenz:
Q. Did Mr. Hunt pay Mr. Sturgis sums of money for activity related to the transportation of weapons?
A. Yes
Q.Did Mr. Sturgis tell you where you would be going from Miami, Florida, during November of 1963, prior to the time that you traveled with him in the car?
A. Dallas, Texas.
Q. He told you that?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you arrive in Dallas during November of 1963?
A. Yes.
Q. After you arrived in Dallas, did you stay at any accommodations there?
A. Motel.
Q. While you were at the motel, did you meet anyone other than those who were in the party traveling with you from Miami to Dallas?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you meet?
A. E. Howard Hunt.
Q. Was there anyone else who you saw or met other than Mr. Hunt?
A. Jack Ruby.
Q. Tell me the circumstances regarding your seeing E. Howard Hunt in Dallas in November of 1963.
A. There was a prearranged meeting that E. Howard Hunt deliver us sums of money for the so-called operation that I did not know its nature.
Q. Now, can you tell us in relationship to the day that President Kennedy was killed, when this meeting took place?
A. The day before.
Q. Is it your testimony that Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald is, to the best of your ability to identify him, the person who was in the motel in Dallas with you, E. Howard Hunt, and Frank Sturgis the night before the president was killed?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it your testimony today, that today's testimony is consistent with waht you said before the House Select Committee?
A. That's right.
From p. 320-22 of Plausible Denial: "Verdict as of February 6, 1985. We, the jury, find for the defendant, Liberty Lobby, and against the plaintiff, E. Howard Hunt."
"...The reporters gathered around [jury foreperson] Leslie Armstrong. What had caused her to vote for the defendant she was asked time and time again. Patiently she explained that at the outset she was, as were all the jurors, absolutely objective. None of them had any fixed opinion about either or the facts surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy."And why had she found against Hunt, she was asked...The evidence was clear, she said. The CIA had killed President Kennedy [and] Hunt had been a part of it..."
From the HSCA report, "Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy...the Committee believes that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."
Dallas Police officer Joe Marshall Smith told Texas Observer reporter Ron Dugger, "I was approached by a woman who was yelling, 'They're shooting the president from the bushes.' When I reached the railroad yard, I caught the smell of gunpowder...I could tell it was in the air. I stopped a suspicious looking man in the area, but he presented Secret Service credentials, and I let him go. Later I regretted it, because it just didn't ring true. He was dressed like an auto mechanic, and he had dirty fingernails."
According to the Secret Service, there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza. From pp. 190-191 of Best Evidence, by David Lifton: "I talked to a nuerosurgeon friend of mine...I told him I had an unusual request. I wanted to read him a description of the damage to Kennedy's brain, because I had found it puzzling. I then read [Dr. James J.]Humes' testimony regarding the 'parasagittal laceration.' The doctor replied that he could see why I was puzzled, because I was not describing a gunshot injury...I was reading from a description of the brain after it was sectioned. His exact words were: 'That brain's been sectioned...cut into as part of the standard autopsy procedure, cuts are made in the brain to expose the interior and facilitate inspection.'"I assured the doctor that was not so, that what I read to him was the way the brain was before the autopsy [according to Dr. Humes]."'Just use common sense,' he replied...'how could a bullet create that kind of damage? You're telling me that something entered the skull at the rear, and then exited somewhere on the right-hand side. And none of it stayed inside the head? How could a missile which travels a path so that it exits on the right-hand side still create the practically straight-line damage you're describing to me, which goes all the way to the front of the head?' My doctor friend said emphatically that the damage sounded like it had been made with a knife."
Finally, I got so frustrated with the Haloscan nuts that I resorted to sarcasm: What follows is my word-for-word post:
"It must be comforting to you to believe in lies, misinformation and CIA propaganda, but that also means you're living a fairy tale...a sort of Pollyanna existence. And that is not very manly. I thought all you right-wingers were gun-toting, macho, bring-it-on types who prefer the wild-west vision of America, where the most ruthless and violent prevail. Well, that's what happened. The macho, flag-waving, take-it-or-leave-it types like you should be proud to lay claim to the CIA/military-industrial complex methods and bravado. After all, they won. They removed the president, and all their greedy, conscienceless, sociopathic defense contractors got rich on the blood of dead soldiers in Vietnam. Just like in Iraq. Halliburton KBR and Blackwater got their billions and the ruthless warmongers got their bloodlust fix. That's the American establishment you're so invested in defending; why not admit it? Frankly, it's a little bit sissy-ish of you to so stridently deny that the MIIC took over America in 1963. A real man, or at least the right wing's version of a real man, would take pride in such an achievement. The most violent should prevail. The most ruthless win. Greed is good. Bullies rule. Kennedy got what he deserved. He was a communist appeaser who wouldn't bomb Cuba, tried to get out of Vietnam, and refused to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR. Why do you shy away from admitting this is what happened? You're bearing false witness to your fundamental precepts when you blame it all on silly little Oswald. You make the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs look like passive pantywaists, who rolled over and took Kennedy's resistance like a bunch of little schoolgirls. Come on, be a real gunslinger; grow a pair like your right-wing brethren did in '63. Don't be a pansy. Be proud of your heritage. It was people who believed the same things you do who pulled this off."
This, of course, merely incensed them further, and they became more entrenched than ever in their misguided beliefs. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. Those who believe Oswald acted alone are either paid disinformationists or nitwits. They spout their lies in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and they will not change their minds, even if a film of David Atlee Phillips, Edward Lansdale, Lucien Sartin, David Morales, George Joannides, and Curtis LeMay firing in unison from the grassy knoll surfaces.
It never ceases to amaze me how invested in proving there was no conspiracy to murder JFK the far right is. Why does it mean so much to you? As far as "technical facts," how do you explain the technical fact that more lead was removed from Connally (in fact, remained in Connally) than was missing from CE 399 (the magic bullet)? I suppose you'll dismiss the eyewitness accounts from Dealey Plaza which indicate shots from the knoll. And what about the Dallas Parkland doctors who saw an ENTRANCE wound in the front of the president's throat and fist-sized EXIT wound at the back of the president's head in the occipital-parietal area. And I suppose the violent backward movement of the president's head was caused by a bullet which did a U-turn in mid-air? I don't have time or space here to educate you; one of the hard facts of the American right is that it will choose to believe what it will despite reason, facts, common sense and absolute proof. Nothing will convince you that Kennedy was murdered by the military-industrial-intelligence complex, not even if Zapruder had filmed Allen Dulles firing a rifle from the grassy knoll. After all, you elected a moronic, criminal, Bible-thumping, sociopathic, daddy's boy twice, despite an abundance of evidence of who he really was. Still, I'll do what I can...Have you heard of a man named D.H. Byrd? Didn't think so. He was a Texas oil millionaire/businessman, financial supporter of LBJ and radical right-wing friend of Hunt, Murchison, Richardson, Bush, Phillips, Mallon, and the right-wing Dallas cabal. Byrd, with the help of his great friend, Curtis LeMay (Air Force chief of staff and profound Kennedy hater), formed the Civil Air Patrol. CAP members included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Bath (drug-running buddy of W), John Liggett, David Ferrie, and others, all of whom were recruited into the CIA. Byrd also owned Ling-Temco-Vought, which built fighter planes. After LBJ became president and started the Vietnam War, Ling-Temco-Vought got a huge defense contract to build fighter planes for the Air Force. Oh, and did I mention, Byrd also owned the Texas School Book Depository building (you've heard of that?). Oswald was steered to the job at the TSBD by his CIA handler, Ruth Paine, the Oswald family landlady. Ruth was married to Michael Paine, engineer at Bell Helicopter of Dallas/Fort Worth, another big Vietnam defense contractor. Bell made a fortune off its Huey helicopters. Michael's boss at Bell was one Walter Dornberger, ex-Nazi V-2 rocket engineer who should have been hanged at Nuremberg for war crimes. He was saved from the hangman's noose by Allen Dulles and the CIA (OSS at the time) in 1946 through Operation Paperclip which evacuated Nazi scientists, doctors, spies, and engineers to the US. (I'm sure you righties have no problem with this; you seem to love a neo-fascist state.) It was Dulles who placed Dornberger with Bell, under the auspices of the CIA and the military-industrial complex. Dulles's mistress, Mary Bancroft, was best friends with Michael Paine's mother. I could go on and on...but I don't know why I bother. What I'm trying to tell you is Kennedy was murdered by people who wanted not only to win the Cold War, by whatever means necessary, but also profit mightily from it. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War. Kennedy, practically alone, stood in the way of the huge military-industrial-intelligence complex taking over America. But I'm sure you, and all other right-wing zealots, hated him for that...and so somehow it is necessary for you to prove that Oswald acted alone. By the way, who were all those people flashing Secret Service credentials in Dealey Plaza right after the shooting? The Secret Service itself admitted it had no one on the ground in the Plaza that day. And why would Dallas policeman Joe M. Smith say he smelled gun powder behind the picket fence and encountered someone flashing Secret Service credentials in that area? And why would Roger Craig say he saw Oswald getting in a Nash Rambler at 12:40 pm when Oswald was supposedly on a bus six blocks away at the time? And on and on...My god you lone nutters sure have to explain away a lot of strange circumstances and expert testimony and appearances of impropriety and incredible timing and stunning coincidences to believe what you do. How do you do it?
From Best Evidence, by David Lifton, pp.61-62: "White House transcript 1327-C makes the debate concerning what Dr. Perry said about the throat wound on November 22 academic. The matter came up three times. Each time, Perry said the throat wound was an entrance."...[Dr. Perry speaking]'There are two...one of the neck and one of the head.""QUESTION: 'Where was the entrance wound? 'DR. PERRY: 'There was an entrance wound in the neck. 'NEXT QUESTION: "Which way was the bullet coming on the neck wound? At him? 'DR.PERRY: 'It appeared to be coming at him...the wound appeared to be an entrance wound in the front of the throat...'"From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story of Dec. 18, 1963, by Richard Dudman, "...the question that suggests itself is: How could the President have been shot in the front, from the back?...Dr. McClelland said, 'It certainly did look like an entrance wound...we are familiar with wounds, we see them everyday--sometimes several a day. This did appear to be an entrance wound.'"
From Best Evidence, pp. 14-15: "Sixty-four known witnesses indicated that shots originated from forward of the motorcade, from the grassy knoll. This amounted to approximately two-thirds of the ninety witnesses whose accounts appeared in the twenty-six volumes...who expressed an opinion as to the source of the shots."
From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 308: "Twenty-one out of twenty-two witnesses at Parkland Hospital--most of them doctors and nurses, trained medical observers--agreed in their earliest statements that JFK's head wound was located in the right rear of his skull, demonstrating a fatal head shot from the front."
From pp. 294-298: "T.F. White was a sixty-year-old, longtime employee of Mack Pate's garage in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. While White worked on an automobile the afternoon of the assassination, he could hear police sirens screaming up and down Davis Street only a block away. He also heard radio reports describing a suspect then thought to be in Oak Cliff. The mehancic looked out the open doors of the garage. He watched as a red 1961 Falcon drove into the parking lot of the El Chico restaurant across the street. The Falcon parked in an odd position after going a few feet into the lot. The driver remained seated in the car. White said later, 'The man appeared to be hiding.'...White walked across the street to investigate. He halted about ten to fifteen yards from the car. He could see the driver was wearing a white t-shirt...[White] paused, took a scrap of paper from his coveralls pocket, and wrote down the Texas license plate number of the car: PP 4537.
"That night, while T.F. White was watching television with his wife, he recognized the Dallas Police Department's prisoner, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the man he had seen in the red Falcon." Wes Wise, a Dallas reporter, heard of White's story and, realizing that the real Oswald had already been arrested by the Dallas police at the time White saw the fake Oswald, decided to investigate. Wise asked White for the license plate number and submitted it to the FBI. The FBI reported that the license was issued to a Carl Amos Mather, 4309 Colgate Street in Dallas. "The FBI also discovered that Carl Amos Mather also did high-security communications work for Collins Radio, a major contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency. Three weeks before Kennedy's assassination, Collins Radio had been identified on the front page of the New York Times as having just deployed a CIA raider ship on an espionage and sabotage mission against Cuba. Collins also held the government contract for installing communications towers in Vietnam. In 1971, Collins Radio would merge with another giant military contractor, Rockwell International. In November 1963, Collins was at the heart of the CIA-military-contracting business for state-of-the-art communications system.
"Carl Mather had represented Collins at Andrews Air Force Base by putting special electronics equipment in Vice-President Lyndon Johnson's Air Force Two plane. Given the authority of his CIA-linked security clearance, Carl Mather refused to speak to the FBI. The FBI instead questioned his wife, Barbara Mather, who stunned them. Her husband, she said, was a good friend of J.D. Tippit. In fact, the Mathers were such close friends of Tippit and his wife that when J.D. was murdered, Marie Tippit phoned them. According to Barbara, Carl and Barbara Mather drove to the Tippit home, where they consoled Marie Tippit on the death of her husband (killed by a man identical to the one seen a few minutes later five blocks away in a car bearing the Mathers' license plate number)."
From JFK And The Unspeakable, p. 103: "Abraham Bolden joined the White House Secret Service detail in June 1961 [where] he saw increasing evidence of the president's isolation and danger from the standpoint of security. Most of the Secret Service agents seemed to hate John Kennedy. They joked among themselves that if someone shot at him, they'd get out of the way. The agents' drunken after-hours behavior carried over into lax security for the president...Abraham Bolden spoke up. He complained to his superiors about the president's poor security. They did nothing."
In TV news film footage of the motorcade leaving Love Field, Emory Roberts, Secret Service shift leader in Dallas, can be seen ordering Henry Rybka off the side of the president's car. Rybka throws his hands up in dismay and disgust.In Dealey Plaza, as the shots are fired, Roberts orders his Secret Service agents to stand down. Most could not move quickly anyway because they are hungover from a night spent drinking and carousing at a mob-connected hangout in Dallas.
From page 170 of JFK And The Unspeakable: "Ruth Hyde Paine, Michael's wife and Marina Oswald's caregiver, was the daughter of William Avery Hyde. From October 1964 to August 1967, Hyde was the AID (Agency For International Development) Regional Insurance Advisor for all of Latin America. Hyde's job description was to provide technical assistance from the US State Department to insurance cooperatives being launched in south and central America. A later AID director, former Ohio governor John Gilligan, admitted that 'AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. It was pretty well-known in the agency who they were and what they were up to...The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.'"
Ruth Hyde Paine was also the younger sister of Sylvia Hyde Hoke...[a declassified] CIA Security File memorandum...noted that Sylvia Hoke was identified as a CIA employee."
From Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane, pp. 293-4: "A Novemeber 29, 1963, memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover entitled 'Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963' stated that on November 23, 1963, while Oswald was in police custody and available for interrogation about his affiliation with agencies of the United States government, FBI Special Agent W.T. Forsyth and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency briefed 'Mr. George Bush of the CIA' about potential problems related to the assassination. A source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the Agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine opertions."
From pg. 705 of Best Evidence: "Dr. Jones testified to the Warren Commission that he thought Kennedy was shot from the front, with the bullet exiting the rear of the head."
George H. W. Bush still denies being with the CIA before 1976.From the introduction to Plausible Denial, p. xiii, "It has been clearly evident for years that the American public, and the people of the world, do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy...the evidence is on their side. It is the side of the truth...this truth was borne out in a courtroom on February 6, 1985, in the US District Court for the Southern District in Florida, where as lawyer for the defense in the case Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, [Mark] Lane won a verdict from a jury of our peers that upheld, against a claim of libel, a news story that E. Howard Hunt, a long-time CIA employee, was in Dallas on the day the president was shot. The testimony at that trial gave more credibility to the notion that the CIA was involved in the assassination."From the transcript of that trial (Plausible Denial, pp. 295-297): Lane's direct questioning of witness Marita Lorenz:
Q. Did Mr. Hunt pay Mr. Sturgis sums of money for activity related to the transportation of weapons?
A. Yes
Q.Did Mr. Sturgis tell you where you would be going from Miami, Florida, during November of 1963, prior to the time that you traveled with him in the car?
A. Dallas, Texas.
Q. He told you that?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you arrive in Dallas during November of 1963?
A. Yes.
Q. After you arrived in Dallas, did you stay at any accommodations there?
A. Motel.
Q. While you were at the motel, did you meet anyone other than those who were in the party traveling with you from Miami to Dallas?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you meet?
A. E. Howard Hunt.
Q. Was there anyone else who you saw or met other than Mr. Hunt?
A. Jack Ruby.
Q. Tell me the circumstances regarding your seeing E. Howard Hunt in Dallas in November of 1963.
A. There was a prearranged meeting that E. Howard Hunt deliver us sums of money for the so-called operation that I did not know its nature.
Q. Now, can you tell us in relationship to the day that President Kennedy was killed, when this meeting took place?
A. The day before.
Q. Is it your testimony that Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald is, to the best of your ability to identify him, the person who was in the motel in Dallas with you, E. Howard Hunt, and Frank Sturgis the night before the president was killed?
A. Yes.
Q. Is it your testimony today, that today's testimony is consistent with waht you said before the House Select Committee?
A. That's right.
From p. 320-22 of Plausible Denial: "Verdict as of February 6, 1985. We, the jury, find for the defendant, Liberty Lobby, and against the plaintiff, E. Howard Hunt."
"...The reporters gathered around [jury foreperson] Leslie Armstrong. What had caused her to vote for the defendant she was asked time and time again. Patiently she explained that at the outset she was, as were all the jurors, absolutely objective. None of them had any fixed opinion about either or the facts surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy."And why had she found against Hunt, she was asked...The evidence was clear, she said. The CIA had killed President Kennedy [and] Hunt had been a part of it..."
From the HSCA report, "Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy...the Committee believes that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."
Dallas Police officer Joe Marshall Smith told Texas Observer reporter Ron Dugger, "I was approached by a woman who was yelling, 'They're shooting the president from the bushes.' When I reached the railroad yard, I caught the smell of gunpowder...I could tell it was in the air. I stopped a suspicious looking man in the area, but he presented Secret Service credentials, and I let him go. Later I regretted it, because it just didn't ring true. He was dressed like an auto mechanic, and he had dirty fingernails."
According to the Secret Service, there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza. From pp. 190-191 of Best Evidence, by David Lifton: "I talked to a nuerosurgeon friend of mine...I told him I had an unusual request. I wanted to read him a description of the damage to Kennedy's brain, because I had found it puzzling. I then read [Dr. James J.]Humes' testimony regarding the 'parasagittal laceration.' The doctor replied that he could see why I was puzzled, because I was not describing a gunshot injury...I was reading from a description of the brain after it was sectioned. His exact words were: 'That brain's been sectioned...cut into as part of the standard autopsy procedure, cuts are made in the brain to expose the interior and facilitate inspection.'"I assured the doctor that was not so, that what I read to him was the way the brain was before the autopsy [according to Dr. Humes]."'Just use common sense,' he replied...'how could a bullet create that kind of damage? You're telling me that something entered the skull at the rear, and then exited somewhere on the right-hand side. And none of it stayed inside the head? How could a missile which travels a path so that it exits on the right-hand side still create the practically straight-line damage you're describing to me, which goes all the way to the front of the head?' My doctor friend said emphatically that the damage sounded like it had been made with a knife."
Finally, I got so frustrated with the Haloscan nuts that I resorted to sarcasm: What follows is my word-for-word post:
"It must be comforting to you to believe in lies, misinformation and CIA propaganda, but that also means you're living a fairy tale...a sort of Pollyanna existence. And that is not very manly. I thought all you right-wingers were gun-toting, macho, bring-it-on types who prefer the wild-west vision of America, where the most ruthless and violent prevail. Well, that's what happened. The macho, flag-waving, take-it-or-leave-it types like you should be proud to lay claim to the CIA/military-industrial complex methods and bravado. After all, they won. They removed the president, and all their greedy, conscienceless, sociopathic defense contractors got rich on the blood of dead soldiers in Vietnam. Just like in Iraq. Halliburton KBR and Blackwater got their billions and the ruthless warmongers got their bloodlust fix. That's the American establishment you're so invested in defending; why not admit it? Frankly, it's a little bit sissy-ish of you to so stridently deny that the MIIC took over America in 1963. A real man, or at least the right wing's version of a real man, would take pride in such an achievement. The most violent should prevail. The most ruthless win. Greed is good. Bullies rule. Kennedy got what he deserved. He was a communist appeaser who wouldn't bomb Cuba, tried to get out of Vietnam, and refused to launch a nuclear first strike against the USSR. Why do you shy away from admitting this is what happened? You're bearing false witness to your fundamental precepts when you blame it all on silly little Oswald. You make the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs look like passive pantywaists, who rolled over and took Kennedy's resistance like a bunch of little schoolgirls. Come on, be a real gunslinger; grow a pair like your right-wing brethren did in '63. Don't be a pansy. Be proud of your heritage. It was people who believed the same things you do who pulled this off."
This, of course, merely incensed them further, and they became more entrenched than ever in their misguided beliefs. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. Those who believe Oswald acted alone are either paid disinformationists or nitwits. They spout their lies in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and they will not change their minds, even if a film of David Atlee Phillips, Edward Lansdale, Lucien Sartin, David Morales, George Joannides, and Curtis LeMay firing in unison from the grassy knoll surfaces.
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