The President's Mortician is Featured in Local Paper

The Alton Telegraph this weekend has a feature story on The President's Mortician. To access the article use this link:
http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/news_local_features/530035/historical-novel-focuses-on-JFK-assassination

JFK Conspiracy Fact #1: When They Killed Kennedy, They Also Killed America

America was once a great country, and its leaders understood that to keep it from falling into the hands of a petty, greedy, narrow-minded, regressive few, we had to be vigilant and forward thinking. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy all took this responsibility quite seriously. However, every President since Kennedy has abrogated his duty; to the point where, slowly over time, our greatness has eroded. America has become a government of the rich, by the selfish, and for the few. Congress shuts down the government to prevent the sick from getting access to health care. Social Security and Medicare are endangered. The NRA and a small handful of rich right-wingers buy and sell politicians like cattle. Schoolchildren are slaughtered and we raise not one finger to prevent its recurrence. Climate change and evolution are dismissed. Science is denigrated. Progressive thinking is derided. War and the threat of war are constants. It was not always this way.

FDR was keenly aware of the external and internal threats to democracy. He used government for good purposes: to defeat world fascism and lift us out of the Depression. He also stood guard against internal threats. His cabinet and appointees were extensions of this vigilance. In 1936, William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he stated, "A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime....A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions."

Roosevelt used his powers as President to stop fascist infiltration of the U.S. economy. On the 20th of October, 1942, he seized the assets of the Union Banking Corporation. The shares of the bank were owned by Prescott Bush (father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush), E. Roland Harriman, and three members of the Nazi Party. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation and the Silesian-American Corporation, a company that had been managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker.

President Eisenhower, though a Republican, supported social safety programs. He wrote a letter to his brother Edgar on Nov. 8, 1954, which read in part: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” Hunt and his Texas oil cronies financed the murder of John Kennedy and supplanted him with their own oil-friendly, warmongering President, Lyndon Johnson.

JFK also actively stood for progress and peace, and against the takeover of America by wealthy interests. Four of his prominent speeches illustrate this--

April 27, 1961: Following the Bay of Pigs, a flawed operation concocted by the CIA to trap the President, Kennedy spoke out against secret organizations: “Secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. There is a very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning…there is a monolithic, ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence.” This was a direct shot at the CIA and its culture of secrecy. He also put on notice those organizations whose members had accumulated undue influence over government agencies and, by extension, the American people. Organizations like Skull and Bones, Bilderbergers, Freemasons, the Council on World Affairs, et al, had infiltrated all spheres of the government.

America since then: Two Skull and Bones presidents have presided over unnecessary wars which greatly profited their crony defense contractors. The CIA has operated clandestinely without oversight in foreign and domestic matters, enriching its corporate sponsors by overthrowing socialist and democratic governments around the globe; subverting the free press; drugging its own citizens; conducting illegal wars; and siding with totalitarian regimes.

June 10, 1963: In a speech delivered at the American University commencement, JFK declared his intent to end the Cold War, not win it. He advocates for world peace and says, “ What kind of peace do I seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Total war makes no sense in an age…when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would by wind and water and soil and seeds travel to the far corners of the Earth…every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace should…examine his own attitude towards the possibility of peace with the Soviet Union…Both [the U.S. and USSR] are devoting to weapons mass sums of money which could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease…if we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

America since then: The Cold War lasted another quarter century, and JFK’s vision of world peace never came about. Since November 22, 1963, war and the threat of war have been constants in American life.

To sum up, Kennedy envisioned perpetual peace; what we got after his death was perpetual war.

September 2, 1963: Speaking with Walter Cronkite about Vietnam, JFK said, “In the final analysis, it’s their [the South Vietnamese] war; they’re the ones who have to win or lose it.” Just weeks later JFK issued National Security Action Memo (NSAM) 263, calling for total American withdrawal from Vietnam in his second term.

America since then: Three days after JFK’s death, Lyndon Johnson rescinded NSAM 263 with his own National Security Action Memo (NSAM 273) which laid out the rationale for the Vietnam War. The war lasted 12 years and cost 58,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives, and billions of American dollars.

October 22, 1963: In a speech praising scientific advancements and research, JFK, in an age where political charlatans were ridiculed for denying or condemning scientific fact, lauded Americans’ “…wholehearted understanding of the importance of pure science…” Kennedy encouraged scientists to find ways to “…protect land and water, forests and wildlife, to combat exhaustion and erosion, to stop the contamination of water and air by industrial as well as nuclear pollution, and to provide for the steady renewal and expansion of the natural bases for life.”

America since then: Scientific research and discoveries are condemned as anti-religion
(evolution) and anti-free enterprise (carbon emissions have caused climate change). Politicians and corporations with blatant agendas bully their way into public discourse, and are not denounced by media for what they are—regressive, ignorant, and greedy.

When they killed Kennedy, they killed his vision for America—peace, progress and an age of enlightenment. Fifty years on, we’ve seen the America that the plotters wanted—hatred for science, constant war, denigration of social programs for the old and the needy, and protection of the rich and greedy—come to pass.

“When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer! Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, 'A wild beast devoured him.' Then let us see what will become of his dreams!”
--Genesis 37:18-20

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #2: So Who Actually Pulled The Trigger? Here Are The Likely Suspects

It is my contention that each of the groups or individuals who wanted Kennedy dead had to provide their own assassin, in order that there would be mutually assured involvement, culpability and deniability. In other words, no group or individual could rat out the other because each of them had the goods on the other. They were all equally guilty, and this ensured mutual silence. Thus, LBJ, rogue CIA, Texas oilmen, the Joint Chiefs, and the Mafia (all deadly JFK enemies) hired their own gunmen for Dallas.

This is not just speculation on my part; there is hard evidence of assassins linked to each of the Kennedy-hating groups in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Let’s start with Malcolm Wallace, LBJ’s personal killer.

Wallace’s fingerprints were found on a box in the Texas School Book Depository on the day of the assassination. There is no innocent explanation for this. For decades, Wallace had been accused, and once convicted, of doing LBJ’s dirty work. On October 22, 1951, Wallace shot and killed John Kinser, a man who was having an affair with Josepha Johnson, Lyndon Johnson’s sister. Kinser was reportedly blackmailing LBJ, and LBJ ordered him hit. Wallace was convicted of murder, but inexplicably the judge gave him just a five-year suspended sentence. Some say LBJ pressured the judge into the light sentence.

Wallace went on to kill several LBJ enemies. After the Kennedy assassination, Wallace went to work for Ling-Temco-Vought, a Vietnam defense contractor owned by D.H. Byrd who also owned the Texas School Book Depository where Wallace’s print was lifted on November 22, 1963. Byrd was a close friend and financial supporter of LBJ. They were photographed together at University of Texas football games.

Then there’s CIA/OAS hitman Jean Souetre, who also had links to the Mafia and the international “French Connection” drug trade. Souetre, using one of his aliases—Micheal Roux—entered the U.S. on November 19, 1963, through New York, from where he traveled to Fort Worth. From there he followed JFK to Dallas on the morning of November 22. After the assassination, Souetre was expelled from the U.S.

The source for much of the information about Souetre was an Army code breaker name Eugene Dinkin. Dinkin deciphered cable traffic prior to Kennedy’s killing which stated that a known assassin named Jean Souetre would be in Dallas on November 22. Dinkin was taken into custody and hospitalized in a closed psychiatric ward where he was held for four months. Apparently the Army did not like what he had to say, and it was trying to shut him up. The cables he decoded were in the hands of the CIA before the assassination.

There is evidence to indicate that Souetre met with E. Howard Hunt in the spring of 1963 in Madrid. Madrid, at the time under the rule of fascist dictator Franco, was a hotbed of ultra right-wing activity. Ostensibly the CIA’s Hunt was recruiting Souetre for the hit on JFK. Later that spring Souetre came to the U.S. to visit General Edwin Walker just before Walker was supposedly shot at by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Eugene Hale Brading, also known as Jim Braden, was arrested in Dealey Plaza shortly after the shooting of the president. But he was released a short time later. The day before the assassination he visited the offices of Dallas oilman Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, a fanatical right-winger and an avowed Kennedy hater. Brading/Braden admitted to being in the Dal-Tex building on the same floor where Hunt Oil kept an office. The office was vacant at the time, and its west window looked out over the parade route. It was perfect vantage point from which a killer could have shot at JFK as the motorcade turned down Elm Street.

Another man who was arrested by police, and then mysteriously released on November 22, was an Air Force sharpshooter named Jack Lawrence. Lawrence worked at a car dealership in Dallas for a short time before the assassination. In his book Crossfire author Jim Marrs writes, “Lawrence had obtained a job as a car salesman at the dealership…with job references from New Orleans that were later discovered to be phony. Lawrence never sold a car and on the day before the assassination, he had borrowed one the firm’s cars, after telling his boss he had ‘a heavy date.’ On Friday, November 22, Lawrence failed to show up for work. However, about 30 minutes after the assassination, he came hustling through the company’s showroom, pale and sweating with mud on his clothes.” For some reason Lawrence had left the company car behind and had to get a ride back to the site where he had left it—in the parking lot behind the picket fence atop the grassy knoll at the west end of Dealey Plaza. The very spot from which assassination eyewitnesses heard and saw shots fired and smoke drift out from under some trees. Lawrence may have been Curtis LeMay’s hired hit man, though no evidence directly links him to the Air Force chief of staff.

Jack Ruby had long-standing and indisputable ties with the Mafia. He also once worked on the staff of Richard Nixon. When Ruby shot Oswald on November 24, Nixon, watching it on TV, reportedly said, “Hey, I know that man.” On the day before the assassination, he was in the Hunt Oil building at about the same time that Eugene Hale Brading was.

The one guy who shot no one was the fall guy Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time of the assassination he was seen calmly sipping a Coke in the Texas School Book Depository's 2nd-floor lunchroom.

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #3: The Incredible George DeMohrenschildt: The Man Who Knew Everyone In The JFK Case

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #4: The Suspects’ Own Words And The Words Of Others Indict The Guilty

What follows is my list of the prime suspects in the murder of President Kennedy and the incriminating statements by them or others who knew them very well—
1)The CIA and the Pentagon
”…as Kennedy’s [peace] speech reached out to Kruschev, it opened a still wider chasm between the president and his own military and intelligence advisers. To the Pentagon and the CIA, the president’s words of peace at American University seemed to put him on the enemy’s list.”
--from JFK And The Unspeakable, by James Douglass

“One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither. If the U.S. ever experiences a military takeover, it will come from the CIA, and not the Pentagon.”
--from an article by Richard Starnes Washington Daily News, October 2, 1963
2) Lyndon Johnson and John Connally
“He [Yarborough] described how Connally and Johnson were screwing him; worse, he said they’d be after John Kennedy in a minute if they thought they could get away with it.”
--from Advance Man, by Jerry Bruno
3) Allen Dulles
“That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god.”

--spoken by Allen to Willie Morris of Harper's
4) David Atlee Phillips, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, Lucein Sarti, William Harvey
All implicated in E. Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession.
--from Rolling Stone article of April 2007
5) George H.W. Bush and George DeMorhrenschildt
“Maybe you will be able to bring a solution into the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife
and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being
followed everywhere…I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H. Oswald and must
have angered a lot of people. Could you do something to remove this net around us? This will
be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more.”
--letter from George DeMohrenschildt to his good friend George H.W. Bush
who was Director of the CIA at the time. DeMohrenschildt was Oswald’s
best friend in Dallas. Shortly after this letter was written, DeMohrenschildt
was found shot to death on the very day he was scheduled to testify to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations .

6) Curtis LeMay
“Those goddamn Kennedys are gonna destroy this country if we don't do something about this!”
--from the movie "Thirteen Days"

JFK Conspiracy Fact #5: NOVA’s “Cold Case Kennedy” is Junk Science

Like its fictitious namesake, PBS’s “Cold Case Kennedy” is a made-for-TV junk, full of improbable plot twists, magic bullets, astounding coincidences, and an easy, pat solution. Watching it pleases the simple-minded. It encourages one to not think too hard; just rely on pseudo-experts to do the thinking for you. In the end, you’ll be satisfied with the conclusion. Because in TV land the real murderers never get away with it.

Just one problem. This Cold Case was a real murder, and not just any murder, but the murder of a President who was secretly at war with his own intelligence agency and military chiefs. He had enemies who had the power to muddy any crime scene, kill any witness, destroy tangible evidence, even highjack the body for pre-autopsy alteration. You won’t see this in any TV special. In the JFK case you have to actually do your own thinking instead of relying on some TV contrivance.

For instance, in TV land bullets can do impossible things like land intact on a hospital stretcher after fracturing human bone and tearing human skin and muscle. In real life this never happens. But in NOVA the magic bullet is pristine after passing through Kennedy’s and Connally’s bodies. The Cold Case scientists concoct, contort, and twist themselves into logic pretzels to accomplish this. They ignore the fact that no other bullet in recorded human history has ever done this. And Dallas doctors found more fragments in Connally's body than are missing from the magic bullet…no mention of this on NOVA.

Then the TV scientists try to make us believe that it is quite common for a person who is shot in the head from behind to have his head move backwards. It all has to do with putty in the head…or play-dough in the brain…I can’t recall which. It was all explained so fast that I could barely follow the logic (which was the whole point, I suppose). It’s meant to rationalize JFK’s head snap backwards while being shot from the back. (No gunshot victim in recorded history has ever done this, but this is TV land where anything is possible.) Most appeasing to the uncritical viewer. But it ignores eyewitnesses’ testimony of hearing and seeing shots from in front of the motorcade. Eyewitness evidence was discretely omitted from the NOVA episode.

Contradictory wound analysis was glossed over. Some doctors got it right; others got it wrong. The ones who agreed with NOVA were right; the others were whimsically wrong. No dissenting experts were given more than brief air time; then they were summarily dismissed as quacks. I'm surprised the NOVA producers did not insist they wear black hats. You see, conflicting medical evidence makes for bad TV…as in not comforting.

JFK’s autopsy photos and x-rays are assumed to be genuine. And only the set which were done at the end of the autopsy are presented. No mention made of earlier photos and x-rays which have just disappeared. And omitted are the Dallas doctors’ observations of frontal entry wounds. These men saw bullet entries in the front of Kennedy’s body and an exit wound to the rear of his head. But an autopsy photo shows the rear of Kennedy's head intact...the bullet exit wound just DISAPPEARED between Dallas and Bethesda. This is too dangerous and confusing information to present to mindless TV viewers, so I guess the NOVA scriptwriters thought it best to ignore the Parkland evidence.

I was left wondering what NOVA really stands for. My best guess is Never Offer Viable Alternatives.

I call on all thinking Americans to boycott PBS. Do not send them your dollars; do not support them in any way. If the network persists in preserving and protecting the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, then it has outlived its usefulness.

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #6: Prime Suspect Was Power-Mad Nazi Sympathizer and U.S. Corporate Elitist

An incomplete yet stunning biography of the Dulles brothers, written by Stephen Kinzer, delineates the utter control and totalitarian power that Allen and John Foster had over America and the world in the 1950s. Allen Dulles was head of the CIA and John Foster Dulles ran the State Department. Under Eisenhower, who essentially abrogated his domestic and foreign policies to these brothers, the Dulleses had free reign to overthrow foreign leaders whom they despised and maintain a secret imperialist dominance for American corporate interests around the globe.

Long before the ‘50s, in fact, the Dulleses were funneling U.S. dollars into Nazi Germany. Their firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, helped finance I. G. Farben, the German chemical company which produced the Zyklon B gas used to murder millions of Jews in concentration camps, as well as Krupp A.G., Nazi weapons manufacturer. John Foster was close friends with Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schact. Allen signed his letters to Nazi officials with a respectful “Heil Hitler.”

Sullivan & Cromwell became so influential and powerful in American corporate spheres that the Dulleses were often rewarded with posts on many of their clients’ boards. One was United Fruit, which, with Allen’s CIA help, overthrew duly elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. United Fruit had confiscated peasants’ land there for growing bananas at slave-labor costs. When Arbenz tried to return the land to the peasants and nationalize the fruit-growing industry, UFC and the CIA ousted him. The CIA earned the nickname Corporations’ Invisible Army.

Eisenhower turned a blind eye to this as long as the Dulles brothers kept America out of war. Ike had seen enough death and destruction in World War II, and opted for another way to exert America’s dominance over the world. So while he played golf with Bob Hope in Palm Springs, the Dulles brothers ran the country.

When Kennedy came into office, Allen, still head of the CIA, assumed he was still in charge. But after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy fired him. This outraged the Eastern intelligence/business establishment, and Allen took out his revenge in Dallas. To ensure the matter would be covered up properly and exculpate all guilty parties, LBJ appointed Allen to the Warren Commission…or was it the other way around?
As de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles attended more meetings and hearings than any other member. He misled witnesses, diverted evidence, misinformed his colleagues, and brushed aside all CIA culpability. Funny what happens in a murder case when the lead investigator is also the prime suspect.

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #7: Photographic Clean-Up Crew In Dealey Plaza

When people ask me why a clear photo of another shooter in Dealey Plaza has never been found, I tell them it’s because all photos and films were confiscated by “authorities” shortly after the shooting. Some of these photos and films were never returned to the rightful owners. Other images were edited or cropped to delete conspiratorial content. Some were misinterpreted. Some pictures were just reported lost; some cameras were even stolen.

Gordon Arnold took a home movie of the assassination while standing almost directly in the line of fire by the picket fence on the grassy knoll. He hit the deck and covered up when the shots whizzed right over his head. Quickly two “cops” emerged from behind the fence and demanded, at gunpoint, that Arnold turn over his camera. One of the cops was carrying a rifle and the other was sobbing uncontrollably.

Phil Willis, standing on the south side of Elm Street with his family, swears he took a picture of Jack Ruby walking in front of the Texas Book Depository right after the shooting. Ruby said he was not in the plaza at the time of the shooting, and proof of his presence there would have sent conspiratorial shockwaves through the investigation. When Willis got his photo back, he saw that it had been cropped right through the image he claimed was Jack Ruby.

Canadian journalist Norman Similas was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, and he took photographs of the open sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, the exact location of Oswald’s sniper’s nest. When his film was later developed it showed two men in the window, which would indicate Oswald had conspirators. When he submitted the photo to his newspaper in Toronto, the negative went missing. He has never seen it again.

Orville Nix took an amateur film of the assassination with a good view of the grassy knoll in the background, and what appears to be a gunman behind the fence. According to Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, “…Itek Corporation, which handles government contracts and is closely tied to the CIA, studied the film…and concluded that the gunman figure was actually shadows…[however] when Nix panned back over the area the ‘shadow figure’ is no longer visible.” Nix gave his film to the FBI in 1963; supposedly the original was returned to him, but it has since disappeared. Nix died in 1972, and now his granddaughter is actively searching for the original.

Beverly Oliver, another amateur filming from the south side of Elm, said that she was approached by government agents—either FBI or Secret Service—just days after the assassination. They said they were aware of her film and wanted to develop it for evidence. The agents confiscated the film, and Oliver never saw it again.

Mary Moorman took one of the most famous photos of the assassination. It was a picture of JFK just as the bullet which killed him struck his head. Moorman’s photo has obviously been cropped. How do I know? Look closely sometime. There is no one driving the car. Limo driver William Greer, who some say pulled a gun and pointed it at JFK, has been cut out of the picture.

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #8: Part Two of Discussion on JFK, LBJ and Vietnam

In Part One, I engaged writer Jack Durish in a debate over the causes and effects of Vietnam. In Part Two, another writer, Arthur Frank, challenges my assertions. (Note: I have neither edited nor proofed other writers’ comments; they appear here unvarnished, with typos and faulty grammar.)

Arthur Frank, Novelist:
“Timothy: It is not the dead that should concern you. There were 2 categories, black plastic bags, blown to bits in the theater of operations, and aluminum boxes, died later in field hospitals. One went out in a flash, the other went out over tie in great pain. They knew they were dying, it was only a matter of time.

"The ones that you should cry about are the wounded, dismembered, disoriented , permanently scarred to smaller or larger degrees. I got out of it pretty much unscathed, but not a lot of others. A friend of mine who is still screwed up all these years later used to fly medivac helicopters, He doesn't remember much because he used to fly stoned. I asked him how he flew a chopper , which is all hands and feet, constant motion, when he was stoned. He said it was simple. If he wasn't stoned, he was too scared shitless to fly, when he was stoned, basic instincts operated the chopper, he had little to do with it.

"If you really want to know. ask someone who was on the ground over there. If they like you , they might tell you, all these years later. Or maybe not.
It wasn't Bell, it was Sikorsky who made the Huey.If you had a Bell, oit was on;ly good for reconnaoisance and if you were in one, you wwerre probably dead, They were easily shot down and fell out of the sky like a stone.

"It wasn't Ling Temco Voight, it was Ling Temco Vine, which was basically a holding company . They bought out all kinds of smaller manufacturing firms, many of whom made civlian and military supplies. I used to work for LTV in Labor Relations after I got out of yhere service. They went bely up.It was a long time ago, and now we buy all kinds of stuff from people that we used to shoot at. Look in Home Depot.Go figure.
Everybody gives JFK a pass on Viet Nam. It was Jack who sent all kinds of advisors to the Arvn, shipped them all kinds of militray supplies and started drafting Americans into the Army and Navy . Ity was LBJ wjho escalated it further, and It was RMN who gave it an all time , make it or break it push. It failed and he pulled pout in response to political pressure. I was back home by then.

"I was there for every belessed minute of it.It is a brutal business, and if you can't follow the Marine addage, "kill them all and let God sort it out." then you shouldnt be there at all.”

Fleming:
“Lots of misinformation in your posts, Arthur. If you're civil, we can discuss. Cronkite interviewed JFK on Sept. 2, 1963, the evening of the first half-hour news broadcast in history. When asked about Vietnam, JFK said, "It's their war (meaning the South Vietnamese); they're the ones who have to win it." Shortly afterwards, he issued National Security Action Memo 263, calling for complete withdrawal of all advisors and military assistance by 1965. LBJ reversed this the very week he took office.

"The owner of Ling-Temco-VOUGHT was one David Harold Byrd. He is a prominent character in my book. Byrd was a wealthy Dallas businessman who hated JFK. His oil cronies were H.L. Hunt, Murchison, and Richardson. Byrd just happened to own the Texas School Book Depository building, and he was the founder of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. That's right, incredibly enough, Byrd provided the first and last places of employment for Lee Harvey Oswald. This is no coincidence. Byrd, Hunt and Murchison were LBJ's guardian angels and benefactors. As were Brown & Root and Halliburton. When LBJ ramped Vietnam, his cronies got huge defense contracts. (Bell Helicopter of Dallas/Fort Worth made a fortune off the Huey too.) Rewards for services rendered getting him to the White House.

"It is not the dead that should concern you." Really? You're saying it was better to die than live the rest of your life wounded? Okay. You seem to have a great deal of bitterness about the whole thing, and you resent those who did not go there and yet write about it like they were experts. Be that as it may, I knew plenty of people who were on the ground over there; some came back, some not. The ones who came back are grateful to be alive. I wrote about survivors of the Battle for Hill 875 near Dak To in the Central Highlands, November 1967. You should read it, then maybe I'll have some cred with you. "The Barefoot Hero" appears in the anthology Writers On The Wrong Side Of The Road.

"To recap: JFK wanted out of Vietnam entirely by 1965; LBJ: massive escalation by 1965. JFK murdered in LBJ's home state, and in city ruled by LBJ's cronies who made a fortune off the war. If you can't connect the dots, Arthur, well..."

Frank:
“The whole Viet Nam thing is totally fubar. It goes back to the 1800;s with the French colony of French Indo China, which included territories of Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam.

After WW 2 m the Big One, the French had trouble with their colonies, as did everybody else more or less. The US didn't have colonies, so we didn't have the trouble.There were uprisings and the French put troops in there to contain it. They ran a poor campaign and Eisenhower started to send them help. Ike liked the French for some unknown reason. He treateed De Gaulle like the Pope. Eisenhower escalated the troop support. You didn't see much in the papers.The French pulled out altogether, Kennedy escalated the troops to fill the vacuum. Foriegn campaigns benefit officers, especially 1 st Looies and Captains, it is the patthway to Field Grade- Light Col and Bird, maywe even Brigagier Foriegn wars kill grunts, elevate the officers.

In fact , if JFK wanted the troops out , he could have puklled them - He was the President, Even if the Pentagon got pissed at him, it would not have hurt him. He was the Golden Boy. He could do no wrong.The idea that he wanted them out is just bushwah.
Regarding the dead, any soldier will tell you that you kind of distance yourself emotioanlly from others in hot zones.because you feel like crap if your buddy buys the farm. Feeling like crap is a good way to get killed yourself. You are also tickled silly that you are glad it was somebody else amnd not you, which also makes you feel like crap, but not enough to get you killed too.. If anybody tells you different, they are either lying to you or they were a clerk, not a grunt.

The bottom line in Viet Nam is that NOBODY was determined to win it and get ouit. If they were serious, they would have pattern bombed the border for a 10 mile stretch, pulled concertina wire, set up guard posts along the border, identified the enemy, and when they caught them, hung them and let them swing in the breeze as an example to others.. The military doesn't think that way anymore, not since Black Jack Pershing , Douglas Mac Arthur and George Patton...kill the enemy, preserve the peace.Simple.

Basically, that is the way it is, once you scrub out all the politically correct crap. War sucks. You do your best to win it, because if you lose you are screwed. You bury the dead, you do what you can for the injured and you pray that some field grade asshole who is sitting fat and happy far behind the lines doesn't get you back into the crap you just got out of.

Winston Churchill said that ‘Total extasy is having been shot at and missed.’ The man had a point.”

Fleming:
Arthur: "Completely missed my point, or evaded it. The truth of Vietnam is ugly, I grant you. And it may be painful, and it may hard to face. But it is the truth nonetheless. Defense contractors, the CIA, and every other scourge of the 20th century were making barrels of cash. From p. 184 of Barry & The Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History: ‘Do you want to know why the Vietnam War lasted so long? Because too many people were making too much money.’ If JFK had lived, America would have been out of Vietnam in his second term. Oh, what's the use...that's the problem with America. Too many people believing whatever they damn well please, regardless of the facts. Bye Arthur, and bye to your peculiar version of history."

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to be to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”
--Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #9: JFK, LBJ and Vietnam

Recently I got caught up in a history discussion with some other writers on a LinkedIn forum. The topic of “What was America’s worst war” was introduced by Dennis Byrne, Chicago Sun Times columnist and author of Madness: The War of 1812.

The material is lengthy, so I will present it in two parts. Part 2 will appear tomorrow in my post etitled JFK Conspiracy Fact #8. I present the discussion unedited and unproofed (typos and all), because it is an illuminating conversation. Misinformation about the “why” of Kennedy’s death is rampant, even among the supposedly historically literate. I will identify the writers as they appear.

Dennis Byrne:

“I suggest that America's worst war was the War of 1812.

Not Iraq? Not Vietnam?”

Timothy Fleming Author of The President’s Mortician: A Story of How and Why JFK’s Murder was Executed and Covered Up:
“Vietnam...pointless and cruel. War profiteers got rich, of course, but no one else benefitted.”

Jack Durish Author/Historical Fiction, Spy Thrillers, Action/Adventure, Short Stories:
“Every war seems pointless and cruel and war profiteers always get rich, but no one else benefited? How about the other communist inspired insurgencies that failed in Southeast Asia because we attempted to hold the line in Vietnam? Thailand. Indonesia. Et al. And we would have succeeded in Vietnam - indeed we succeeded and then walked away - because we were so poorly led politically.”

Fleming:

“So it is America's right and privilege to determine by what system others will decide their fate? 58,000 dead Americans to accomplish what? Prevent SE Asians from determining their own fate? We lost the war. The North overran Saigon in April 1975. Did you miss that chapter? And you seem to ascribe innocent motivations to USA intentions. Naïve.”

Durish:
“No, Timothy, I do not advocate that the US has any special privileges or rights to determine anything for others. Indeed, it's a fool's errand to attempt it (as seen so clearly in Iraq). Especially when we espouse a system (democracy) that we do not ourselves want (well at least those among us who think).

The fact is that the South Vietnamese had made their choice to avoid communism and made that choice clear. The partition of Vietnam was based on that decision. However, the communists were hell bent on expanding their plans for world domination throughout Southeast Asia (and later everywhere else) and invaded South Vietnam. Yes, there were South Vietnamese who joined their cause, but it was never a popular movement in that country.

Now tell me: Where should we have fought that war?”

Fleming:
“Where? Nowhere. It was never our war. It was theirs. We made it our war for profit. It was Bell Helicopter's war. It was Halliburton's war. It was Brown & Root's war. It was Ling- Temco-Vought's war. It was Dow's war. It was General Dynamics war. It was not fought to beat back the communists; it was fought for profit.”

Durish:
“Timothy: What proof do you have of your assertions? Yes, those companies profited from the war. Profits in and of themselves are not evil. (Well, to communists they were evil) However, those profits were merely an outcome of the conflict unless you can provide specific proof that those organizations actually caused the US entry into the war. Where's the proof?

Harry Truman became famous for investigating and uncovering "war profiteering". These were people who "took illegal advantage" of the opportunity. They paid bribes and gave favors to those who insured that they obtained government contracts at excessive profits. However, even in that case, he never found that the proof that they inspired Hitler to invade Europe or the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. Likewise, there is no proof that any American organization colluded with Joseph Stalin to strive for world domination or encouraged North Vietnam to invade their southern neighbors.”

Fleming:
“There's not enough room here to provide the evidence. Please read my latest work, "The President's Mortician." http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASIN/098882907X
Sorry for the link and shameless plug, but I have neither the time nor the space here to give you a good answer. Have no doubt, though, that I DO have rock-solid evidence that Vietnam was fought to line the pockets of the wealthiest, most powerful defense contractors...the kind of corporations that can make kings, write the laws, control the information, and subvert democracy for their own means.”

Durish:
“Timothy: Out of respect, I will put your book on my TBR pile. Unfortunately, it is a huge and terrifying thing. Although, I must admit that I've read evidence purporting to prove the same case (maybe different from yours, maybe the same) and all ranks up there with other conspiracy theories alongside such venerable examples as the "Grassy Knoll" conspiracy or the fact that George Bush had explosives planted in the WTC Towers and had it detonated in time with holographic projections of airlines crashing into them. Alternatively, I have read credible history regarding the events we've been speaking of.and found perfectly reasonable explanations for our involvement in Vietnam.

Furthermore, I have studied the history of Korea and Cuba (of which I've written novels) and see the same diplomatic bumbling as evidenced in all US attempts to steer foreign relations. My research has led me to wish on occasion that some secret cabal would take over our relations with other nations. They couldn't do worse than the State Department and would be entitled to some reasonable profits for their efforts.”

Fleming:
"Fair enough, Jack. It is a terrifying thing, but I want to know my real history...not the crap we've been fed to assuage or deepest suspicions. As Thoreau said, "More than love, than riches, than fame. give me the truth!"

Nice talking to you...and please send the link for your Cuba novel."

JFK Conspiracy Fact #10: Flying the LCAP Way; And Killing JFK

What follows is an excerpt from my latest book, The President’s Mortician: A Story of How and Why JFK’s Murder Was Executed and Covered Up:

“Running the country and the world required that the CIA raise its own money in order that its operations be kept secret. Using more than its rationed share of public funds would have risked exposure. Even though the Empire’s millionaires chipped in for big events, like the murder of a sitting U.S. president, the CIA had to be mostly self-sufficient. It did this by, among other things, selling narcotics and running guns. And in order to sell drugs it needed pilots who could fly all over the world to make pick-ups and drop-offs. So the CIA came up with an ingenious idea—it would recruit young, impressionable, adventure-seeking cadets from the Civil Air Patrol who aspired to a life, whether for the US Air Force or not, of daring and stealth. The ideal recruit would also lack morals or a social conscience, or, in the alternative, would be a loner, willing to commit abnormal or questionable acts without resistance.

“An unusually high number of Louisiana Civil Air Patrol cadets became psychopathic killers, CIA pilots, or gullible, low-level fall guys. Among them were John Liggett, Charles Rogers, Lee Harvey Oswald, Barry Seal, and James Bath. In order to facilitate its recruitment of LCAP cadets, the CIA needed mesmeric leaders who had sway over young men. It found one such leader in David Ferrie, a defrocked priest, a skilled pilot, a hypnotist, and a pedophile. Ferrie, we now know, was well acquainted with numerous players in the JFK assassination drama, including Lee Harvey Oswald. While serving in a Louisiana Civil Air Patrol unit in 1955, Oswald was recruited into the CIA by ‘Captain’ Ferrie. While Oswald did not become a drug-running pilot, there were plenty of other LCAP members who did, like Barry Seal and Charles Rogers.

“Seal, whose incredible life is well-chronicled in Daniel Hopsicker’s stunning book, Barry and the Boys, became an adept pilot at a very young age under Ferrie’s tutelage. Subsequently, Seal was entrusted by the CIA to fly drugs out of Southeast Asia, Central America, and South America; guns in and out of troubled nations across the globe; and operatives to secret CIA missions whenever it needed a democratic or socialist leader overthrown. Hopsicker writes, ‘[Seal] was a high-rolling mercenary, a rogue pilot, an infamous gun-runner, the chief Mena narcotics trafficker, a fast-talking, self-assured, 300-pound pilot and Special Forces veteran, a notorious drug smuggler, a mystery man, and the most valuable informant in DEA history.’ Seal, according to Hopsicker, was also something else—one of the getaway pilots flying out of Dallas after JFK was killed.

“Another LCAP alumnus who became notorious was Texas native Charles Rogers, CIA pilot and murdering psychopath. Rogers was as brilliant as he was disturbed. A graduate of the University of Houston, Rogers worked as a seismologist for Shell Oil in the 1950s before joining the CIA. It is a seismologist’s job to determine if the underlying rock or substrata of any particular area is fertile ground to drill for oil or natural gas. This was and is vital information to oil companies; thus, seismologists and geologists are in great demand. But that kind of life was apparently not adventurous enough for Charles. So in 1956, he applied with the CIA and was interviewed in the offices of Shell Oil’s law firm, Fulbright-Jaworski (yes, the Leon Jaworski of Watergate fame). It was most likely George DeMohrenschildt who interviewed Rogers for the CIA. A long-time CIA asset and, later, Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in Dallas, DeMohrenschildt was also an expert in knowing where to drill for oil. He had an advanced degree in petroleum engineering, and he was associated with many Texas oil millionaires, including H.L. Hunt. Thus, it made sense that he would be the one to assess Rogers’ worth as an intelligence asset.

“On DeMohrenschildt’s recommendation, and with a good word from David Ferrie, Rogers was hired by the ‘Company.’ He was assigned to Latin America, where his piloting experience came in handy. As an avowed anti-communist, Rogers enthusiastically flew men and weapons into and out of Guatemala and points south in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

“When the CIA began planning its next big covert action, Rogers became a central player. What his exact role was is unclear, but Rogers was photographed in Dealey Plaza, the JFK kill zone, on November 22, 1963. Several pictures snapped by news photographers on the scene show three ‘tramps’ being led away from the scene of the crime by men dressed as Dallas police officers. One of the tramps bears a remarkable resemblance to Charles Rogers. In fact, a Houston police department forensic artist named Lois Gibson is convinced that Charles Rogers is one of the tramps.

“One James R. Bath turned out to be another ‘illustrious’ grad of Byrd’s Civil Air Patrol. He served in his CAP unit in the mid-1950s, about the time Oswald, Ferrie, Seal and the other CIA recruits were active members. But it’s what he accomplished after his CAP training that makes him notorious. Bath began a lucrative CIA career sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, after leaving active duty with the Air Force. He joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1965 where he met his great pal, George W. Bush, just as the Vietnam War was escalating. The Air National Guard was a great hideout for those pilots who wanted to avoid combat. According to author Pete Brewton, Bush claimed that he and Bath never went into business together; however, ‘…records filed in a Houston lawsuit involving Bath contradict the [Bush’s] son: they show Bath was an investor in a Bush oil and gas enterprise.’

“Another mysterious and unique individual who served in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol with Ferrie and Oswald was a man named John Liggett, a brilliant, quirky guy who became a master mortician/reconstruction artist. Little is known about his days in LCAP, except that he was almost certainly recruited into espionage and criminal work by Ferrie. In the early 1960s Liggett was working at Restland Funeral Home in Dallas where he bragged that he was the best at rebuilding injured and deformed bodies. Even his colleagues admitted that he was quite skilled in this area. He rebuilt skulls, eye sockets, noses, ears, and any feature necessary to make the deceased look whole again. Mourners at the funeral home often raved about his abilities, abilities that came in handy when the mob or the CIA needed to cover up the cause of someone’s death. But Liggett was more than just a mortician; he was a killer, and, like Charles Rogers, he had a preference for bludgeoning his victims with a hammer. The Dallas police caught up to Liggett in 1974, when he was arrested for the attempted murder of Dorothy Peck, wife of Jay Bert Peck. Jay Bert Peck was Lyndon Johnson’s cousin, and according to some, bore a remarkable resemblance to LBJ. Liggett never divulged his reasons for viciously beating Peck and burning her home. The Dallas Times Herald reported that ‘…a suspect [Liggett]…will be questioned by Dallas police about the bizarre sexual mutilation slaying of a legal secretary whose apartment was set afire to conceal the homicide.’ It seems Liggett’s modus operandi was known to the local police.

“To those who were close to him at the time, Liggett’s role in the JFK scenario is no less mysterious than it is memorable. On November 22, 1963, Liggett was officiating the funeral of his wife’s aunt at Restland Funeral Home, when he was suddenly called away from the graveside. He returned after a few minutes to tell his wife that Kennedy had been shot and he had to go to Parkland Hospital. When Lois asked him if Restland was going to get the job, John replied that he did not know but that she should not try to contact him. This was quite unusual. Normally when Liggett was on a job or on call, his wife and kids visited him at the funeral home. Never before had he instructed them to stay away. Equally as strange, Liggett did not return home until the next day. When he arrived he seemed worn and disheveled, quite unlike his customarily cool comportment and dapper dress. He quickly ordered Lois and the kids to pack up; they were going to hit the road.”

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #11: Read My Interview in Today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The JFK assassination is the focus of the November 10 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Arts & Entertainment page. In the books section I am interviewed by the Post's book editor, Jane Henderson. She has a regular feature, in question and answer format, which highlights St. Louis authors. Here is a reprint of the article:

"Penned in St. Louis by Jane Henderson:"

Tim Fleming, 60, grew up in an Irish Catholic family and began reading books about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination when he was just a kid. “It’s been a lifelong obsession,” he says. Now a retired English teacher who lives in O’Fallon, Ill., Fleming uses history as a backdrop for his novel “The President’s Mortician” (Neverland, 242 pages, $16.95).

The “mortician” of the title is John Liggett, a real person. Why is he important? • I believe he was involved in the postmortem alteration of JFK’s wounds to disguise the true nature of how JFK was murdered. How, where and when he did this is the central thesis of “The President’s Mortician.”

If he helped cover up facts about the shooting, why haven’t historians paid more attention to him and any survivors who knew him? • His work was done in secret, and few people even knew of his existence. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a close relative of Liggett, who told me his story.

You also send Liggett on a fictional trip to St. Louis? • Yes, Liggett was not only a master mortician, but also a contract killer who was jailed for murders he committed in Dallas. I have him commit a fictional murder in St. Louis to bring the narrative close to the area I know best.

Read more at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASIN/098882907X

JFK Conspiracy Fact #12: The “Why” is Explained in This Excerpt From My Book The President’s Mortician

“In the time that has passed since the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was murdered, the topic has been addressed by hundreds of books, countless documentaries, numerous investigations—both public and private, and even a courtroom battle. The evidence in the case has been hashed and re-hashed many times over, yet the years (nearly 20 now) and the analysis overkill have not dulled the world’s fascination with the subject. Nor has time diminished America’s conviction that a conspiracy was afoot to take Kennedy’s life on November 22, 1963. Since the early 1970s the numbers have remained consistent—three in every four citizens believe that either accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, or he did not act at all…rather, he was likely just the “fall guy” or the patsy. Moreover, among people 27-39 years of age as of 1980, upwards of 85% were pro-conspiracy. In other words, all reasonable people with even a passing knowledge of the events and aftermath of JFK’s assassination suspect that an organized, far-reaching plot took the president’s life that day in Dallas.
“Who killed JFK? The easy answer is that rogue CIA operatives planned, orchestrated and covered up the murder. But this solution is too pat, too simplistic. For it does not take into account the other elements that played their parts in the drama—Texas oilmen, Mafia associates, future presidents and corrupt politicians, ambitious lawyers, Secret Service traitors, the military hierarchy, and wealthy defense contractors. Taken together, these elements form a Secret American Empire.

“Born of the anti-communist fervor which inflamed the nation in the 1940s and ‘50s; fed by the enormous wealth of oil and weapons makers; protected by ambitious, greedy public servants; and enforced by violent, pathological criminals, this Secret American Empire possesses what amounts to its own foreign policy, its own air force, its own militia, its own economy, and its own rules. It is not subject to the laws of the land. It is rich and powerful enough to operate outside the laws that restrict all the rest of us. As Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, one of its high ministers, once said, ‘I am the richest man in the world. I can do any damn thing I want to do.’ This empire existed before JFK’s murder, but it had never before pulled off anything so outrageous and brazen as the crime it committed on November 22, 1963. In fact, some of the participants feared for their own apprehension and left the country before and after the execution. Their fears were unfounded, however, because the fix was in. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, was the Empire’s boy, and soon he cut off all legitimate investigations and appointed his own fraudulent commission made up of the Empire’s most ardent protectors. Once the perpetrators knew they were safe, America became their playground. They were free to romp through the public trust, trample the Constitution, start an unnecessary and catastrophic war, have free reign over domestic and foreign policy, and invoke immunity from crimes committed. The JFK assassination taught the Empire that it could get away with anything, and in the years subsequent to 1963 it has coalesced its power and consolidated its reign over democracy. Its candidates have been elected, by hook or crook; its power base has expanded; its wealth has grown unchecked. It has smugly, almost defiantly, moved on to evermore audacious, outlandish covert operations—the removal of Richard Nixon from office, the subversion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the narcotic trafficking necessary to fund covert operations, and the overthrow of foreign governments. In short, the Secret American Empire, while waving the flag in our faces and clamoring to high heaven about the land of the free and the home of democracy, has done everything it can to undo the processes and the restraints that would impede it under a true democratic system. We are living in, and have been since 1963, a neo-fascist oligarchic state, where only wealth and power matter, where the ways and means of a free press are stifled, where the people are propagandized by disinformation and half-truths, where our elected officials represent their own greedy interests and the interests of the Secret Empire, rather than the interests of those who elected them.

“Would it have been different if JFK had lived? Emphatically, yes! Kennedy, a conventional cold warrior when he took the oath of office, had transformed into a startling advocate of world peace by 1963. His landmark address at American University, in June 1963, laid out a revolutionary vision of America and its place in the world, one that made him a lot of deadly enemies. A world without endless war? An America free of what Eisenhower called ‘…the unwanted influence of the military-industrial complex’? A pullback on the power of the intelligence community? JFK became a marked man. He wanted to pull us completely out of Vietnam. He wanted to negotiate a settlement to the Cold War and live in peaceful co-existence with the communist world. The Secret Empire was not going to tolerate such a radical paradigm shift in domestic and foreign affairs. That was the entire point of the assassination.”

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASIN/098882907X
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JFK Conspiracy Fact #13: Travel Channel Special Gets It Right and Uncovers New Info

As a JFK assassination historian, I am watching all the 50th anniversary specials and documentaries with skepticism as I fully expect most investigations to be dishonest attempts to prolong the cover-up. If you’ve been reading this blog you know that I do not trust the American media to tell the truth of JFK’s murder. As actor Richard Belzer, author of Hit List: 50 Mysterious Deaths after the JFK assassination, puts it, “90% of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The 10% who don’t, work for the media or the government.” Those figures are slightly exaggerated, but you get the point. Don’t expect CBS, NBC, PBS, or ABC or any other network to suddenly name the grassy knoll shooters.

However, one investigation which surprised me aired the other night on the Travel Channel of all places. It’s called “America Declassified,” and it’s hosted by ex-CIA operative Mike Baker. Given his intelligence background I was shocked that Baker delivered an honest report. He interviewed Belzer and pro-conspiracy author Jim Marrs. He also talked to a former Texas School Book Depository employee who said Oswald was not where the Warren Commission said he was during the shooting.

But the most fascinating segment was the recreation of a shot at JFK’s limo from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. This is where most eyewitnesses placed a shooter on November 22, 1963. One especially critical witness named Lee Bowers, who worked in the Terminal Railroad tower just 100 yards north of the picket fence, had a clear view of a shooter that day. He testified that he saw a puff of smoke and a flash of light from behind the picket fence as Kennedy was shot. Baker placed a camera in the railroad tower and recreated the shot. Thus, viewers can see what Bowers saw. There is clearly a puff of smoke when the rifle is fired, indicating Bowers was telling the truth.

Bowers was killed in a mysterious one-car accident near Midlothian, Texas, in August 1966. A witness claimed Bowers’ car was forced off the road by another car driving in the adjacent lane. Bowers died of multiple head and internal injuries, much more than one would expect from a single-car crash. He was cremated the same night, and an autopsy was never performed.

Fast forward to my current book, The President’s Mortician, which exposes the truth of how Kennedy’s murder was covered up. A Dallas mortician and “reconstruction artist” named John Liggett is the eponymous villain. His actions on November 22-24, 1963, speak to the sinister role he played in altering JFK’s wounds post-mortem. He worked for Restland Funeral Home in Dallas, a notoriously disreputable establishment with CIA/Mafia ties. Inconvenient deaths, murdered informers, secret embalmings, and quiet underworld burials were commonplace at Restland. A portion of its graveyard was sarcastically nicknamed the “Field of Honor,” because it was the resting place of corpses who died under mysterious circumstances. If one wanted a body disposed of without any questions asked, Restland was the place to do it.

Back to “America Declassified.” One of the documents presented by the Travel Channel program was Bowers’ death certificate. I hit the pause button and took a good look at the document. And there it was—Place of Cremation and Burial: Restland Funeral Home!

JFK Conspiracy Fact #14: False Documentaries Have Begun Airing

As we get nearer the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, we enter the season of media lies. One of the most humorous just aired. I just got finished watching the Military Channel's documentary “Unsolved History: The JFK Conspiracy.” And I recommend you skip it. It’s the first a series of disinformation documentaries that will be broadcast this November, and it's filled with so much illogic, distortion, and one-sidedness that its evidentiary value is minimal. It left me wondering what is the purpose of such a program, who really funds it, and why is it being broadcast? If its purpose is to sway the uninformed and uncritical to the "lone-assassin" side, it may have succeeded, but why is this of value? Whose purpose does this serve? Certainly not history's, because the program left out a ton of known facts and happenstances that, if included, would have contradicted the show's obviously preconstrued premise. In other words, in 2013, who is still so avidly invested in covering up the truth?

I perused the credits for funding information, but found nothing. Apparently, it's rehashed garbage originally produced by The Discovery Channel in 1998. I leave it for others to divine why TDC wants so desperately to finger Oswald as the lone assassin, when 80% of America believes he was not.

Anyway, the funny stuff began right away when an expert marksman shoots at a watermelon which is supposed to represent JFK’s head. The disembodied watermelon is propped up in the back seat of an old Ford which rolls, driverless, down a dirt path in the middle of nowhere. Very scientific recreation of Dealey Plaza. At least the marksman fired the same kind of weapon Oswald supposedly did—a defective Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. And you know what, it misfired so much that the marksman had to admit it was too unreliable for any serious assassin to get the job done. The marksman finally got off a shot which exploded the watermelon, as the voiceover tastelessly informs us that this would have been JFK’s head.

The voiceover was beyond laughable, bordering on creepy. She had a soft, sing-songy delivery, reassuring in an eerie Tokyo Rose sort of way. It was meant to sway critical thinkers into accepting the government’s propaganda. But it was scary to me; I felt I was being brainwashed like one of those guys in The Manchurian Candidate. At one point Tokyo Rose gently intones, “Firing at live human beings would be impractical.” Impractical? Really? Criminal, inhuman, or monstrous would be more like it. “Impractical” sounds like “we would really like to kill a human being during this recreation to prove to you subversives that Oswald acted alone…but we would get into trouble with the PC police.”

Gary Mack is one of the brainwashers…er, hosts…and he has a suspicious background. He used to be pro-conspiracy until he cashed in by taking a job as the curator of The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. At one point he timed an Oswald actor walking from Oswald’s old rooming house to the Tippit killing scene, just to make sure it was possible to walk it in the prescribed time. When the Oswald actor took too long on the first try, Mack simply had him take a shortcut on the second try. During the shooting recreation, Mack says, “Current thinking now holds that Oswald fired his first shot much sooner.” Problem is, only lone nutters have changed their thinking on this. And there is not one scrap of evidence to support it. If there were, lone nutters would have presented it 40 years ago. So they simply alter the facts. Can’t fit Oswald’s three shots into the ascribed timeframe? No problem; just extend the timeframe.

The funniest part is when the marksman finally got tired of trying to fire the Mannlicher-Carcano and just discarded it. Instead he started firing green laser beams, at night no less. The JFK and Jackie actors wore hideous glasses as they rode through Dealey Plaza. They looked like Paintball players in a shooting gallery. Of course, Mack placed the laser beams on the exact wound locations that the Warren Commission lied so hard…uh, fought so hard to sell the American public. So much for unbiased investigating.

Nellie Connally, John’s widow, makes a bizarre appearance. She oddly smiles as she says, “Oh, it was terrible.” Perhaps because she knew that her husband, at LBJ’s insistence, had suckered JFK into coming to Dallas for the kill.

The biggest howl came when, to assimilate the 15-20-mile-an-hour winds in Dallas that day, TDC wheeled out a huge fan to blow on the limousine. That one made me guffaw. An electrical fan duplicating the winds of a city...how scientific!

Mack, who was once sure that he saw a rifleman wearing a badge shoot from the shadows on the grassy knoll, is now certain that the kill shot could only have come from behind. I suppose he'll sway with any wind, even one from a giant electrical fan in the middle of nowhere, to drum up ticket sales for his museum.

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #15: Cronkite and Others Lied About Assassination

Walter 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 strongly "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. This November when Cronkite’s reporting of November 22, 1963, is re-broadcast, and tributes to him come gushing from the mouths of the uninformed, I will get nauseous.

JFK Conspiracy Fact #16: Article Names Traitors in JFK Cabinet Who Plotted To Have Him Killed

I am re-printing below portions of 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. 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. We also know that all of the images of the president's death captured by photos and videos are not authentic. The president's autopsy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital is a sham, as are the X-rays and the autopsy photos. 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. 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. Bundy and McNamara were at the Pentagon precisely at the time the presidential limousine approached Dealey Plaza.

"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. 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 curiosity 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. This was to begin with the withdrawal of '1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.' 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.

"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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.”

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JFK Conspiracy Fact #17: Mary Meyer and JFK, Martyred Peace Activists

An overlooked person in the JFK death saga was one Mary Meyer, an artistic, sensitive beauty who became JFK’s close confidante and, reportedly, lover in the early 1960s. Meyer, the ex-wife of the CIA’s Cord Meyer, was murdered under mysterious circumstances in October of 1964. What she did and what she knew presented a great danger to the intelligence cabal that plotted and covered up JFK’s death, according to author Peter Janney. His book Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy To Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, And Their Vision For World Peace lays out a stunningly frank and revealing tale of the relationship and demise of America’s original peace activists.
I stumbled upon a fantastic review of this book, and I share it with you here. Written by an Australian named Greg Maybury, it presents a perspective that is representative of foreigners' certainty that is lacking in the American media. The rest of the world knows what our Mockingbird media refuse to acknowledge. Here is what Maybury wrote:

“The great 19th Century American author, historian, poet, philosopher, naturalist, prototype environmentalist and anarchist Henry David (HD) Thoreau, once opined the following: 'Some circumstantial evidence does exist, as when you find a trout in the milk.' In few areas of the Grand Narrative of his native country does this aphorism come into its own than with The JFK Thing, especially so when it comes to the discussion of who actually murdered him and why. (Spoiler Alert: It was not Lee Harvey Oswald on his Pat Malone, not by a long shot - or three - from the Grassy Knoll or an even longer one -or two - from the Texas School Book Depository Building).

"And it is with this in mind - this being the 50th anniversary of that monumentally pivotal historical event on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, TX - that one should approach reading Peter Janney's thoroughly engrossing story of the life and death of Mary (Pinchot) Meyer. After reading this book, it's clear Meyer is the sort of person one hopes America still produces in enough numbers because it is then and only then that we can truly hope the 'empire' will be able to save itself from itself. Yet by the same token, given where America is at present, it's equally clear they haven't been doing so.

"At the risk of resorting to lazy, glib cliché, this is one time where it might be OK to say that ‘if you only read one JFK book this November’... readers, you all know the
rest. On its own, it's a multi-genre read - combining crime, legal, political, spy thriller, history, murder, tragedy, mystery, conspiracy and love story/human interest - and in ways that fiction can never invent. Easily one of the most fascinating of the JFK related books I've ever read, and I've read quite a few as part of our research on a planned documentary on POTUS 35. That it fills in several gaps in our understanding of the man they called JFK and his truncated tenure as commander in chief is a not to be sniffed at bonus.

"It also is easily a story about one of the most fascinating and - in extraordinarily intriguing and unexpected ways - influential, women of her age. Yet in the hallowed hallways of historical academia let alone in the minds of those with more than a passing interest in American history, she is hardly a 'household' name. Even most of the JFK 'tragics' appear to have overlooked her role somewhat. Peter Janney's recently published and up to the minute book - presumably re-published and re-released to coincide with the imminent Anniversary of 11/22 - hopefully may change that.

"By all accounts Meyer was an extraordinarily intelligent, artistic and creative person. Indeed, she later became an established, exhibited artist. And along with being a professional and respected journalist, also a compulsive diarist, a 'compulsion' that, along with her refusal to be cowed or intimidated, may have contributed to her untimely demise.

"All round, she was a unique individual, not to mention a unique beauty. Hey, it was JFK after all - few had a keener eye for a 'plum looker', or to use the popular lingo of the era, a classy dame. Indeed, JFK had the ‘hots’ for Meyer for over two decades prior to their respective deaths, and it's a measure of this woman's class, substance and style that she resisted the Kennedy come-on for so long. Few women did, as history now tells us.

"But more than that, Janney presents solid evidence that Meyer was one of JFK’s most trusted policy advisors and political confidantes in those crucial, last years of his life, maybe even equalling that of his brother Robert (RFK), who himself by all accounts was also an ardent admirer of this intriguing woman. For her part Meyer had very definite ideas on America's role in the geopolitical firmament at the height of the Cold War. She clearly had an influence on his thinking about nuclear disarmament amongst other Big Issues of the time; she was a free spirit and prototype peace activist if one likes, who makes John Lennon look like a Johnny come lately in the Make Love, Not War stakes.

"This influence likely revealed itself publicly in Kennedy’s seminal June 1963 American University address, where he openly canvassed the very real prospect of a lasting rapprochement with the Soviet Union, not just with a view to heading off any further escalation of this destructive and totally avoidable conflict, but to nip it in the bud altogether. It is widely acknowledged that this speech (the first ever by an American president publicly broadcast in the SU since the advent of the Cold War) caused considerable alarm amongst the architects of the US national security state; in the words on one writer, they viewed JFK as nothing more than a heretic. And we all know what happened a scant few months later.

"Like her husband Cord Meyer (later to become one of the CIA’s most effective ‘assets’ and architect of their Grand Propaganda Strategy), Mary actively advocated for a world government in the post-War years. In fact in 1947, Cord Meyer was elected president of the United World Federalists, an organisation pushing for world government in the wake of the establishment of the United Nations. For her part, Mary – a fully-fledged and qualified journalist - wrote for its official organ, The United World Federalists.

"She was by all accounts JFK's true soul mate - personal and political. Utterly devastated by his death, and, not without some justification, she even suspected her former husband – one of its charter members - played a role in, or had some prior knowledge of, the Big Hit.

"Even without her connection to JFK, her story is compelling enough on its own. But in the context of the JFK hit - and her own murder less than 12 months later - the yarn is irresistible, one that is still unfolding as we speak, and is likely to do so in the weeks and months ahead. This woman might have changed the course of history in more ways than I can list here or possibly even imagine later, but it was not to be. She's also a genuine, true American hero – of the type we rarely see anymore - albeit one whose been sadly unsung for the most part until now.

"The Meyer story is truly a key missing link in the JFK story, and one that should put to bed once and for all any lingering doubts about the lone-nut, single bullet theory, although that does not appear to be the main premise of this book.

"(It should be noted on this point, anyone still holding to this view may be the real 'lone-nuts' themselves, and anything short of the threat of a single bullet to their heads, is unlikely to change this view. In this case such folks may not be interested in reading this book. They may wish to read the Warren Commission Report instead so they don't stray too far from their comfort zone! After all, there is no better fictionalized account of The JFK Thing out there.)

"Janney has brought her story to vivid life, and deserves enormous kudos alone for his painstaking research and relentless effort over decades to find at least a truth if not indeed the truth about this highly intelligent, remarkable, courageous and unique woman. He also deserves great marks for his own unerring courage - not the least being that even now there are powers in America that don't want the full story of her death to come out.

"Which is to say, the real story of her death has implications for the broad sweep of modern US history (even beyond a resolution once and for all of the The JFK Thing, to begin with, a serious reboot of some of the cherished myths and illusions (delusions anyone?) that keep the Good Ship America afloat may indeed be required), and indeed its political system, its democratic structures (what's left of them at least), even its standing in the world.

"Meyer's story as told by Janney is one that both history and the mainstream media have virtually ignored. And it is a very big part of history that is being ignored without some answers as to why she 'had to die'. It's a mystery almost as complex as the JFK thing, on a much smaller scale of course, but possibly no less intriguing. But that's the thing: solving the riddle of Meyer's death could well be The Key to solving the JFK Thing once and for all, at least to a sufficient critical mass of folk that might help trigger that 'reboot.' And Janney has come as close as anyone to doing this.

"This of course is not to suggest that Janney is the first writer to appreciate her story in the last fifty years and attempt to get it out there. The author even details, draws upon - and openly acknowledges - the efforts of many others before him to do so, citing at least one of them who came tragically unstuck in the process.

"But his achievement is not only to aggregate the previous work of other writers and investigators, but to tell the story more completely, coherently and with an unmistakable passion and respect for his subject. As a CIA child, Janney himself grew up in spy v spy world, of which Meyer herself was so much a part of in these early days. Indeed, Janney's relationship to Meyer appears to be that of being a second mother to him. Yet the author is careful to eschew allowing his personal feelings towards his subject to 'interrupt' the ebb and flow of this meticulously laid out, and sleep-depriving narrative.

"Janney makes the point that even before her death, she was a danger to those who didn't want the dirty linen of 11/22 airing itself in public view. Of course he argues that that was why she was murdered, and tells of the elaborate efforts the CIA went to make her murder look like a random (lone-nut?) attack, so that the case would be closed once and for all. But for some very determined, dogged, intrepid folks (again, of the type that America needs more of in critical mass quantities), the CIA – and the broader government forces that were also part of the monumental act of treachery that was JFK’s assassination – might have escaped any suspicion at all in relation to her death.

"As the son of one of her husband's CIA colleagues Wistar Janney, Janney's Mary's Mosaic is an illuminating insight into the development of the national security state, the early history of the CIA, and in particular, the extraordinary influence and control the CIA exercised over the most powerful media folks and organisations - the impact of which is enduring to this day. For his part, Cord Meyer was one of the most interesting, compelling characters in CIA history. His crowning glory was oversight of Operation Mockingbird, the ongoing CIA operation that would go on to not just influence but infiltrate, all key elements of the media and publishing industries in the US and beyond, and even included major school book publishers. Mockingbird went on to become arguably one of The Company's most nefarious, insidious yet supremely successful covert operations, with Cord Meyer almost certainly aware of the Big Hit going down in Dallas if not directly involved.

"Of course being in this role Cord Meyer was also very closely associated throughout this period with the two most enduring, powerful, influential and amoral CIA players of all time - the first civilian director Allen Dulles (the CIA’s ‘Dagger’, who actively sought out Meyer for recruitment) and his redoubtable chief of counter-intelligence, the disarmingly and deceptively named and inclined James Jesus Angleton (the ‘Cloak’), both of whom almost certainly had their fingerprints all over the events of 11/22 and its subsequent cover-up, if not in Meyer's demise. Angleton himself has been described by one author not given to hyperbole as one of the "most evil" of the Cold War players, an opinion this writer has difficulty finding fault with.

"As a writer and researcher, I was always keenly aware of and intrigued by Mary Meyer, but her political influence over and personal impact on Kennedy was extraordinary to an extent I didn't fully appreciate before this book. It's abundantly clear she was 'offed' by the CIA (October 1964), and her ‘ex’ Cord Meyer was certainly aware The Company had a hand in it, even if he wasn't actually involved. Many years later he reportedly said as much that the CIA were involved, but stopped short of admitting any involvement on his own part. In the grand cover-up of the JFK Thing, Mary Meyer was not the type to let it go, and the CIA folks weren't prepped to let her go, if readers know what I mean.

"And for the pruriently, deviantly and morbidly inclined, Mary's Mosaic has everything: sex, power, drugs, corruption, lust, lies, adultery, murder, infidelity, deceit, amoral ambition, conspiracy, suicide, addiction, treachery, depression, treason, dipsomania, monomania, megalomania, moral turpitude, madness, and a whole host of other elements essential for a great ‘family story’...all seemingly part and parcel of the Grand American Narrative.

"Oh and one other thing, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) again gets the nod – at the very least as someone who was ‘in the know’ well and truly before 11/22, if not in Janney's assessment directly involved in its planning. Insofar as this writer is concerned, it is becoming increasingly obvious - indeed, irresistible - that POTUS Number 36 (along with his redoubtable side kick J Edgar Hoover, and as a member of the Warren Commission, ably supported by the aforementioned Dulles, and his side kick/deputy sheriff, Angleton) was The Key Man behind it all, albeit with a cast of thousands and a large cult following providing the back-up to the Big Event and its subsequent and thus far, all too successful, cover-up.

"Fitting then that in the 50th anniversary year that we are closer to an answer than ever before to one of history’s greatest and most controversial unsolved (or at least as yet unresolved) crimes. For this writer at least there is no further argument. For those that dispute this, let them read what I have read and viewed. LMK and I will forward you a list. And in the top five would be this book about the redoubtable Mary Meyer, who in my book should be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They have given them out to far too many folk much less deserving, that's for sure!

"And I have no doubt that Meyer herself would have little difficulty appreciating the cosmic irony of such an award.”

Greg Maybury is a Perth WA based freelance writer, author, publisher, blogger and documentary filmmaker. With the support of like-minded folk, he is developing a documentary on JFK. His recently launched blog Pox Amerikana (see links below, or Google it) will feature a weekly four-part examination of what he calls The JFK Thing. The first part is scheduled for November 1, and will run for four weeks.

poxamerikana.wordpress.com/prelude-journeys-and-detours-in-a-sometimes-great-nation

Greg Maybury
editor/publisher: pox amerikana
producer/writer: off piste productions
www.poxamerikana.wordpress.com">