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Re: Donald Sutherland wanted Executive Action subtitled CIA

PostPosted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:09 pm
by MinM
MinM » Sun Sep 15, 2013 5:13 pm wrote:
MacCruiskeen » Sun Sep 15, 2013 3:34 pm wrote:Has anyone here seen the film Executive Action, made in 1973 and directed by David Miller? I haven't, yet, but it's recommended today in a blogpost by Mathias Bröckers, who also mentions that the film was withdrawn from circulation only two weeks after its premiere - "Not because it was badly made or even poorly cast (Burt Lancaster, a veritable star, played the lead [alongside Robert Ryan]), but because it presents a background to the assassination -- the military-industrial complex -- that comes far closer to the truth than either the lone-gunman hypothesis or any [imagined] conspiracy of Mafia bosses."

The praise and critiques are all valid .. here's some more background on it ..
MinM » Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:18 pm wrote:
The Consul wrote:
8bitagent wrote:Can anyone recommend films in league with Network, Blow Out, The Shining, Taxi Driver, Parallax View, THX 1138, 2001, 2001, Seconds, etc? It seems like that 68-81 period yielded some of the best cinema ever. Actually more specific films with an "RI" element.


A forgotten one: Executive Action starring Burt Lancaster. 1973. Watched in context of the time, it's revealing.

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Executive Action:

Conspiracy
In
America


BTW a few other Burt Lancaster films in this genre...

Seven Days in May (1964)
Executive Action (1973)
Twilight's Last Gleaming (1978)
The Osterman Weekend (1983)

MinM » Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:57 am wrote:
The Omega Man wrote:Executive Action with Burt Lancaster


Mark Lane, the man who wrote Executive Action, gives some background on that movie at the 37 minute mark of this interview.
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more Mark Lane...

Mark Lane wrote Executive Action with Donald Freed and Dalton Trumbo (one of the 'Hollywood 10').

Image @CinemaReel: Film School Rejects: Bryan Cranston Set to Write Screenplays in the Bathtub as Dalton Trumbo: In 1953, Dalton... http://bit.ly/1eUfZtr

Casting Watch: Bryan Cranston Will Play Blacklisted Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Upcoming Biopic
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Well, this is exciting. Bryan Cranston, star of AMC's "Breaking Bad," will play blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in an upcoming biopic, "Trumbo."

John McNamara penned the script, adapted from the book by Bruce Cook. It centers on Trumbo's status as Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter, to a man imprisoned in 1950 for refusing to answer questions hurled at him by HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee), to a prolific screenwriter operating under false pen names, to the man who ultimately broke the blacklist when given his real screen credit in 1960's Stanley Kubrick-directed "Spartacus," starring Kirk Douglas.

Jay Roach, who in 2012 took home a DGA award for "Game Change" starring Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, is helming. He's perhaps most well-known for the "Austin Powers" films and the first two films in the "Meet the Parents" franchise. So we'll see what he does with this distinctly unfunny and dark chapter in American history.

The film is set for a 2014 start, and marks Cranston's first major role following the hotly popular AMC series, for which he's won three Emmys -- and is nominated for another one at the annual Emmys ceremony this coming weekend (September 22). "Breaking Bad" has its final episode September 29.
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https://twitter.com/akstanwyck/status/3 ... 5225132033

Breaking Bad

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:07 pm
by MinM
Image
Cranston gives a dazzling performance as LBJ in an action-packed new play about a seismic moment in American history

The conflict of a divided soul — personal, political and national — sears onstage in A.R.T.’s sprawling, heady and thoroughly gripping drama “All the Way,” starring Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) as President Lyndon B. Johnson. In this production that already has Broadway buzz, Cranston gives a dazzling, far-ranging and moving perf as the accidental president who took office following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Robert Schenkkan doesn’t shrink from the collision of power and personality at this seismic moment of American history, filling his incident-packed narrative to the bursting point — and then some.

The play starts on the plane trip from Dallas after the shooting and continues to Johnson’s landslide election in 1964 over Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. And with Schenkkan, a Pulitzer winner for “The Kentucky Cycle,” telling his story with Texas-sized ambition, what a wild 11-month journey it is.

Cranston, who is expert at playing troubled protagonists who have lost their way, early on transitions from a moment of quiet mourning to an embrace of his manifest destiny. From that point on, his perf builds increasing power and danger like a runaway train, as he vividly shows Johnson as master manipulator, charismatic charmer, good old boy, bad old boy and, ultimately, tragic hero who changed the course of politics, his party and the nation for both good and ill.

What makes LBJ, the play and Cranston’s perf so riveting is this American sense of split identity: the do-good dreamer versus the deal-making pragmatist. (“This is not about principle,” he says. “It’s about votes.”)

The play is also ingeniously divided. The first act is a rollicking legislative drama (think “Lincoln”) centering on the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing of an increasingly powerful and confident Johnson as he steers the historic Civil Rights Legislation by sheer will and foreboding awareness. “Nothing comes free,” he says tellingly. “Nothing. Not even good. Especially good.”

In the second half, things grow darker and the play expands into the epic as Johnson becomes paranoid, self-pitying and blinded by hubris as a multitude of events turn him into a nearly Shakespearean figure — minus the eloquence of language, of course, though some of his country-boy stories weave their own spell.

Helmer Bill Rauch — who last year staged the show’s premiere at his Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where he is a.d. — keeps characters and narrative moving with clarity and grace in Christopher Acebo’s legislative arena setting. Shawn Sagady‘s projections also help with historic contexts and characters i.d.’s.

The solid ensemble members all take on multiple roles effectively, but standouts include Michael McKean as J. Edger Hoover, Christopher Liam Moore as LBJ’s aide Walter Jenkins, Dakin Matthews as Sen. Richard Russell, Reed Birney as Hubert Humphrey and Betsy Aidem as Lady Bird Johnson.

Even at three hours, the work has an abbreviated feel since Schenkkan takes on so many story strands, historic themes and characters that major incidents and players become reductive. But it’s all in the service of telling Johnson’s — and the country’s — grand story, and the triumphs that come at tragic costs.

http://variety.com/2013/legit/reviews/r ... 200662005/

***
@lisapease: Oh, bless you #Emmys for saying Kennedy's "accused" assassin. THAT is factual. Thank you.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 5:09 pm
by elfismiles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjU2LtVGxN0

Published on Oct 4, 2013

Abby Martin speaks with former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, about his new book ' They Killed our President', going over the most compelling reasons why he thinks the assassination of JFK was a conspiracy, Bin Laden's death, and his potential presidential run in 2016 with Howard Stern.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 8:57 am
by MinM
Roland "Bud" Culligan claimed he followed an E.A. order to execute three Dallas Shooters

Post by Tom Scully Today at 8:37 pm

Is this the ole, 'he changed his name from William to Bill to avoid discovery," S.O.P. of CIA assassins we've been told to believe, or does it support Culligan's 1970's claims?
...
http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net ... s-shooters

@lisapease: A CIA operative named Bud Culligan told the Church Committee he had participated in CIA "EA's" - "executive actions," i.e., assassinations.


Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 2:44 pm
by MinM
Image @nprfreshair: TODAY: Philip Shenon investigates the "Cruel and Shocking Act" of the Kennedy Assassination and the questions that remain.

@nprfreshair: Philip Shenon: “The destruction of evidence begins within hours of the president's death."

@nprfreshair: "It turned out that Lee Harvey Oswald had been under surveillance by the FBI for months before the assassination.."
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Botched Investigation Fuels Kennedy Conspiracy Theories
October 28, 2013 12:48 PM
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http://www.npr.org/2013/10/28/240822565 ... y-theories

Re: real or forged?

Post by James DiEugenio Yesterday at 3:06 pm

Glad you brought that up Robert.

Schiefer and Shenon tried to make this sound like it was new when in fact its as old as the hills.

John Newman showed it to me well over a decade ago. Its supposed to be from one of the Childs brothers, Operation Solo I think it was called.

Anyway John told me it was a forgery.

This is why it never made any noise. The HSCA also investigated these charges of Oswald saying this and said it was simply not supportable.

What a pile of BS Shenon is dumping and he gets the gig on CBS and his book goes soaring.

Isn't this the same guy who did a limited hangout on 9-11?

***
MinM » Fri Jul 12, 2013 7:49 am wrote:
@jeffersonmorley: Ending a journalistic taboo: Former New York Times reporter takes on #JFK http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/exper ... es-on-jfk/ … @jfklibrary @jfkforum @mmoore

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Phillip Shenon, a former New York Times reporter and author of The Commission, an acclaimed and critical look at the 9/11 Commission Report, has promised us a new book that claims that“powerful” people had influenced the Warren Commission’s investigation and final conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing John F. Kennedy.”

In short, Shenon is doing individually what the Times never did institutionally: accountability reporting on JFK’s assassination.

The media release from respected published Henry Holt doesn’t say much more than that so, for now, Shenon’s background is the story. From Atlantic Wire:

“At The New York Times Shenon covered topics like the FBI, domestic terrorism, and the goings-on at the Justice Department. Most notably, he wrote The Commission in 2008, a scathing look into the 9/11 Commission Report. If that book can give us any clues into his JFK dissection, it’s that it won’t be a blaring conspiracy theory, but rather a more clinical and subtle dissection of the Warren Commission.”

Which is just what we need. Not another conspiracy theory (yawn) but rather a serious investigation. The failure of major news organizations like the Times and the Washington Post to investigate the JFK story is rooted in their symbiotic relationship in 1963. At the time JFK’s murder, the country’s leading news organizations had a relationship of trusting ignorance with U.S> national security agencies. The senior editors of these papers emerged from the same social and political milieu of senior officials in the secretive agencies and implicitly or explicitly trusted them. They were often friends. Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, was social friends with James Angleton, chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff...

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/exper ... es-on-jfk/

Uncle $cam » Sat May 02, 2009 2:49 am wrote:Author Philip Shenon, who wrote a history of the commission, found that at the start of the commission’s work Zelikow drafted a welcome memo containing ground rules for staffers, such as not talking to journalists. One of the rules was that the staff should not talk freely to the commissioners. If a staffer were contacted by a commissioner, he should not deal with the commissioner himself, but contact Zelikow or his deputy, who would then “be sure that the appropriate members of the commission’s staff are responsive.” ...

White hot White house White wash?


Hugh Manatee Wins » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:59 am wrote:Welcome to RI, not anything like DU and an exile hang from that partisan turf. Here deep dark truths aren't suppressed in favor of cover stories. As you know.

I worked in NYC lots in a former career but fled to the left coast a few ago.
That city always felt like a shot of adrenalin to the heart once it came into sight but I've kicked that drug for now.

Didja catch the NYTimes Operation Mockingbird singing 9/11 disinfo on Democracy Now this morning?

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Philip Shenon, investigative reporter with the New York Times. He was the paper’s lead reporter on the 9/11 Commission. He is author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
.....


Philip Shenon has a book rehashing Zelikow's conflicts of interest on the 9/11 Omission Panel to get yet more mileage out of the cover-up in the guise of investigative journalism.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/5/new_book_alleges_9_11_commissioner

Amy Goodman did eventually ask 'what about the people who think 9/11 was an inside job and fault the panel for not even addressing WTC Building 7.'

Shenon took a long pause and said that 'yes, some do think that....but he doesn't see any evidence for an inside job or massive conspiracy.' He lobbed the Government Is Too Incompetent For Large Sins nonsense.

Wonder why Shenon thinks the USG therefore must've been competent enough to suspend the Newtonian law of physics called Conservation of Momentum which proves the three WTC buildings can't come down that fast without demolition?

Just an oversight, I'm sure.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 4:11 am
by Elvis
James DiEugenio Yesterday at 3:06 pm
...
What a pile of BS Shenon is dumping and he gets the gig on CBS and his book goes soaring.


http://www.npr.org/2013/10/28/240822565 ... y-theories

I happened to be listening to the radio when that "Fresh Air" (gag) interview with Shenon came on, and I could hardly believe I was hearing what I was hearing. It's a new "incompetence theory": from the thousands of files that have been released, we now know that if the FBI and CIA had only acted on the information they had on Oswald, the assassination might have been prevented.

Can this guy Shenon be so clueless as to not figure out that Oswald was being set up? Like Posner, Bugliosi, et al., he makes his case by simply ignoring facts that don't fit his scenario.

'Oswald did it' but Shenon generously allows that others might have been involved -- the Castro hypothesis is kicked around for several wasted minutes; or of course, paradoxically, the Cuban exiles might have had a hand; the mafia? sure, maybe, why not?; even the Soviets warrant suspicion -- everyone but the CIA.

The host, Dave Davies, had done some homework and asks some fairly good questions, but lets Shenon get away with murder.

Shenon attributes the "magic bullet" explanation to a "Navy autopsy pathologist" -- in other words, to an irrefutable expert -- but wan't that Arlen Specter's baby? Later on, Shenon calls it a "finding of the Warren Commission staff."

No matter anyway, because despite the obvious facts, Shenon says some "very serious scientists" and "technical teams" have assured us that a single bullet is the "logical explanation."

:wallhead:

Then listen at about 35:40, when Davies asks about the fact that the magic bullet looks brand new; when he finishes, there's a good three seconds of dead air while Shenon thinks up more horseshit to get out of that. And then what can Davies say? Is he going to contradict those very serious scientists on national radio?

The interview is worth listening to just for Shenon's impressive bullshitting. The bullshit and the blinders are too carefully applied; I really have to question his sincerity about all this, and his motives.

Harrison Ford dislikes social networking

PostPosted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 12:50 pm
by IanEye
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Elliot Gould @ 33:55 talks about producing and starring in the film "Little Murders".

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Michelle McNamara, in the midst of relating an anecdote about her husband Patton Oswalt being on an episode of Jerry Seinfeld's "Cars & Coffee" show, lets slip that she and Patton have "Mossad level security" at their house involving ex IDF soldiers because of her work researching serial killers.
Later on they mention Charles Manson and a litany of currently at large serial killers in California.

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A woman named Monika shares with another man named Gould the intimate first hand details of experiencing the shootings at KCRW located on the campus of Santa Monica College.
Adding to the confusion, the POTUS was in town.

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A man named Wells takes a trip through time to discuss a hero from a 1000 places with the mythical Joseph Campbell.

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a touch of evil mockingbird


Harrison Ford hangs out with a bunch of nerds, where he gives his opinion of the internet, "I think it's very useful for the gathering of misinformation and wasting time." @ about 47:30

.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 1:04 am
by thatsmystory
Elvis » Thu Oct 31, 2013 3:11 am wrote:Then listen at about 35:40, when Davies asks about the fact that the magic bullet looks brand new; when he finishes, there's a good three seconds of dead air while Shenon thinks up more horseshit to get out of that. And then what can Davies say? Is he going to contradict those very serious scientists on national radio?

The interview is worth listening to just for Shenon's impressive bullshitting. The bullshit and the blinders are too carefully applied; I really have to question his sincerity about all this, and his motives.


SHENON: If you look at the bullet, it is a bit damaged. It is not fully pristine, as some people describe it. And I think a lot of experts would tell you they would have expected to see more damage to the bullet if it passed through both bodies. But there are no rules here and apparently people who know this science well say that it is quite possible that this bullet could've passed through both men's bodies and sustained as little damage as it did.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=240822565


Another money quote from the interview:

What you learn and what the Warren Commission staff learned is that - and they'd learned this from medical specialists - is that in fact, human bodies react often in unpredictable ways to bullet wounds. You know, when a bullet hits a body the nervous system kicks in and it can do things that would seem to defy the laws of physics.

It is quite understandable that President Kennedy's head moved backward rather than forward because of the action of his nervous system when he was hit by the bullet.


Shenon is a good example of the way US media works. Any avenues of investigation that fundamentally question the integrity of the establishment are simply not up for review. He won't admit that. The people who interview him won't admit that. Instead they suggest or outright state that only conspiracy nuts would actually question the credibility of the powerful. Sure it's ok to accuse them of CYA or political infighting but it is nutty to accuse powerful people of intentional involvement in the murder of JFK.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:16 am
by JackRiddler
What you learn and what the Warren Commission staff could have learned is that - and they could have learned this from social scientists and historians - is that in fact, power elites often lie like crazy to protect their sustaining ideologies. You know, when an inconvenient truth hits the prevailing bullshit the propaganda system kicks in and it can do things that would seem to deny the need for plausibility.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:19 am
by JackRiddler
thatsmystory » Fri Nov 01, 2013 12:04 am wrote:
Elvis » Thu Oct 31, 2013 3:11 am wrote:Then listen at about 35:40, when Davies asks about the fact that the magic bullet looks brand new; when he finishes, there's a good three seconds of dead air while Shenon thinks up more horseshit to get out of that. And then what can Davies say? Is he going to contradict those very serious scientists on national radio?


My guess is not that Shenon was thrown off by this obvious question that surely occurred to him many times, but by the surprise that his interviewer would violate the unspoken rules of puff-piece propriety and actually ask it.

At a Commission press conference in DC in 2004 what I remember about him still is the tone of utter exasperation with which he responded when he started a question and the podium's asked him first to give his name and affiliation. As in, "Philip Shenon, New York Times," do you seriously not know who I am and what I work for?! Extreme arrogance.

.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 11:45 am
by MinM
Gerry 'the fixer' Ford gets honored a few weeks before the 50th...
Hoover Street Rag ‏@hooverstreet: Follow up: @MGoShoe alerted us that they've already chosen the motto for the Gerald R. Ford, but it's a good one too.
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MinM » Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:16 am wrote:
Wombaticus Rex » Sun Oct 06, 2013 10:18 am wrote:Power House, pg. 176

In June 1982, the FBI began investigating allegations made by a male congressional page (a high school student working for Congress, usually as a messenger) that he had been solicited by a congressman, and that several of his fellow pages had told him about sexual activities with members of Congress. A couple of weeks later, on July 1, Congressman Louis Stokes, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, known as the Ethics Committee, annonuced that the Committee was joining the FBI and local law enforcement in their investigations. Stokes said the Ethics Committee would widen the scope of the investigation to include a range of alleged irregularities on Capitol Hill including sexual relations between pages and congressmen, and charges that a cocaine and marijuana ring operated in Congress and used pages and congressional employers as couriers...

Post-Gerald Ford and Pre-Lee Hamilton .. Louis Stokes appears to have been another one of those reliable deep-state fixers. Both in this case and as Chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations before this...
House Select Committee on Assassinations

Thomas_N. Downing was appointed Chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations by Carl Albert, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.[1] The Committee was tasked to look into evidence that was not available to the Warren Commission during its investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[1] Upon his retirement from Congress in 1977, Louis Stokes succeeded Downing as Chairman.[1]

Downing stated before[2] and after[1] the HSCA's investigation that he believed there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. He said that he was skeptical that Lee Harvey Oswald could accurately fire a bolt-action rifle within a short span of time, and he believed video footage of the assassination showed that Kennedy was struck from the front and the rear.[1] According to a theory provided by Downing, one which he said was without evidence and based on speculation, anti-Castro Cuban exiles killed Kennedy due to his failure to support them after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.[1] Downing stated that they expected pro-Castro Cubans would be blamed for the assassination in retaliation for the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro by United States agents.[1] Downing said: "I am firmly convinced, I am sincerely convinced, that more than one person was shooting at President Kennedy in Dallas that day. It is so obvious to me."[1]

Downing described JFK, Oliver Stone's 1991 film about the assassination of Kennedy, as "implausible".[1] He said: "It's impossible to tell where fact stops and fiction starts, it blends in so well."[1]

Prior to the investigation, James J. Kilpatrick described Downing as "a man of exception integrity and common sense" yet "not altogether unbiased in the matter of Kennedy's assassination". Robert P. Gemberling, head of the FBI's investigation of the assassination for thirteen years after the release of the Warren Commission's report, said in 1976 that Thomas_N. Downing and his successor, Henry B. Gonzalez, had "preconceived conspiracy theories".[3] ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_N._Downing

It's funny looking back at the Watergate, Iran-Contra, and HSCA hearings...


being very naive at the time it really seemed that we were finally getting the whole story on the inner workings of the government. Of course that naiveté was understandable given that we were all in the dark about the machinations of these committees.

So in the end Louis Stokes was selected to control the message with a big assist from chief counsel Robert Blakey. Blakey had replaced the incorruptible Richard Sprague. Sprague was however able to add some lasting legitimacy to the investigation by hiring Gaeton Fonzi...
MinM » Wed Sep 12, 2012 7:16 am wrote:
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Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator of Kennedy Assassination, Dies at 76
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: September 11, 2012


Gaeton Fonzi was one of the most relentless investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, remembered by former colleagues with both awe and echoes of the impatience he inspired with his pursuit of the full story behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

They called him Ahab.

Mr. Fonzi was also the staff member most publicly dismayed by the committee’s final report, which concluded in 1979 that the president “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

Of course it was a conspiracy, said Mr. Fonzi, a journalist recruited mainly on the strength of scathing magazine critiques he had written about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But who were the conspirators? What was their motive? How could the committee close its doors without the answers?

Mr. Fonzi, who died in Florida on Aug. 30 at 76, nailed those questions to the committee’s locked doors, figuratively, in a long article he wrote the next year for Washingtonian magazine and in a 1993 book, “The Last Investigation.” In both, he chronicled the near-blanket refusal of government intelligence agencies, especially the C.I.A., to provide the committee with documents it requested. And he accused committee leaders of folding under pressure — from Congressional budget hawks, political advisers and the intelligence agencies themselves — just as promising new leads were emerging.

“Is it unrealistic to desire, for something as important as the assassination of a president, an investigation unbound by political, financial or time restrictions?” he asked in Washingtonian.

He never got the answer he had hoped for. Congress never authorized a follow-up to the work of the committee, which, from 1977 to 1979, also re-examined the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., concluding that it, too, “likely” resulted from an unspecified conspiracy.

But historians and researchers consider Mr. Fonzi’s book among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and credit him with raising doubts about the government’s willingness to share everything it knew. The author Jefferson Morley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, said “The Last Investigation” had refocused attention on a handful of reported contacts between C.I.A. operatives and Oswald — tantalizing leads that had long been fascinating to conspiracy buffs but that had never been fully scrutinized by a veteran investigative reporter.

The Central Intelligence Agency has denied that any such contacts occurred, and Mr. Fonzi spent most of his two years with the committee crisscrossing the world trying to prove otherwise. He considered it impossible that the C.I.A. had never made contact with Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, repatriated with his Russian wife and baby in 1962, and settled in Dallas, where he openly espoused Communist views.

“We called him Ahab, because he was so single-minded about that white whale,” said G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and staff director of the House committee, now a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. The white whale for Mr. Fonzi was the meaning of those supposed contacts.

Mr. Blakey was criticized by Mr. Fonzi as overly deferential to the C.I.A., and he now concedes that Mr. Fonzi was probably right on that score. Mr. Blakey said he was shocked in 2003 when declassified C.I.A. documents revealed the full identity of the retired agent who had acted as the committee’s liaison to the C.I.A. The agency never told Mr. Blakey that the agent, George Joannides, had overseen a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Dallas in the months before the assassination, when Oswald had two well-publicized clashes with them.

At the time of the revelation, the C.I.A. said Mr. Joannides had withheld nothing relevant from the committee. Mr. Joannides died in 1990.

“Mr. Joannides obstructed our investigation,” Mr. Blakey said. Asked how that had affected the committee’s work, he added: “We’ll never know. But I can say that for a guy like Gaeton, a guy who really wanted to know what happened to Kennedy, it kind of tortured him.” ...

Jim DiEugenio wrote:Wow, I am kind of shocked. That was actually kind of good.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... ntry259721

viewtopic.php?p=477057#p477057

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:19 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen
There's a more subtle pattern of disinfo that is more prevalent. Here's an example:

Dana Milbank: Benghazi, as seen from the grassy knoll
By Dana Milbank,September 16, 2013

Why do people claim that the Benghazi scandal is “phony”?

To answer that, let’s check in with the people fanning the controversy. They assembled Monday morning at the Heritage Foundation, convened by a conservative group to listen to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and several experts on the terrorist attack that killed four Americans in the Libyan city last year.

Some of those onstage posed questions about Benghazi that pointed to serious, if not scandalous, mistakes the government made before and during the attack. But those legitimate questions were undermined by other participants who rolled around the grassy knoll.

The lunacy began when Cliff Kincaid, a leader of Accuracy in Media, the group holding the gathering, suggested that the Obama administration is covering up events regarding Benghazi because the CIA operation there was secretly arming the enemy. “This administration has a policy of supporting al-Qaeda, the same people behind the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” he declared.

One of the panelists, former CIA officer Clare Lopez, picked up the theme. “Have we flipped our policy,” she asked, “to where we are placing the power, the influence, the might, diplomatic assets, military assets, intelligence assets, financial assets, at the service of al-Qaeda in the Middle East to bring to power forces of Islamic jihad? . . . Are we involved in the Middle East to help the forces of Islam, of al-Qaeda, of the Muslim Brotherhood, of jihad and sharia?”

Wolf’s reply: “I think Clare makes a very good point.” And this is the man leading the effort to create a “select committee” to investigate Benghazi.

So the Obama administration, which dispatched Osama bin Laden and decimated al-Qaeda with drone strikes, is now in cahoots with the terrorist network? Sorry, Congressman. I’ve got an appointment back on Earth.

It’s a pity that those seeking answers on Benghazi can’t focus on what really matters: Could anything have been done to prevent the deaths of the four men lost in Benghazi that night? And what can be done to make sure such a thing never happens again?

Instead, the Benghazi scandal-seekers are determined to link Hillary Clinton to the inadequate security at the diplomatic outpost (ignoring the obvious fact that a secretary of state doesn’t make security decisions for individual facilities) and the bogus “talking points” presented by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice in the days after the attack (as though more accurate talking points might have retroactively saved lives).

At least one participant at the Heritage gathering seemed to have the right perspective. Retired Gen. Paul Vallely wasn’t concerned about after-the-fact talking points or al-Qaeda conspiracies or whether Clinton signed diplomatic cables about security requests. He wanted to know why the U.S. military didn’t at least try to get reinforcements to the besieged Americans in Benghazi.

“Obviously there was not even an attempt at a rescue,” he told the 40 people in the audience. “That’s the bottom line of it all.” Vallely, a frequent critic of President Obama, said he doesn’t believe administration claims that there wasn’t enough time to send help to Benghazi.

Certainly, any such help would have been too late for Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleague Sean Smith, who were killed in the early moments of the attack. It may not have saved security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty either, he acknowledged, “but you don’t know until you try.”

An investigation led by Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen concluded that “there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.” Even if that’s true, nobody knew at the start of the siege how long it would last. Why didn’t they at least try?

But investigators haven’t shown such discipline, which makes it easy to discredit the inquiry. A report issued Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who leads the congressional investigation of Benghazi, mentions Clinton 33 times — but essentially ignores Vallely’s question.

Maybe that’s because activists pushing for the inquiry are distracted by wild theories. At the Heritage event, Lopez speculated that the administration covered up the Benghazi events because Obama wants to make it illegal to criticize Islam.

Retired Col. Dick Brauer Jr. spun the notion that the military was told to stand down by presidential friend Valerie Jarrett, or perhaps Tommy Vietor, then a White House spokesman.

And Wolf found it objectionable that “Hillary Clinton is now making $200,000 a speech.”

Scandalous.


Typical MSM meme management. In order for the public to be convinced the Warren Commission was right, it is important that the perception of competing theories spelling out conspiracy not only be made to appear incorrect, but absolutely ridiculous. Generally, MSM will use this by taking some aspect of the JFK assassination that the general public regards in connection with conspiracy, like the grassy knoll, and applying it to the latest controversy of the day where a conspiracy hypothesis can be disproved. Milbank correctly disputes the Benghazi hypothesis posited by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media and former CIA officer Clare Lopez that the Obama administration "flipped our policy" and was arming al-Qaeda. (Really, Clare? Like you were completely unaware of any 'black ops' by your former employer at odds with the stated "policy" of previous administrations?) But then Milbank gilds the lily by describing their "lunacy" as being "around the grassy knoll." The clear implication is that the belief that a shot hit Kennedy from the front, all visual indications in the Zapruder film aside, should be disregarded as hallucinatory, otherwise noted journalists like Milbank will roll their eyes and say, "I've got an appointment back on Earth."

What's sad is that in the past 10 years, this concerted effort has shown some results. A poll earlier this year conducted by Associated Press-GfK shows 59% of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill JFK, whereas a 2003 Gallup poll found 75% of Americans felt there was a conspiracy. That's 16% of this country that, in a 10 year span has decided to, in Bill Hicks' words, "Go back to bed, America!"

50/50 chance

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:26 pm
by IanEye
thanks for that 59% poll link.

i really think some people were hoping it got to 50% for the 50th anniversary.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:58 pm
by JackRiddler
The unfortunate thing is that probably, most of the 16% who used to agree there was a conspiracy did not change their minds but are older people who died, and most of the new 16% who do not agree are younger people who have come of age in the post-"JFK" (the movie) propaganda environment in which "Grassy Knoll" is equated with "Apollo Hoax," "tinfoil hat," Alex Jones, chemtrails as a New World Order extermination program, "Benghazi," etc.

Re: countdown to 11/22/13: JFK disinfo in multi-media

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:59 pm
by JackRiddler
All things considered, 59% is pretty good and any further documentary revelations -- if they actually free up the Oswald files, for example -- can only go our way.