Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
FourthBase wrote:You know who else is a hero? Richard Case Nagell.
If only the gods had inspired him to be slightly more effective in his warning.
MinM wrote:FourthBase wrote:You know who else is a hero? Richard Case Nagell.
If only the gods had inspired him to be slightly more effective in his warning.
Richard Case Nagell and a guy who worked with Garrison, Zachary Sklar. Just in the 4 short years between this interview:
http://www.blackopradio.com/black38a.ram
http://www.blackopradio.com/black38b.ram
http://www.blackopradio.com/black38c.ram
and this one:
http://www.blackopradio.com/black200a.ram
You really get a sense of the toll this took on his career.
Larry King, of all people, seems to have played a strange role in the Garrison case:
In the early 1970s, King was entangled in legal and financial troubles. He was arrested on December 20, 1971 and charged with grand larceny. The charges stemmed from a deal he had made with Louis Wolfson, who had been convicted of selling unregistered stock in 1968.
The circumstances of what occurred between the two are unclear. According to King, he told Wolfson that he could arrange a special investigation by John Mitchell, the incoming US Attorney General, to overturn the conviction. Wolfson agreed, and paid King $48,000. King never delivered, and could not pay back the money. When Wolfson was released from prison, he went after King.
According to Wolfson, King served as an intermediary between Wolfson and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison was investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, but needed to raise funds for the investigation. Wolfson offered to pay $25,000 to help fund the investigation. The arrangement was that Wolfson gave Larry King cash (about $5,000 per visit). King was supposed to give this to Richard Gerstein, the State Attorney for Dade County, Florida. Gerstein was to transfer the money to Garrison.
This took place over a year or two. Wolfson eventually found that not all the money he gave to King made it to Garrison. The larceny charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. But King pled no contest to one of 14 charges of passing bad checks.
As a result of these troubles, he was off the air for three years. During those three years he worked several jobs. He was the PR director at Louisiana Downs, a race track in Louisiana, and he wrote some articles for Esquire magazine, including a major piece on New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King
nathan28 wrote:is it just me, or does the world start to get too small around these points of interest? it seems stage-managed...
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:That's the best picture of Larry King ever. Ever.
MinM wrote:That story tends to support my thinking. Rather than being a bump on his career-path. My guess would be that Larry King made his 'Mockingbird' Bones in this case.
.....
The larceny charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. But King pled no contest to one of 14 charges of passing bad checks.
As a result of these troubles, he was off the air for three years. During those three years he worked several jobs. He was the PR director at Louisiana Downs, a race track in Louisiana, and he wrote some articles for Esquire magazine, including a major piece on New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath...
SonicG wrote:In the Garrison Tapes (hat-tip to Monster) they mention that GHWB reported to the FBI about overhearing someone saying they were going to shoot the president. Has anyone ever heard that or have a source?
sunny wrote:SonicG wrote:In the Garrison Tapes (hat-tip to Monster) they mention that GHWB reported to the FBI about overhearing someone saying they were going to shoot the president. Has anyone ever heard that or have a source?
I do not know why my mind is drawing such a blank, because this was mentioned right here on the board very recently. It has something to do with GHWB providing an alibi by sending the FBI on what he knew was a wild goose chase. Anybody?
"Heeeere's Justice!" 37 years ago this month, Johnny Carson spent 50 minutes with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison
Sahl is one of my favourite undersung heroes of the Sixties, for having spent the capital of a successful career in the Quixotic pursuit of justice for the murderers of America.
From the cover of Time
to "conspiracy monger"
That strikes me as the trajectory of an honourable man.
There's an interview with Sahl a couple of months later in 1968, before the epochal one-two of Dr King and Robert Kennedy, that is as prophetic as anything I've read from that time:
ARGO: Why is the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?
SAHL: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy's life in order to control ours..
Rigorous Intuition: "Heeeere's Justice!"
Rigorous Intuition, a blog with an, ahem, unique perspective, dips into the memory bag to retrieve a Johnny Carson flashback that brings back a whole spooky era.
"Try to imagine Jay Leno devoting an entire Tonight Show to Michael Ruppert [author of Crossing the Rubicon and overseer of From the Wilderness], and the topic of Dick Cheney's role in the attacks of 9/11. Or David Letterman conversing for an hour with Dr Nick Begich, co-author of Angels Don't Play this HAARP, on the weaponization of the ionosphere.
"Because as bizarre and unlikely as those scenes would be, 37 years ago this month, Johnny Carson spent 50 minutes with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison - and millions of Americans - on the subject of the state-sanctioned murder of John F Kennedy."
Carson didn't cotton to Garrison, the conversation was contentious, but still--imagine something that earthquakish in its implications being argued on the country's number one late night talk show. Rigorous Intuition also excerpts an ominous interview with Mort Sahl, whose agitation was responsible for Garrison getting booked on the Tonight Show, conducted in 1968 only a few months before the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. "If America goes, it will surely be an inside job," Sahl predicted. That's what the Bush administration is: a hammering cacophony of inside jobs.
Which got me to "thinking." Last week the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the improved fortunes of Air America, which is is picking up audience share and affliliates and proving doomsayers wrong. Good for them. But the network still has room for improvement.
I think Air America should devote an hour or two each week to discussing and delineating conspiracy theories regarding the machinations of the Bush administration, the oil companies, the interlocking Washington think tanks, and their media stooges. Some would say this plays into the hands of the right and the mainstream media, who mock any evidence of longterm coordinated activity from scheming factions as the frothings of conspiracy buffs. As Gore Vidal has written, "Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic `conspiracy theorists', who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life."
But if you're going to be dismissed as a conspiracy buff, why not embrace the term, brandish it proudly, put it to good use? Gay activists converted "queer," an epithet of abuse, into a battle cry by wearing it like a badge until it became semi-legitimized. Why not adopt "conspiracy buff" with defiant pride? Because of course there are conspiracies in American life, as Vidal is shrewdly aware--conspiracies to hide and blur Bush's service record and DUI; to protect the sleazy racketeering of Tom DeLay; to further the fortunes and ambitions of Ahmed Chalabi; to prevent a complete undertaking as to what transpired before on an 9/11 (consider Rumsfeld's recent Freudian slip about the 9/11 flight being "shot down" over Pennsylvania--scroll way down); to remake the Mideast to neocon specifications. Let's get it all writhing on the table...
This is priceless. Rigorous Intuition has assembled a dandy visual essay indicating beyond a shadow of an innuendo that a certain powerful somebody can't keep his hands off that Kojak skin. This polishing of knobs is no doubt a harmless pastime, though I would suggest that this watchdog might want to wear a hat, or perhaps a helmet, during security briefings.
...such naivete was more forgivable during the pre-Watergate era. Because of this, Johnny Carson's reaction to Jim Garrison's Tonight Show appearance was hardly out of bounds.
"The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries," Garrison told an incredulous Carson.
"I just can't understand how you think that these men think they can get away with it or for what reason they would do it," Carson later responded...
http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Re ... 5chin.html
The King of the Nights darkest hour
Johnny Carson and the Kennedy assassination
By Larry Chin
January 28, 2005 Even in glints of light and joy, there is the darkness of unacknowledged realities and suppressed nightmare.
As America mourns the death of late night TV icon Johnny Carson, fondly reminiscing over decades of gags and laughs, few bother recalling the single most telling "Carson moment" there ever was.
On January 31, 1968, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison appeared on the Tonight Show to discuss his investigation into US government involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson1.ram
http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson2.ram
Over the course of 90 minutes, the smiles and yucks went silent. Carson, Americas chuckling nighttime buddy, everybodys friend, was the assassin. He badgered, belittled, and mocked Garrison, repeatedly interrupting Garrison as he made an impassioned plea to the American people to question the official story of the JFK assassination. When Garrison attempted to show the photograph of the infamous "Three Tramps" (still unidentified mystery men who were arrested behind the Grassy Knoll and marched through Dealey Plaza, likely members of the assassination team), Carson made sure America would not see it. He yanked Garrisons arm aside, and cut the cameras. Garrison later mused:
"Why had I been debriefed in advance so that Carson could be apprised of my likely answers? Why had Carson pulled my arm away so that the photographs were out of camera range? And why had the director and the control room switched the camera so that the photographs could not be seen? The only reasonable, realistic explanation, I found myself concluding, was control.
"Some long-cherished illusions of mine about the great free press in our country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period. The restraint and respect for justice one might expect from the press . . . did not exist".
As noted by Maureen Farrell
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/11/far03002.html
, the "unholy alliance between the media and the government," in covering up government crimes, was evident that night:
"The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries," Garrison told an incredulous Carson. "I just can't understand how you think that these men think they can get away with it or for what reason they would do it," Carson later responded.
By 9:00 the next morning, Garrison had received more than 2,000 telegrams from district attorneys across America, who felt that Carson's "nervous antagonism," was a sign that Garrison was onto something.
Feeling the need to apologize for Carson's demeanor (which was nevertheless polite and jovial by today's shout-fest standards), NBC sent out thousands of form letters saying, "The Johnny seen on TV that night was not the Johnny we all know and love. He had to play the devil's advocate, because that makes for a better program."
Carson was furious about NBCs letter, and promised never to allow Garrison on his program again.
It is no surprise that today, as mainstream corporate media is flooded with "happy" Johnny Carson memories and magnificent tomes about how the charming Carson "epitomized the goodness of middle America", the Garrison interviewthe one glaring moment that exposed Carson as a peevish, patronizing, gatekeeping servant of larger forces continues to be studiously avoided.
Times, and the historical facts, have fully vindicated the late Garrison. Oliver Stone's film JFK, which included an amusing version of the Carson interview (Stone depicted his fictional Garrison protagonist being badgered by an obnoxious talk show host named "Johnny Johnson," played by John Laroquette.)
Here we find something to truly mourn: Johnny Carson, on that night in 1968, had the power to change the world. He chose to use that power to destroy a courageous whistleblower, kill truth, and keep America naïve and stupid.
As one television critic wrote of Carson, "he rode his droll detachment and bemused self-effacement through wars and assassinations, riots and Watergate". But Carson, like many other powerful public figures and Hollywood celebrities, did little to address these serious events, except to provide water cooler humor and lampoons (ultimately giving birth to brain-addling sound-bite entertainment politics, epitomized by Jon Stewart, Jay Lenos Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, etc.), and worse. There's Johnny.
http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Re ... ports.html
The late-night war among Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and David Letterman is an Oedipal conflict: pretender, contender, and defender. But none has the elusive quality that made Johnny Carson king.
By James Wolcott
April 2010
He retired as host of NBC’s Tonight Show in 1992, concluding a 30-year run that began when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president and color TV was a toddler. Upon retirement, he made only a few evanescent public appearances, a silver phantom whose craving for privacy never wavered. A chain-smoker for most of his adult life (sneaking puffs at the Tonight Show desk during commercial breaks), he died of emphysema-related respiratory failure in 2005. And yet the spectral presence and kingly mien of Johnny Carson loom like Hamlet’s father’s ghost over the late-night talk-show wars that volcano’d this winter. It is over Carson’s throne that the daggers are drawn, his troubled spirit that must be honored and avenged. And it’s so hard to win Daddy’s approval when Daddy’s long gone...
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