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  • Review of James Douglass’s New Book – Pt 3

    Jim DiEugenio concludes his three-part review of James Douglass’s important new book with a discussion of the final and culminating murder of the sixties: the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

    Martyrs to the Unspeakable – Pt. 3

    By James W. Douglass

     

    Because James Douglass wrote an entire volume about the presidency and the assassination of John Kennedy, it is that case which gets the least attention in Martyrs to the Unspeakable. Which is a justifiable decision.

    But, having said that, Douglass still does deal with JFK. He brings up the case first in its relation to our current troubles: That is, President Kennedy’s dispute with David Ben Gurion and Israel. (p. 10) This important issue is finally getting the attention it deserves through writers like Rick Stirling, Ken McCarthy, and Monica Wiesak. Douglass shows that, quite early, Kennedy was aware of the need for America to come to the aid of the Palestinians who had been impacted by the Nakba. He addressed the problem in 1951. (p. 10). Later on, the author shows that Kennedy never stopped supporting that cause. He was trying to pass a UN resolution to grant relief on November 20, 1963– one which Israel vociferously objected to. (pp. 64-67)

    As Kennedy was about to enter the White House, he was alerted by the outgoing Secretary of State, Christian Herter, that there were rumors that Israel might be trying to build an atomic bomb. The problem mushroomed as Douglass notes, because “No American president was more concerned with the danger of nuclear proliferation than John Fitzgerald Kennedy.” (p. 11). The conflict between Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben Gurion began at their first, and only, head of state, face-to-face meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in late May of 1961. At this meeting, Kennedy expressed his curiosity about the size of the atomic reactor at the Dimona site, but Ben Gurion insisted that it was only for desalination. Which, of course, was false.

    Kennedy’s interest was in not starting an atomic arms race in the Middle East. (p. 14). Specifically, he thought the possibility existed that if Israel developed a bomb, the Russians would aid Egypt in doing the same. As Douglass notes, this canard by Ben Gurion would mushroom two years later into a direct confrontation, which would result in Ben Gurion’s resignation.

    Douglass notes an important conversation that JFK had with Amos Elon, an American reporter for Haaretz. As early as 1961, Kennedy was realizing that the American/Israeli relationship was more useful to Tel Aviv than Washington. And he specifically said, “We sometimes find ourselves in difficulty due to our close relations with Israel.” The president said that the important thing was that the Israelis get along with the Arabs. And if that meant Israel adopting a neutralist stance, he would consider it. As long as there would be an Israeli/Arab settlement. (pp. 16-17)

    Douglass now goes to another complicating factor in the Middle East equation. This was Kennedy’s attempt to forge a relationship with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Before his meeting with Ben Gurion, Kennedy wrote to Nasser about a peaceful settlement to the Arab/Israeli conflict and also a viable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, based on repatriation or compensation. (p. 17) This, as JFK knew, was very important to Nasser.

    Ben Gurion was worried about Kennedy’s aim of regular inspection at Dimona. He even encouraged the prominent Jewish lobbyist Abe Feinberg to discourage Kennedy from insisting on this. But Feinberg reported back that Kennedy would not be thwarted. Therefore, as related by former Mossad chief Rafael Eitan, the Israelis built a phony control center over the real one at Dimona, “with fake control panels and computer-lined gauges.” The goal was to make it look like a desalination plant. To top it off, none of the American inspectors spoke Hebrew, which made it easier to conceal the camouflage. (p. 20)

    This all escalated until May of 1963 when Kennedy insisted on scheduling full, unfettered and biannual inspections. And if these were denied, he was threatening to pull funding for Israel. After an exchange of four letters, Ben Gurion resigned. This allowed a delay to take place while a new prime minister was chosen. Two months later, the same ultimatum was issued to Levi Eshkol. Eshkol stalled on Kennedy’s request before agreeing to it. But Kennedy’s assassination then occurred, and, as in many other areas, Lyndon Johnson curtailed, stopped and then reversed Kennedy’s policy on both Dimona and the Palestinian refugee dilemma.

    In fact, as Douglass writes later, there is evidence that CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton actually helped Israel produce its first bomb. Angleton ran the Israeli desk at the CIA. He helped by referring an English scientist named Wilfred Mann to the Israelis. But Angleton denied ever being involved with shipping fissionable materials. In other words, he wanted no part of the NUMEC scandal out of the Pittsburgh area. (p. 58; click here for that story https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/05/25-years-of-cn-how-israel-stole-the-bomb-sept-11-2016/)

    II

    Bobby Kennedy did not forget his brother’s devotion to nuclear non-proliferation. He noted it prominently in his maiden speech in the Senate. In that speech, he specifically mentioned how Israel was a problem in this regard. Although they were little noted in the USA, the comments were noted prominently in Israel. Mainly because of RFK’s support of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which did inspections of nuclear plants. (p. 61) These types of professionals would likely have unearthed the Israeli ruse about Dimona. Tel Aviv wanted no part of that.

    From here, Douglass shifts the focus to Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. Specifically to the lengthy—150 hours– hypnotic sessions sponsored by the legal team of William Pepper and Laurie Dusek. The late Harvard psychologist, Dr. Daniel Brown, concluded that Sirhan was one of the most susceptible hypnosis subjects he had ever encountered. Brown concluded that he was “…the perfect candidate.”(p. 69)

    Sirhan had two disturbing events happen to him in rather close proximity to each other. The first was the death of his sister, who died of leukemia when he was 21. The second event was when he fell off a horse at Granja Vista Del Rio Horse Farm. Sirhan was treated at the Corona Community Hospital emergency room by a Dr. Nelson. He was discharged four hours later. But according to his brother, he was gone for two weeks. (Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail, p. 434). Yet he only received four stitches over one eye. Both his mother and a friend tried to find out where he was. (Douglass, p. 73)

    With Sirhan under hypnosis, Brown discovered that he was in a ward with no windows and with about seven other patients, all with head injuries. Doctors would approach him each day with clipboards, taking urine samples, and asking him how he felt. When he did return, those close to him detected a personality change; he was more reserved and argumentative. (Douglass, p. 74) But further, you only visit a doctor once to get four stitches removed. So why did Sirhan then visit a doctor 13 more times over the next year, from 1966 to December of 1967? (Pease, p. 435)

    III

    From here, Douglass goes into the RFK career and his murder. In my view, this was a real highlight of the book. For the Bobby Kennedy of 1968 was probably the most radical candidate for president since Henry Wallace. Douglass goes into RFK’s disputes with President Johnson on civil rights and Vietnam. For example, Marian Wright of the NAACP wanted to attract political attention to Mississippi, since so many African/American children were suffering from hunger. Bobby Kennedy did go down as part of a small sub-committee on poverty. He was greatly impacted by what he saw and wanted Johnson to declare a state of emergency–which he would not. From there, he went to Indian reservations, Appalachia and New York City ghettoes. He wanted to see firsthand what Michael Harrington called the Other America. (Douglass, p. 88)

    When LBJ would not act on this issue, even after the riots of the summer of 1967, RFK decided that the man who could act was King. He told Marian Wright to tell King to bring the poor to Washington. So while in Atlanta, she did just that. And as she later said, “Out of that, the Poor People’s Campaign was born.” And King decided that this was then going to be the prime focus of his career. (Douglass, p. 91)

    But, as Douglass points out, it was not just this joint opposition to poverty that was worrisome to the Powers That Be. It was also their mutual opposition to the Vietnam War. Kennedy had made a speech against that war in the Senate on March 3, 1967. Almost exactly one month later, on April 4th, King delivered his polemic at Riverside Church in New York.

    Most people in this field are aware of President Kennedy’s conversation with Charles de Gaulle about the Vietnam War. What most people do not know is that the French president had a very similar conversation with Bobby Kennedy about the same subject. And Douglass describes it in detail in this book. (pp. 392-94) RFK took a European tour in late January and early February of 1967.

    He had two important topics he wished to discuss with some of the leaders he met: atomic weapons and the Vietnam War. He quickly found out that each one of the emissaries he met with thought Johnson’s war policy in Vietnam was so misguided as to be termed mad. When RFK met with de Gaulle, they talked for over one hour. And the exclusive subject was Vietnam. The president reminded Bobby of the advice he had given his brother, namely that the USA should not go into Vietnam. He then said that by directly entering that conflict, America’s special place in the world—one of respect and admiration—had been torn to tatters:

    The United States is in the process of destroying a country and a people. America says it is fighting Communism. But by what right does it fight Communism in another people’s country and against their will…. History is the force at work in Vietnam. The United States will not prevail against it. (p. 394)

    When they walked to the door, with the 6’4” de Gaulle hovering over the 5’10” Kennedy, the French president gave the senator some sage advice:

    Do not become embroiled in this difficulty in Vietnam. Then you can survive its outcome. Those who are involved will be badly hurt, because your country will tear itself apart over it. A great leader will be needed to put it back together and lead it to its destiny…. You must be that leader. (ibid)

    How could anyone not be impacted by someone like this? De Gaulle was the man who risked his own life, many times, to get France out of Algeria. Something JFK had advised France to do back in 1957. Douglass had done us all a favor in describing this little-known meeting.

    IV

    Kennedy’s visit to France had some big blowback when he got back to the USA. There was an article in Newsweek saying that he had received a “peace feeler” from Hanoi while in Paris. The senator did not understand what the report was about, and he told his press secretary that. (p. 409)

    What had happened is that on the same day that he had met with de Gaulle, he had a meeting with the Far East desk officer in the French Foreign Office. Kennedy was accompanied by a translator from the American embassy. The desk officer said that North Vietnam was willing to enter negotiations in return for an unconditional bombing halt. The senator did not think this was very important. But the translator did. He cabled his superiors in Washington about the story. And that is how it got in Newsweek. And from there it spread to the MSM, including TV.

    President Johnson was quite offended by this story, as he took almost everything RFK did as a personal affront. He thought that Bobby had leaked the story in order to promote himself as a peacemaker. But it was even worse than that. Because Johnson–under the influence of his Vietnam overall commander, William Westmoreland—thought that he was on the verge of winning in Indochina.

    When RFK got word of this MSM story, he wanted to straighten things out with the president. So he went to see Johnson. This was a mistake. Instantly, LBJ accused him of leaking the story. Kennedy replied with, “I didn’t leak it. I didn’t even know there was a peace feeler. I think the leak came from somebody in your State Department” (Douglass, p. 410)

    Johnson took this reply badly. He said it was not his State Department. It was Bobby’s. Meaning that it was still filled with Kennedy loyalists.

    Kennedy tried to change the subject. He offered him what his plan would be to settle in Vietnam: stop the bombing, go to the negotiating table, do a staged cease-fire and create a coalition government governed by an international commission to hold elections as a final solution.

    About a year from Tet, Johnson was not in a state of mind to listen to any peace agreement. He made no bones about it either. He began with “There’s not a chance in hell I’ll do that.” Then it got worse:

    I’m going to destroy you in six months. We’re going to win in Vietnam by the summer. By July or August the war will be over. You and every one of your dove friends will be dead politically in six months. You guys will be destroyed.

    What is really kind of bizarre about this is that it appears that Johnson believed it. He really thought that General Westmoreland was giving him the right info and predicting the correct outcome. RFK had finally gotten a glimpse into Johnson’s real psyche about the most divisive conflict since the Civil War. He appropriately walked out. He now understood de Gaulle’s advice. There was only one way to end the war. Even if it meant the end of him.

    V

    I would like to close with two sterling episodes from the book.

    The first is another conversation I had never seen before. This was between Bobby Kennedy and Giorgi Bolshakov in May of 1961. (pp. 469-70) Bobby called him in and told the Russian spy that his brother thought there could be a lot more cooperation between their two countries. But Jack was taking over from a former general, namely Eisenhower, as president. Therefore, he was stuck with people like Lyman Lemnitzer as chair of the Joint Chiefs and Allen Dulles as Director of the CIA.

    Now recall, this was after RFK’s duty on the Taylor Commission investigating the Bay of Pigs. He understood how that debacle had occurred. He knew the CIA had deceived the president, and the Joint Chiefs had approved the operation. So he now delivered the punchline: His brother had made a mistake in not firing Dulles and Lemnitzer right away!

    Again, I had never seen this quote before. If you ever wondered where Bobby Kennedy’s later radicalism came from, here it is. He would have gotten rid of Lemnitzer and Dulles on day one. He then expanded on this point:

    These men make outdated recommendations and suggestions which are out of keeping with the president’s new course. My brother has been compelled to go by their mistaken judgments in decision making. Cuba has changed all our foreign policy concepts. For us, the events in the Bay of Pigs are not a flop, but the best lesson we have ever learned. So we are no longer going to repeat our past mistakes. (Douglass, p. 469)

    RFK knew that this attitude by his brother would put a target on the president’s back: “They can put him away any moment. Therefore, he must tread carefully in certain matters and never push his way through.” This remarkable discussion—four hours’ worth– went on until nightfall. When RFK gave Bolshakov a lift home–at or after 10 PM, the Russian could barely sleep. The next morning, he cabled his summary to Moscow. This is what began the secret communications between JFK and Khrushchev. So intricately described in JFK and the Unspeakable.

    If anyone has any knowledge of something similar to this happening since, I would like to hear it. I know nothing like it occurred during the Truman or Eisenhower administrations. It might have been possible under Gorbachev, but Reagan blew that opportunity. Thus paving the way for him to be deposed.

    VI

    As most of us know, the so-called Bobby Kennedy open and shut murder case was not open and shut. But there were signals at the start that the game was going to be rigged. For instance, as Roger LaJaunesse of the local FBI told Bill Turner, both he and the regular command of the LAPD were shoved aside almost immediately. The LAPD Chief of Detectives, Robert Houghton, installed an elite team of his own officers to run that investigation. It was called Special Unit Senator. And the two men who were in charge were Lt. Manny Pena and Sgt. Hank Hernandez. Both of them had ties to the CIA. And they did their best to keep that angle out of the trial and to censor any exculpatory material to the defense.

    But it was actually even worse than that. Thomas Noguchi was the man who performed the autopsy on the senator. He wrote a 62-page report on his findings. The late pathologist Cyril Wecht once called it the finest piece of medico-legal reportage he had ever read. For whatever reason, Noguchi was the last person to testify for the prosecution. In his testimony, both his report and some photographs were admitted into evidence. As Noguchi was beginning to describe the damage to Robert Kennedy’s skull that was revealed during his examination, the lead defense lawyer objected. Grant Cooper said the following:

    Pardon me, Your Honor. Is all of this detail necessary? I would object on the ground of immateriality. I hardly think that this testimony of the doctor is necessary in dealing with the cause of the man’s death. I am not suggesting, Your Honor please…this witness may certainly testify to the cause of death, but I don’t think it is necessary to go into details. I think he can express an opinion that death was due to a gunshot wound. (p. 377)

    This is astonishing. Because it is Noguchi’s findings that exculpate Sirhan as the killer of Robert Kennedy. And here was Sirhan’s defense attorney handing the prosecution their guilty verdict on a silver platter. As anyone who has read some of the better books on the RFK case should know, all the projectiles that entered the senator were from behind, at upward angles, and at very close range. The wound that Noguchi was about to describe was at contact range, about 3 inches away. (Douglass, p. 388) Which means the gun was so close to the head that expelled particles had nowhere to escape into the air. So they created a tattoo ring on the rear of Kennedy’s skull. (Douglass, p. 387) Sirhan was never behind the senator, and no one ever said that his gun arm was aimed upward or that he was in point contact with the rear of Kennedy’s head.

    So why would Grant Cooper object to having the best witness he could have testify to those particular elements of the crime scene?

    The answer is simple: Johnny Rosselli. Cooper was serving as attorney for a cohort of Rosselli’s in the Friars Club case right before he took on the RFK case. Maurice Friedman was a Las Vegas frontman for the mob’s casino ownership. Both Friedman and Rosselli ran a card cheating ring at the club, which was frequented by some high rollers from the entertainment industry, like Phil Silvers. Because of the sophisticated cheating apparatus, Friedman won hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rosselli got a cut since it was on his mob turf. (Douglass, pp. 400-401)

    But on July 20, 1967, the FBI raided the club. The ring was exposed, and Rosselli and Friedman were indicted. They were worried about being convicted, so they bribed a court reporter for the grand jury minutes in their case. A copy of Phil Silvers’ grand jury testimony was found on Cooper’s desk during the trial. At first, Cooper lied and said he had no idea where it came from. (Douglass, p. 404)

    Cooper eventually came clean about what had happened. And it was clear he was facing an indictment. But the inter-agency task force on the Sirhan case was told that this decision would not be made until after the RFK trial. Well, after his less-than-zealous performance for Sirhan, Cooper ended up not being indicted. Defended by a member of the Warren Commission, Joseph Ball, Cooper got off with a slap on the wrist. And a mild one at that. He was fined a thousand dollars. (Click here for the decision https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1827338.html)

    It is quite difficult not to see this in tandem with his horrendous performance in defense of Sirhan. Where he actually stipulated to the prosecution’s evidence.

    Jim Douglass has done a fine job in describing and then defining the epochal impact of the four high-level murders of the sixties. They were not the result of aimless violence by disturbed assassins. They were all cleverly worked out plots, and the net result was a large diversion of American history. Which does not get into textbooks. This book is a worthy successor to JFK and the Unspeakable.

    The book is available here. Editor’s note: An advance copy was provided for this review. The prior link may also be used for preordering, with an expected release date of Oct 28.

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Review of James Douglass’s New Book – Pt 2

    James Douglass, the only print journalist at the Jowers/King 1999 conspiracy trial now returns to that subject, plus the radicalization of Martin Luther King by 1968.

    Martyrs to the Unspeakable – Pt. 2

    By James W. Douglass

     

    James Douglass was the only American print journalist in attendance at the entire civil trial in Memphis on the King case in 1999. He was there as a correspondent for Probe Magazine. Court TV was originally going to cover that proceeding, but according to Douglass, they pulled out just a couple of days before. The Memphis Commercial Appeal’s reporter on the King case was not allowed to attend. So he waited each day for Douglass to emerge in order to get the rundown on what happened. The jury in that trial found for the plaintiffs, the King family, against defendant Loyd Jowers. They decided that the King murder was the result of a conspiracy in which local tavern owner Jowers took part. Jim’s report was first published in Probe, and then excerpted in the anthology The Assassinations.

    As with Malcolm X, J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with the so-called rise of a Black Messiah. Therefore, he did everything he could to discredit King. The first charge was that King was really a secret communist who had infiltrators from Moscow amid his entourage. In fact, Stanley Levison was a private businessman who contributed to the CPUSA but had halted his contributions by late 1956. The FBI knew this, and they also knew that his evolving interest was in the civil rights movement. He was now going to turn his fundraising abilities to that cause. So the FBI tried to get him to return to the party as their informant. He turned them down. (p. 141) So Hoover tried another track: Levison was steering the civil rights movement for Moscow.

    The other target for Hoover was Jack O’Dell. Again, O’Dell was a former member of the CPUSA who went to work for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Beginning in 1961, he was an associate editor for Freedomways, an African-American political journal. He was a good office organizer for the SCLC, especially out of New York.

    As many commentators–like the late Harris Wofford–have noted, Hoover used these accusations of communist influence to drive a wedge between the Kennedys and King. As Douglass notes, the constant harangue by Hoover to expose King as a pinko with communist influences in his camp was, at least, partly successful. President Kennedy told King that if Hoover could prove he had two communists working for him, “…he won’t hesitate to leak it. He’ll use it to wreck the civil rights bill.” (p. 155). Kennedy had fallen for what was at least partly disinformation on Hoover’s part, and he asked King to jettison both men. The president was very sensitive to what Hoover could do to both himself and King. He said in a private conference, “If they shoot you down, they’ll shoot us down too. So we’re asking you to be careful.” (p. 156) King resisted this request on Levison and left the decision up to him. They decided to keep the relationship on a private basis. In 1963, he asked O’Dell to resign, which he did. But King continued to consult with him occasionally.

    What makes this more interesting is that both men fully understood the pressure being brought to bear on all three men: both Kennedys and King. And they understood that whatever they could do for the SCLC, what the Kennedys could do was more important.

    II

    The problem was that the Kennedys had backed the March on Washington. Which turned out to be a smashing success. (pp. 160-61) This had been preceded by President Kennedy’s June 11, 1963, televised declaration on civil rights, the most powerful statement on the matter by any president since Lincoln. In other words, King’s actions, in tandem with the Kennedys, were becoming very potent on a national level. After a thorough study of the FBI files, writer Kenneth O’Reilly stated that the FBI’s,

    …decision to destroy King was not made until the March on Washington demonstrated that the civil rights movement had finally muscled its way onto the nation’s political agenda. (p. 163)

    Under even further pressure from Hoover, he got Robert Kennedy to approve a wiretap on the SCLC’s and King’s phones out of Atlanta. Why did RFK agree to do this? The deal was for thirty days. So “If the taps proved King innocent of Communist associations, then the FBI would have to leave him and Kennedy both alone.” (p. 164). The problem was, as RFK’s personal liaison with the FBI, Courtney Evans, noted:

    …That the assassination of President Kennedy followed these events reasonably close in point of time, and this disrupted the operation of the Office of the Attorney General. ((p. 165)

    If anything, that was an understatement. What happened after JFK’s murder is that Hoover ripped out Bobby Kennedy’s private line to his office. He knew that RFK would not be around very much longer. The rabid racist also knew that his neighbor, Lyndon Johnson, would now allow him much more freedom in his vendetta against King.

    On December 23, 1963, a nine-hour meeting was held at FBI HQ to plan an intensive campaign against King. The aim was to use any technique in order to discredit the man. This included planting a good-looking female in his office:

    We will at the proper time, when it can be done without embarrassment to the Bureau, expose King as an opportunist who is not a sincere person but is exploiting the racial situation for personal gain…. (p. 165)

    The Church Committee adduced testimony that the aim was plain and simple: character assassination. Quite literally, no holds were barred. It was as if King were a dangerous KGB agent. And because Hoover oversaw the Bureau as a monarch, no one dared raise any questions of legality or ethics. It was all made worse when King was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year at the end of 1963. Now, with no one’s permission, the Bureau began to install hidden microphones in the rooms King would stay at on the road. (p. 168). In the spring of 1964, Hoover also got the influential syndicated writer Joseph Alsop to write a communist smear column against King. This was followed a week later by a similar article in the New York Times. (p. 170)

    As he had been warned by President Kennedy, who was not around anymore, King immediately suspected Hoover was behind both pieces. At an airport press conference in San Francisco, he pretty much threw down the gauntlet:

    It would be encouraging to us if Mr. Hoover and the FBI would be as diligent in apprehending those responsible for bombing churches and killing little children, as they are in seeking out allegedly Communist infiltration in the civil rights movement. (p. 171)

    Hoover responded in kind. The tactic now shifted from the Levison/O’Dell angle—which proved to be pretty much a dry well—to the wiretaps and bugs in the hotels. Hoover began this practice at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC in January of 1964. This campaign was ratcheted up even further when it was announced that King would be given the Nobel Peace Prize for 1964. In other words, one of the highest international honors was being bestowed on Hoover’s beta noire. Hoover retaliated in public against this by calling King “the most notorious liar in the country.” His assistant urged him to qualify that remark as being “off the record”, but Hoover would not. Hoover then doubled down and said King was “one of the lowest characters in the country” and he was being “controlled” by his communist advisors. (p. 173)

    III

    When King was alerted to this attack, he was on vacation in Bimini, preparing his Nobel Prize address. He replied with:

    I cannot conceive of Mr. Hoover making a statement like this without being under extreme pressure. He has apparently faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office. (ibid)

    That reply initiated the infamous blackmail tape and letter sent to the Atlanta SCLC HQ in late November of 1964. The entire letter was not found until 2014 by Yale historian Beverly Gage, and Douglass prints it in his book. (pp. 174-75) It is six paragraphs long. The letter is clearly complementary to the alleged taping. In the 4th paragraph, it says the following:

    No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. I repeat—no person can argue successfully against facts. You are finished. You will find on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression with you to your hideous abnormalities….It is all there on the record, your sexual orgies…This one is but a tiny sample….King you are done. (pp. 174-75)

    Toward the end, the letter states: “You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” (p. 175 ) The FBI mailed it from Miami about five days before Thanksgiving of 1964. But the package sat at the Atlanta headquarters for over a month. It was not opened until after King received his Nobel Prize in Oslo. And it was opened by King’s wife Coretta. She notified her husband, and he and his advisors immediately realized it was from the FBI.

    There has been an ongoing debate over two matters in the package. The letter gave King a deadline of 34 days to act. Some believe that, considering when the package was mailed, this would mean Christmas. Others say it was timed for the Nobel Peace Prize honor, which was about two weeks earlier. The second matter was the aim of the package. The SCLC maintained it was for King to take his own life. The FBI, in the person of William Sullivan, who oversaw the composition of the letter, said they wanted King to resign, as they were already grooming his successor, one Samuel Pierce. (p. 169)

    Whatever the timing, whatever the goal, King concluded correctly that the FBI was out to break him. Through their surveillance, the FBI knew he knew and told Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach that “King was emotionally distraught and feared public exposure.” (p. 179)

    King decided to continue in his efforts, knowing that neither of the Kennedys was now in office and Hoover’s venom was virtually unfettered. He must have felt even more forlorn when Malcolm X was killed the next month. As some have noted, Malcolm was killed just two weeks before President Johnson sent the first combat troops to Vietnam.

    IV

    Johnson had escalated the war in Vietnam to heights that President Kennedy would have found appalling. By early 1967 there were nearly 400,000 American combat troops in theater. Johnson had activated the air campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, to complement the combat troops. There ended up being more bomb tonnage dropped in Indochina than had been disposed of during World War II; by a factor of 3-1, the ratio was not even close. The problem was that the bombing campaign inevitably included civilians, since, unlike Germany, Vietnam did not have a highly concentrated industrial base.

    In January of 1967, King was looking at a Ramparts magazine photo/essay entitled “The Children of Vietnam”. Many of the pictures showed little children in a hideously burned state. The article was by attorney William Pepper. King then met with him, and Pepper showed him more photos. It moved King to now begin a sustained assault on Johnson’s prosecution of the war. His first speech was in Los Angeles on February 27th, called “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam”. This was followed up by the more famous address at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. As Douglass appropriately notes, a year later, King was dead.

    There were those—like Ralph Bunche– who advised against King taking on the war. But King thought it was hypocritical to send African-American troops to fight in Vietnam for rights that some did not have at home; and to kill so many innocent civilians along the way.

    Another aspect that made King determined to speak out on Indochina was that he had done so in 1965, and then backtracked. At that time, he said that Johnson had a serious problem in this regard because “The war in Vietnam is accomplishing nothing.” (p. 351) About a month and a half later, in April of 1965, he told some journalists in Boston that the United States should end the war. On July 2, 1965, in Petersburg, Virginia, King said that the war must be halted and a negotiated settlement should be achieved. (p. 352). But the SCLC board members did not want King to continue in this vein.

    So King instead had a meeting with UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg in September to voice his concerns and urge Johnson to negotiate a truce. King even suggested that it would be possible to bring the Chinese into the negotiations. Both Goldberg and Senator Thomas Dodd voiced opposition to these types of talks. (pp. 355-57) And Dodd went further by saying King had no knowledge to speak on matters so complex as Indochina, and further, he was undermining Johnson’s foreign policy. King thought Johnson had put Dodd up to this criticism.

    As others, Douglass sees King’s decision to return to the Vietnam issue, coupled with the stirrings of the Poor People’s March, as raising his targeting from character assassination to outright elimination. As per the latter, what King ultimately hoped to gain from the Washington demonstrations was the following:

    1. A full employment program
    2. Guaranteed Annual Income
    3. Funding for 500,000 annual units of low-cost housing (p. 310)

    King wanted to do in Washington what he did in Birmingham. Through peaceful civil disobedience, he would tie up the city and force its leaders to act on his proposals. But King was going to go even further and unite the two goals:

    After we get to DC and stay a few days we’ll call the peace movement in and let them go on the other side of the Potomac and try to close down the Pentagon, if that can he done. (p. 311)

    King was now talking about closing down both Congress and the Pentagon. The reader should recall that this is on FBI tapings. As Bernard LaFayette, a coordinator of the Poor People’s Campaign, later said, “You see, the Poor People’s Campaign was clearly economic rights. Now, it’s not low volume; it’s high volume.” (ibid). Or as Vincent Harding, the man who drafted King’s Riverside speech, later said: King was moving in “some radical directions that few of us had been prepared for.” He clearly suggested that this necessitated his assassination. (p. 314)

    V

    James Earl Ray escaped from prison in late April of 1967. After working as a dishwasher for a couple of months, he stashed enough money to buy an old car and crossed the border to Montreal, Canada. There, at the Neptune Tavern, he met a man he knew simply as Raul. Although Ray had been attacked for creating this character, a witness who testified at the 1999 King trial confirmed it. Seaman Sidney Carthew also met Raul at the same bar. And he saw him with Ray. (pp. 339-40)

    As Douglass describes it, Ray’s partnership with Raul ended up being a minor gun-running and drug-smuggling operation. It went from Canada to the USA, particularly California, and then to Mexico, and back to the southern part of the USA, ending with Ray being asked by Raul to go to Memphis and buy a rifle. But it was the wrong one. So Raul ordered him to go back and buy another one. As attorney Arthur Hanes testified at the King trial, it was that rifle which was dropped at the door of Canipe’s novelty shop a few minutes before the actual assassination. And that would be the weapon Ray was charged with in killing King. (p. 340) Even though that rifle was never calibrated for accuracy.

    Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Ray’s journeys after his escape is his use of multiple identities, i.e., Eric Galt, Ramon George Sneyd, Paul Bridgeman and John Willard. As Philip Melanson originally noted, all four lived in a suburban area of Toronto; and within a five-mile radius of each other. But beyond that, three of the aliases—Galt, Bridgeman, Sneyd—approximated Ray’s general appearance, that is, in height, weight and hair color. Further, there is no evidence that Ray had been to Toronto before the assassination of King.

    What makes this even more startling is that Ray signed the Galt alias with the wrong middle name of ‘Starvo’, which came from a scrawl Eric used for ‘St. V’, which actually stood for St. Vincent. But here is the capper: “When Galt shortened it to the initial ‘S’ Ray… did the same.” (p. 341) As Douglass concludes, only someone with access to Galt’s security file at Union Carbide, where he worked, could have known about these nuances.

    Douglass now moves to the preparations made for the King’s murder. First, King’s normal all-African-American security team was removed the morning of his arrival. The replacement team of caucasian guards was then removed late in the afternoon, about an hour before the shooting. Two black officers from the fire station across the street were reassigned to different stations for that day. The tactical police units around the Lorriane Motel, where King stayed, were moved back earlier on April 4th. The first three negated any security, and the last made it easier for an escape. (pp. 343-44)

    Was it even more prepared for than that? The reason King returned to Memphis was because, in his first visit there, about a week earlier, there was a raucous disturbance in the demonstration. That disturbance was caused by the Invaders, an African American youth group modeled on the Black Panthers. (p. 448) A prominent member of that group was Marrell McCullough, who was later uncovered as a police informant and then worked a long career as a CIA officer.

    When King decided to return, the FBI then put out a story that on his original visit, he ignored the Lorraine, which was black owned. He had stayed at the Holiday Inn motel, which was white owned. Therefore, King was initially booked into an interior courtyard room at the Lorraine for his return. Someone, no one knows who, had that room switched to a street-level room. It would have been difficult to assassinate King in that first room. The room on the street made it easier. (pp. 448-49)

    On the day of the murder, Raul delivered a rifle to Loyd Jowers’ eatery, Jim’s Grill. The back door opened up to a bush area across from the Lorraine. There is a dispute as to where the shot that killed King originated. At least two credible witnesses say it did not come from the flophouse where Ray was booked at. It came from that bushy area, and Douglass agrees with that. But the point remains, those bushes were inexplicably cut down early the next morning. (p. 455)

    As the reader can see, there is good reason that the MSM did not cover the Jowers/King trial in 1999. Because they suspected that the King family would win out. Which they did. Jim Douglass does a good job presenting that evidence, which helped Bill Pepper win a judgment.

    Next: JFK and RFK are eliminated. Click here to read part 3.

  • Review of James Douglass’s New Book – Pt 1

    Jim DiEugenio begins his three-part review of James Douglass’ important new book on all four assassinations of the Sixties, Martyrs to the Unspeakable. A worthy successor to JFK and the Unspeakable.

    Martyrs to the Unspeakable – Pt. 1

    By James W. Douglass

     

    In 2008, James Douglass published JFK and the Unspeakable. That book became, more or less, an instant classic in the field. One reason being that Douglass did something quite unusual. Instead of having Kennedy’s presidency as a backdrop to his assassination, he made his assassination a backdrop to his presidency. But, beyond that, Douglass delved deeper into that presidency than virtually anyone in the field had done. He brought in things that had not been studied before, and he dug further into aspects that had been gone over previously. With those explorations, he made the case as to why President Kennedy was assassinated.

    Douglass appropriately ended his fine book with the fact that both Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy knew what happened to JFK. And, through envoy William Walton, they communicated to Moscow that the John Kennedy/Nikita Khrushchev attempt at détente would now have to be placed on hold; but Bobby Kennedy would soon resign, run for office, and then run for the presidency. At that time, the quest could be resumed.

    The Douglass book struck a chord with the public. After Oliver Stone endorsed it on television, sales zoomed upwards. It was then picked up by Touchstone, which was a division of Simon and Schuster. In all formats, it has sold well over 100,000 copies. It is the rarest of JFK books in that it was both a critical and commercial success. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-by-james-w-douglass)

    At the time of that book’s publication, Douglass was supposed to pen a trilogy about the major assassinations of the sixties. The second book was going to be about the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King assassinations. The third was going to focus on the Robert Kennedy murder. Since the road to completion took 17 years—interrupted by his book on the life and death of Gandhi–the decision was made to collapse them into one volume. So we now have Martyrs to the Unspeakable.

    II

    Douglass begins the book with a pungent quote from Malcolm X:

    It’s a time for martyrs now. And if I’m to be one, it will be in the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country. I’ve learned it the hard way. But I’ve learned it. And that’s the significant thing. (p. xvii, p. 459)

    This is one of the sub-themes of the book. One lurking not far below the surface and infrequently but explicitly mentioned: Namely, that all four men understood that they were in danger, they were gambling with their lives in advocating the paths they were taking. Malcolm, with his UN resolution condemning America for human rights violations against African-Americans; King, in his organizing of the Poor People’s March on Washington; JFK, in his quest for détente with Cuba and Moscow; and Bobby Kennedy, with his impending victory in the Democratic primary and his pledge to end the Vietnam War. (Douglass points out the little-known fact that the Poor People’s March was Bobby Kennedy’s idea. p. 90)

    Explicitly, Bobby Kennedy told Walter Fauntroy that “…there were guns between me and the White House.” (p. 97). He said about his brother that if the Russians did not meet his attempts at détente halfway, “…his enemies may go to any length, including killing him….” (p. 502)

    JFK said the same thing about himself. He was once asked why he did not move faster for a rapprochement with Moscow. He replied: “You don’t understand this country. If I move too fast on US/Soviet relations, I’ll either be thrown into an insane asylum or be killed.” (p. 503)

    I do not have to tell the reader about King predicting his own death the night before he was assassinated. Why was there this impending doom? Douglass underscores that what these four men were striving for was simply too radical for the national security complex to tolerate. Therefore, they had to be done away with before they could succeed. It is important to note that it was only during John Kennedy’s presidency that all four men were alive and operating at their peaks. As I have noted elsewhere, there was more done on civil rights in those three years than had been achieved in the prior three decades. (Click here and scroll down https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights-how-the-msm-continues-to-distort-history-part-3) For that reason 1.) There could be no Kennedy dynasty, and 2.) There could be no confederation, which was impending, between Malcolm and King.

    III

    The book is structured into three major headings. Part One is called The Witness. Part Two is called The Way. Part Three is titled The Why.

    In the first part, we see certain policies being advocated by the four major players. For instance, Malcolm going international with a meeting with Achmed Sukarno in 1957 (p. 113); hearing Patrice Lumumba speak at Howard University in July of 1960 (p. 123); his arrangement to have Castro take a room at the Hotel Theresa, and his meeting there with him after midnight on September 19, 1960. (p. 125) This last caused quite an uproar in Harlem since the Cuban leader was going to be charged a $20,000 deposit at the Shelburne Hotel. By the time Malcolm made the arrangements to switch hotels, there were 2,000 people waiting in the rain, fully understanding why the Cuban leader was being forced out of downtown:

    To Harlem’s oppressed ghetto dwellers, Castro was that bearded revolutionary who had thrown the nation’s rascals out and who had told white America to go to hell. (p. 125)

    What these instances did was to broaden both the appeal of Malcolm, and also his intellectual horizons. Malcolm was now not just a regional figure in the USA, but he was seen as associating with figures on the world stage. And these men happened to be striking figures in the rising Third World. But then this was all topped. Because Nikita Khrushchev happened to be in New York, and he decided to join Castro at the Hotel Theresa:

    By going to a Negro hotel, in a Negro district, we would be making a double demonstration: against the discriminatory policies of the United States of America toward Negroes, as well as toward Cuba. (p. 126)

    Malcolm had helped arrange a slap across the face to the Establishment. And make no mistake, they did not like it.

    The Cuban leader’s diplomatic triumph over the US government in Harlem was a dramatic counterpoint to his UN speech. It was facilitated by Malcolm X. When US intelligence agencies focused their attention on Fidel Castro in New York, they discovered Malcolm X standing right beside him, welcoming Fidel and the Cuban revolution to Harlem. By joining forces with Fidel, Malcolm, too, had become a target. (p. 129)

    As Douglass notes, the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro began around this time. (p. 128) But as someone close to Malcolm also noted, this meeting with Castro began to divert Malcolm’s thinking away from the narrow restrictions of his loyal service to the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, e.g., black power, black nationalism, and racial separation. He began to see that there were other oppressed groups like American Indians, Chicanos and Hispanics, and theirs could be a common struggle. (ibid)

    There were two other elements that began the notorious split between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam (NOI). There was the matter of Malcolm’s inquiries about Elijah Muhammad’s numerous infidelities. (p. 254) Which Malcolm felt were unbecoming for a Holy Man. And there was his Hajj, which ended up lasting much longer than planned, and with Malcolm visiting countries outside the Middle East, including France and Egypt. He then visited Africa again. All told, he went to Africa three times. He became a member of the Organization of African Unity, and adapted it in the USA as the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Which he saw as a Pan African group extending to the USA. (p. 242) Further, he could use their leaders to facilitate his aim at bringing about a UN resolution condemning American treatment of blacks. As he said:

    You must realize that what I am trying to do is very dangerous, because it is a direct threat to the entire international system of racist exploitation. It is a threat to discrimination in all its international forms. (p. 244)

    IV

    One last element that had caused Malcolm’s split from NOI was his suspension after his perceived inappropriate remarks upon the murder of President Kennedy, which he called the chickens coming home to roost. This suspension was originally for 90 days. But it lasted longer, and Malcolm tended to look at it as personal since he was getting more attention as a NOI representative than Elijah was.

    When Malcolm went on his Hajj, he now began to see that there were all kinds of people visiting Mecca, many of them Caucasian with blonde hair and blue eyes. Which also began to make him question the fundamental tenets of NOI and whether it really was Muslim at all. So he decided not just to split from NOI but to convert to Sunni Islam and form the Muslim Mosque. All these elements did not endear him to Elijah or his followers, like Louis Farrakhan.

    In fact, he wrote a letter to a NY Times reporter where he noted that he now regretted the 12 years he had spent in NOI, and called it a “pseudo-religious philosophy”. He then capped that with this:

    I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did to so many well-meaning, innocent Negroes, who through my own evangelistic zeal, now believe him more fanatically and more blindly than I did. (pp. 245-46)

    It is appropriate to note that years before he became Vice President, Lyndon Johnson had a talk with J Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Hoover said they would not have a problem if they could get these black leaders fighting among themselves to the point they would kill each other off. (p. 241) Although they were likely speaking of King and Malcolm, there is no doubt that Hoover later adapted this divide-and-conquer philosophy to other African American groups, most successfully with the Black Panthers. In fact, there is plentiful evidence that Hoover used this technique in exacerbating and inflaming the split between the NOI and Malcolm. This was done through placing informants in both camps and a clear agent provocateur against Malcolm in the NOI camp. The latter was John Ali. (pp. 249-250)

    Ali began with Malcolm in New York in 1958. The next year, Malcolm recommended him to the NOI headquarters in Chicago. That was a recommendation that he came to strongly regret. When Elijah Muhammad moved to Phoenix for health reasons, Ali essentially took over the Chicago HQ. He even got Malcolm’s brother to read a prepared statement denouncing Malcolm and accusing him of being mentally unbalanced. (p. 272) Elijah essentially called for his elimination with this: “Elijah Muhammad said they had better close his eyes.” In early 1964, the message went out that Malcolm had to be liquidated. (p. 256)

    But this could not have succeeded without help from the CIA, the FBI and the NYPD. The last was through their undercover intelligence group called BOSSI. Douglass does a nice job outlining all of this. There was a previous attempt to murder Malcolm by poison in Cairo. Malcolm was rushed to the hospital and had his stomach pumped. Malcolm had retroactively recognized his waiter, who afterwards had disappeared. Malcolm concluded, “I know that our Muslims don’t have the resources to finance a worldwide spy network.” (p. 427). But further, after an engagement in London on February 9th, he flew to Paris to make another speech. At Orly Airport, the French police intercepted him and said he was not allowed to enter France. Why? Because French intelligence had been told, “That the CIA planned Malcolm’s murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil”, and they did not want that to occur on their watch. (p. 437)

    On February 14, 1965, Malcolm’s home in Queens, which was in dispute between him and the NOI, was firebombed. A day later, BOSSI undercover agent Gene Roberts witnessed a dress rehearsal for Malcolm’s murder. Roberts then predicted to his superiors that the real assassination would take place the following Sunday. Hoover had Malcolm monitored for the last 17 days of his life and had an agent at BOSSI each and every day during that time. He had to know this. (pp. 440-41, p. 450)

    V

    As Douglass notes, one of the most tragic aspects about the murder of Malcolm is that not only was he breaking from NOI, he was trying to forge a relationship with King. One complaint Malcolm had with Elijah Muhammad was that the Nation of Islam would not do anything in public unless it impacted one of their own. They basically sat out the whole civil rights movement. So once he split with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm journeyed to the epochal Selma demonstration in early February of 1965. The talk that he was coming had barely started when he arrived at a meeting of the SCLC and SNCC workers. Coretta King was in attendance while her husband was in jail. He told her, “I have not come to Selma to cause difficulty for Dr. King. I only want to show support.” (p. 435)

    When Malcolm spoke at the Brown Chapel that afternoon, he leaned over the podium and said to the media in front, “You had better listen to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or you will have to listen to me. Dr. King wants the same thing I want—Freedom!” (p. 436) Unfortunately, this was not to be. For Malcom would be dead in a little more than two weeks.

    On the morning of February 21st, Malcolm was on the phone with his sister. He said, “Ask Allah to guide me, because I feel they may have me doomed for this day.” She said, “Not this day.” Malcolm replied, “Yes, this day.” (p. 451) Making this even more prophetic, Malcolm refused to allow his guards to search people coming into his talks. One of his escorts resigned over this policy after telling him he was going to be killed.

    Once the warning came in from Roberts about the dress rehearsal and the day it would occur, the NYPD should have been in the Audubon ballroom and ready to detect and stop the attempt. They were not and did not. They placed their men in rooms away from the ballroom. And they were not allowed to move in that direction unless given radio permission to do so. But when the shots rang out, the walkie-talkies went dead. Therefore, the police ended up entering the scene fifteen minutes after the murder. (pp. 449-450)

    In other words, egged on by the FBI and allowed to proceed by the NYPD, Malcolm was killed by a NOI plan that the authorities specifically knew about in advance. In other words, it was allowed to happen. Douglass has done a fine job on the relatively ignored case of the assassination of Malcolm.

    Next: The Murder of Martin Luther King. Click here to read part 2.

  • Review of RFK Legacy film

    Director Sean Stone and producer Rob Wilson bring us an interesting, compelling and well made film on the career of Senator Robert Kennedy, his assassination, and his enduring legacy.

    Sean Stone and Rob Wilson: RFK Legacy

    Rob Wilson produced JFK Revisited for director Oliver Stone. He has now produced RFK Legacy for director Sean Stone, Oliver’s son. This new documentary seems to me to be unique in its field. Because it deals with three Kennedys: John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Robert Kennedy Jr. And the concentration is on Senator Robert Kennedy: his life, and also his assassination.

    It begins with Robert Kennedy announcing that he is running for president in 1968. It then briefly deals with three primaries in that race: Indiana, Oregon–the first election a Kennedy lost– and the triumph in California on June 4th over Senatorial rival Eugene McCarthy. We see RFK at the podium reciting his now iconic (and final) public phrase, “On to Chicago and let’s win there.” The film then cuts to the aftermath of that victory: the utter shock, disbelief and hysteria of the crowd as some of them see, and the rest of them learn, that RFK has been assassinated. Recall, this is just two months after the murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis. And it is the second Kennedy to be assassinated in five years. The grief at what had just happened at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles was almost palpable. The Jungian consciousness behind it all was this: it was the premature burial of the sixties.

    The film follows as RFK’s body was transported from California to a requiem at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, as that was the state from which he was senator. To make the passing of the era even more symbolic, on that plane were not just Ethel Kennedy, but both Jackie Kennedy and Coretta King. Bobby Kennedy had paid a large part of the cost for King’s funeral in April. And the night of King’s murder, he gave what was probably his finest speech—one which prevented Indianapolis from going up in flames, as almost every other major city in America had. Jackie Kennedy strongly objected to RFK running for president. She feared that what had happened to her husband would happen to him. He had become the substitute father to her children.

    What then followed the service was the train ride from New York City to the burial at Arlington Cemetery in Washington, DC. Arthur Schlesinger was on that train. He had originally thought Bobby was a lesser candidate than Jack. He had since changed his mind. At the end, he thought RFK would make an even greater president than his brother. One reason was that he had become more radical than Jack. He wrote in his diary, “We have now murdered the three men who, more than any other, incarnated the idealism of America in our time.” He pledged never to get this close to any other such candidate. It was too tragic. (David Margolick, The Promise and the Dream, pp. 385-86)

    The film flashes back to RFK’s career with commentators like Lisa Pease in the present and Ed Murrow from the past. We see a young Robert Kennedy as lead counsel for the McClellan Committee going up against the likes of Jimmy Hoffa and, later, Sam Giancana. Members of the press now pronounced Kennedy “ruthless’ for exposing the Cosa Nostra so relentlessly. Which is something that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were reluctant to do.

    When his brother won the presidency, RFK continued his crusade against organized crime as Attorney General. He also, like no other previous AG, pursued the breaking down of segregation in the South and civil rights for African Americans. Further, as the film shows, it was RFK who exposed to JFK that the CIA had deceived him about the Bay of Pigs operation. They knew it could not succeed without Pentagon support. In fact, they knew it would fail. But they thought JFK would commit American power to salvage it. He did not. Therefore, JFK fired Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Director of Plans Dick Bissell.

    This split with the Agency was made worse by the fact that the CIA had secretly contracted out with three members of the Cosa Nostra—John Rosselli, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante—to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is after RFK had ordered a full court press on organized crime, and ordered an almost total surveillance over Giancana. When the FBI (accidentally) discovered these plots and informed Bobby about them, he asked for a briefing by the CIA. The Agency told him the plots had stopped. They had not. And the Agency knew they had not when they lied to him about it.

    By midway through 1961, Bobby became an advisor to JFK on foreign policy. During the Missile Crisis, there was no one more trusted by the president than Bobby. When there was true fear of having to resort to the Greenbrier Underground Shelter –which the film depicts—President Kennedy opted for the blockade alternative. For which he was harshly criticized, especially by the Joint Chiefs. When the Russians communicated a truce agreement, it was RFK who advised his brother on the terms to accept.

    As the film notes, after the double assassinations of JFK and then Oswald, Bobby Kennedy began a metamorphosis. He now became a gentler, kinder, more sensitive politician and person. This was typified by his visits to Mississippi at the request of Marian Edelman, and to California for Cesar Chavez. (I was personally told by the late Paul Schrade that it was Cesar’s idea to approach RFK on this.)

    In keeping with the title of the film, we now shift to RFK Jr. He consciously followed his father’s footsteps by first attending Harvard and then the University of Virginia School of Law. He developed a chronic drug problem after his father’s death, which included running away from home. He was eventually arrested for heroin possession in South Dakota. As part of his probation, he worked for the conservation group the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It was that experience which transformed him into an environmental lawyer of the first rank.

    Some of his successful crusades were his legal actions over pollution of the Hudson River, during which he joined the Riverkeepers group, which had started with fisherman John Cronin. It was this longstanding Hudson River campaign which many feel was the real beginning of the environmental movement in the USA. Kennedy also took on Monsanto and General Electric. He became well known in New York and was featured on the cover of several popular magazines for saving the Hudson River from becoming a cesspool. New York magazine captioned him as “The Kennedy Who Matters”. He wrote a book called Crimes Against Nature, railing against George W. Bush’s environmental policies. This and his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004 got him interviews with Jon Stewart and then Stephen Colbert. He was so in demand that he was doing almost 200 speeches per year.

    The film deals with what eventually caused the MSM to turn on Kennedy. It began with his campaign against mercury in pollution and the fact that it was in some vaccines wrapped in a preservative called thimerosal. He was not the only person to warn about this. Congressman Frank Pallone had done so in 1997. The film also features people like psychologist Sarah Bridges, actress Grace Hightower and essayist Lyn Redwood on the issue. I am not qualified to render any kind of definitive judgment on the subject, so I will not.

    The film then deals with the other issue that turned the MSM against Robert Kennedy Jr. That would be his view of the assassinations of his uncle and then his father. As the film shows, RFK Jr. was first suspicious about his uncle’s death. This was based on the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby. He could not understand why Ruby did what he did in public and in front of TV cameras. He later found out that Ruby was much more than just a patriotic strip club owner. At this point in the film, Sean Stone brings in David Talbot, who does a very nice job describing what happened when RFK heard the news from J. Edgar Hoover that his brother was dead. He immediately suspected a conspiracy, as Talbot described in the early part of his book, Brothers.

    RFK could not stay for the rest of the LBJ term. So after he, Thomas Kuchel and Hubert Humphrey got his brother’s civil rights bill through the Senate, he departed. (As Clay Risen shows in his book The Bill of the Century, what LBJ did on this bill has been greatly exaggerated.) As senator from New York, Kennedy became what author Edward Schmitt called the President of the Other America. He was there for the poor, the young, and the downtrodden.

    He was obviously the candidate to run against Johnson in 1968. After all, as he himself told Daniel Ellsberg, his brother’s policy would not have allowed Vietnam to escalate as under Johnson. (Ellsberg at Harvard JFK seminar in 1993). As Talbot states, by 1968, RFK was going to run on civil rights, poverty and withdrawing from Vietnam. Contrary to popular belief, and as revealed by author Jules Witcover in his book 85 Days, Kennedy had decided before the New Hampshire primary that he would run. McCarthy’s strong showing in that primary, plus the devastating Tet Offensive, forced Johnson out. As Witcover notes, Johnson would have lost in Wisconsin. And he knew that.

    The film closes with two powerful strophes. First is President Kennedy’s advocacy for Rachel Carson. Specifically in her battle against DDT and other pesticides in her 1962 classic Silent Spring. Carson had attended the May 1962 White House conference on conservation. And she testified before JFK’s Science Advisory Committee. She was battling breast cancer at the time, and she passed on in April of 1964. She was viciously attacked by the chemical companies, but she stood her ground.

    The second strophe is the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy Jr admits that he had accepted the orthodoxy on this case until he talked to Paul Schrade. Schrade was one of the victims of the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel that night. When the trajectory of the bullet that hit him was explained, he knew that the LAPD was passing horse manure. He eventually convinced Bobby to read Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report. That did it for RFK Jr. Thankfully, Sean Stone features Lisa Pease in this last segment. There is no better authority on the RFK murder than Lisa. And her book, A Lie Too Big to Fail, is mandatory reading for anyone interested in that case. Stone’s closing twenty minutes or so is quite pointed intellectually and well done artistically. Kudos should also go to Oliver Stone, who did the face-to-face interview with RFK Jr., editor Kurt Mattila, composer Jeff Beal and cinematographer Egor Povolotsky.

    I would recommend viewing the film to our readers. It is being streamed at Angel.com (https://www.angel.com/blog/rfk-legacy/posts/where-to-watch-rfk-legacy).

  • New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files – Part 1

    Did the LAPD invite the CIA into their RFK assassination investigation, or did the CIA push their way in? New documents definitively answer that question.

    New Revelations from the Recently Released RFK files – Part 1

    By Lisa Pease, author of A Lie Too Big to Fail

    Having extensively researched CIA and FBI files on both the JFK and RFK assassinations for more than 30 years, I’m uniquely positioned to identify what’s new and important in the recently released RFK files. So far, I have found three big stories in the recently released records. I’ll start with the first story and continue in subsequent articles to illuminate the other two important stories I’ve found. There are also several smaller stories, which I will get to eventually.

    Just before the RFK files were released, a reporter from CBS News contacted several people who have written books about the RFK assassination to ask what they expected to find in the files. I told the reporter I was especially eager to see the CIA files, as I knew they had been involved in the LAPD’s investigation but had only seen portions of the LAPD’s communications, never the responses.[1]

    It’s a fact that the CIA was involved in the LAPD’s assassination investigation. But there could be innocent or sinister theories for why that would be. If the LAPD had invited the CIA into the case, that could indicate the CIA was not involved and was only summoned due to their ability to track down information about the numerous foreigners who became, however temporarily, part of the LAPD’s investigation. However, it could also have been possible that the LAPD invited the CIA into the investigation because they had planned it together. If, on the other hand, the CIA had invited themselves into the investigation, that would reveal a vested interest in the outcome of the investigation and would also appear to exonerate the LAPD in the planning of the assassination.

    So the first thing I wanted to know from the files was simply that: did the LAPD invite the CIA in? Or did the CIA invite themselves in?

    The first semi-answer came from an important CIA file released back in 2021, that I did not see until this year, after my book came out and after the updated paperback version had gone to print, that contained two documents.

    The first page of the 2021-released document was the CIA’s response to Dan Rather’s questions about whether Manny Pena and Enrique “Hank” Hernandez, the two LAPD officers in charge of the conspiracy side of the investigations of “Special Unit Senator,” the Los Angeles Police Department unit formed to investigate RFK’s assassination, had worked for the CIA. The CIA denied any connection, despite the fact that both of them had been credibly linked to the CIA.[2]

    I had seen the first document in the files years earlier and had to laugh upon seeing it again because the CIA has been known, frequently, to lie on the record when people got too close to their ties to the assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, several years back, I saw a comment in a forum where a poster said to his knowledge, the CIA had never lied to the Warren Commission. I was able to find a lie the CIA made to the Warren Commission in five minutes. Helms denied to the Warren Commission that the CIA had ever had any interest in Oswald, a lie that is now completely exposed with previous and current file releases.

    In the recently released RFK files, there is another “big lie” file about Oswald, also in response to the Dan Rather inquiries, in which the CIA goes to great lengths to say they knew nothing about Oswald before the assassination, something proven to be ridiculously false over the years, and something even Dan Rather raised questions about in his special.

    The second document in the 2021 file, however, dropped a bombshell, albeit with lawyerly language:

    Sirhan Sirhan’s security file reflects that he had never been of interest to the Agency prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. On 5 June 1968 when Sirhan was identified as the probable assassin, the Director of Central Intelligence met with the Deputy Chief of the CI Staff, the Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, and the Director of Security and directed that the CI staff would be the focal point for action in the Sirhan case. The CI staff was to collect all available information on Sirhan and provide appropriate portions of this material to the Office of Security for release to the Los Angeles Police Department. This material was to be released to the LAPD through the Office of Security’s Los Angeles Field Office.[3]

    (I found the use of “reflects that” telling, as if the file might have had more in it at one time but has been altered to “reflect” a certain version of events.)

    So James Angleton’s CIA Counterintelligence group was designated as the records collection point for the RFK assassination investigation, just as his team had run point for the JFK assassination, and could control what was released to the LAPD from the CIA’s end, by the CIA’s OS LAFO contact:

    Mr. William Curtin, the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office, contacted Inspector Yarnell of the LAPD on 5 June 1968 and advised him that the Agency was prepared to cooperate with the LAPD in its investigation of Sirhan.

    From that one sentence, it appeared CIA initiated contact with the CIA first, but I wasn’t ready to declare a conclusion until I read Sirhan’s 815-page 201 file, released in 2025 by the Luna Committee. In there, we find this important bit of information from William Curtin himself:

    When the announcement of the Subject’s [Sirhan’s] identity and foreign background was made public on 5 June 1968, upon instructions from Headquarters, I contacted Inspector Harold YARNELL, in the absence of [LAPD] Chief Tom REDDIN.[4]

    Inspector Yarnell was a member of the LEIU – the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit – a private network of intelligence officers at various police departments across the country. Yarnell had been the Secretary-Treasurer of the LEIU and became the Commander of the LAPD Intelligence Division, where he interfaced with, among others, Lt. Jack Revill of the Dallas Police Department (named chief of the Dallas Intelligence Unit).[5]

    But it’s what Curtin wrote next that proved the CIA had forced its way into the investigation and not been invited:

    Inspector Yarnell was informed of our desire to aid the Los Angeles Police Department in any way that we could in the conduct of their investigation of the Subject. He expressed his appreciation and stated that they would gladly accept any information we wished to pass along to them. However, he advised that their case against the Subject appeared to be airtight and that he did not at that time foresee that they would be calling on us for any assistance.[6]

    In other words, the LAPD’s response to the CIA’s offer of help had been essentially, thank you, but no thank you. That is quite notable. The LAPD didn’t yet know what they didn’t know. But the CIA knew there would be things the LAPD didn’t know, names that would need to be investigated.

    Twelve days later, Inspector Yarnell called William back and set up a meeting with Yarnell, Captain Brown (the Chief of Homicide at LAPD) and Curtin. At this point, Yarnell’s tune changed slightly. Although they felt they had a rock-solid case against Sirhan (which they didn’t—see my book for why the case for Sirhan’s guilt falls flat), Yarnell said they were pursuing a possible conspiracy angle and needed information about Sirhan and possible associates. The CIA’s one request in response is that all mention of their cooperation be kept from the press. And for the most part, it was.

    But I find even this confession of the alliance and circumstances possibly incomplete, because Sirhan had not yet been identified when Chief Reddin gave his 7:00 a.m. press conference on June 5. As I wrote in my book, after viewing the tape from that conference:

    Throughout the press conference, Reddin’s delivery was calm, articulate, and professional, until he came to one particular question. He had just explained that the LAPD was checking with other agencies for any information they might have on the suspect— “the immigration service, the CIA, the Bureau of Customs, Social Security, the Post Office department—”

    “Why the CIA, Chief?” a reporter asked.

    Suddenly, Reddin became visibly rattled and nearly choked as he tried to get the agency’s name out. “The C-A … the C-A … the C-I-A has types of information that might help us identify who the person might be. We’ll give them his picture.” Reddin regained his composure shortly after, but it was a bizarre break—and the only such break—in an otherwise seamless presentation.[7]

    Perhaps Reddin had learned of the CIA’s call to Captain Brown and was planning to share their unknown suspect’s picture with the CIA, but right about this time, Munir Sirhan, the brother of Sirhan who was at his early morning job and watching the TV in the breakroom saw a picture of his brother on TV and went with his brother Adel to the local Pasadena police to identify him. So maybe Curtin’s timeline is an official lie.

    There’s also the weird question the LAPD asked Sirhan about him being married. After the shooting, Sirhan was extensively questioned for a few hours before Reddin heard Sirhan had asked for a lawyer and shut down the questioning. The LAPD and the DA’s assistant who questioned him recognized Sirhan was in some sort of dissociative state. He couldn’t remember what kind of car he drove and couldn’t or wouldn’t give his name. Even his interrogators didn’t believe he was lying. Before his identity had been revealed, one LAPD officer asked Sirhan if he were married (to which Sirhan replied, quite oddly, that he didn’t know).

    It turns out the CIA knew of another man called “Sirhan Sirhan” in the United States who was married, and had been married in 1957 (Sirhan Sirhan had never married and would have only been 13 at the time!), and a reporter with ties to the CIA and Israel named John Kimche had written about him a week after the assassination took place. Kimche thought the Sirhan he was writing about was the Sirhan Sirhan in custody because his source had been right so many times before. The CIA tracked down the man, identified by a friend as “Sirhan Sirhan,” and reported back that he was really Sirhan Salim Sirhan Abu Khadir, a resident of Detroit.”[8] But who told the LAPD within hours after the shooting that the guy in custody might have been married? Might the CIA have planted this story with Kimche after the fact to explain earlier initial misinformation? Had someone from Israel called it in to try to paint Sirhan as someone with ties to Al Fatah (which Sirhan Bishara Sirhan did not have)? Maybe the LAPD just asked if he was married for no reason. But they also asked if his name was “Jesse,” and there was, in fact, a suspect named “Jesse” that apparently had been taken into custody separately from Sirhan and released. So the question may not have been random at all.

    There are still many mysteries in this case. But the CIA pushing their way into the LAPD’s investigation, while not surprising to those who have long assumed a CIA hand in the assassination of RFK, is genuinely new information, with genuinely sinister implications.

    (Part 2 coming soon)

     

    1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-gabbard-rfk-assassination-files-release/

    2. Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), pp. 98-99.

    3. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20INVESTIGATI%5B16011338%5D.pdf, p. 4

    4. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/rfk/releases/2025/0612/07165005_sirhan_sirhan_201.pdf, p. 24

    5. https://afsc.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/1979_NARMIC_Police%20Threat%20to%20Political%20Liberty.pdf, page 52.

    6. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIRHAN%20SIRHAN%20201%5B16506077%5D.pdf, p. 74

    7. Lisa Pease, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Feral House: 2025 paperback edition), p. 58.

    8. Sirhan 201 file, p. 779.

  • “Echoes of a Lost America” by Monika Wiesak – A Review

    Monika Wiesak has followed up her fine volume on the presidency of John F. Kennedy with a book about JFK’s murder.  But it also includes a look at the RFK case and a glimpse into the psyche of John Kennedy Jr.

    Echoes of a Lost America

    By Monika Wiesak

    Three years ago, in 2022, Monika Wiesak published America’s Last President. This remains one of the best, if not the best, of all contemporary books on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. If you have not read it, I strongly urge you to do so. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/last-president) Wiesak has now published a book about the assassination of President Kennedy, entitled Echoes of a Lost America.

    I

    She begins her new book by looking at the crime in a macroscopic manner. She describes some of the things that Kennedy was doing as president that likely disturbed people in the higher circles. She labels his foreign policy as anti-imperialist and mentions his attempt to forge a rapprochement with Fidel Castro in 1963. She uses a telling quote on Vietnam by Gen. Maxwell Taylor: “I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against sending combat troops, except one man, and that was the president.” (Wiesak, p. 10; all references to paperback version) She then discusses how, after Kennedy’s murder, LBJ Americanized the Vietnam War and provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. (Wiesak, p. 6) She continues in this vein by mentioning reversals by Johnson of Kennedy policies in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and the Congo.

    Unlike almost all other authors in the field, Wiesak brings in Kennedy’s clashes with Israeli/Zionist interests as part of her overview. For one example, she mentions Kennedy’s backing of UN emissary Joseph Johnson’s Palestinian refugee plan. Kennedy supported this concept until the end of his presidency. It allowed three methods of repatriation for the Palestinians. Either they could stay where they were and be compensated for their loss during the Nakba; they could move elsewhere and the UN would pay for it; or they could return to where they were originally. Secretly, President David Ben Gurion violently opposed the Johnson Plan. (p. 16)

    She also brings in a rather ignored piece of information. Namely, the highly enriched uranium that was used by the Israelis at the Dimona nuclear reactor was very likely stolen from the United States. (p. 21). This data is examined in minute detail by author Roger Mattson in his book Stealing the Atom Bomb. (Click here for a review https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/) She adds that this heist was likely known to James Angleton. She concludes that Kennedy’s Middle East policy was overhauled in almost every aspect by President Johnson. And she adds this telling fact:

    The 92 million in military assistance provided in fiscal year 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948. (Wiesak, p. 23)

    From here, she goes to Kennedy’s economic policies by beginning with an appropriate Kennedy quotation:

    The president must serve as the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society. (p. 26)

    Like many observers on this topic, she points out the importance of the appointment of James Saxon as Comptroller of the Currency. (p. 27). She wisely quotes from the famous interview that Saxon gave to US News and World Report just before Kennedy was killed. Saxon was trying to loosen bank regulations and also encouraging the opening of more state banks. He and Kennedy wanted an easier flow of credit and loans to small businessmen and farmers. This put Saxon at odds with the Federal Reserve Board. As the magazine summed up his policy:

    The Comptroller approved scores of new national banks, and branches, spurred key mergers, revised outmoded rules. Result: keener competition for deposits and customers. (p. 28)

    During this interview, Saxon said something rather bold. In reply to a question about if the Federal Reserve System should be updated or overhauled, his response was–in no uncertain terms–yes. He went as far as to say bank membership in the system should be voluntary. He clearly depicted himself as in opposition to the Fed, but he said he had Kennedy’s backing on this. He added that it was not surprising to him that the big banks in New York, like Chase Manhattan, did not like him. Because he wanted more open competition for deposits. At that time, Chase Manhattan was a Rockefeller controlled bank. This is an important point, and one that few writers have addressed, save perhaps Donald Gibson.

    II

    Amplifying on Kennedy’s economic reforms, she concentrates on Kennedy building a production-based economy—as opposed to a service economy. One way he was trying to do this was through the investment tax credit. In other words, he was giving companies tax credits if they would modernize their plant and equipment, which would result in higher production rates. This would lead to American products being more competitive in foreign markets. (p.29)

    He also tried to help those in need with welfare benefits by doubling the number of people eligible for surplus food, and also signing a bill extending unemployment benefits from 26-39 weeks. He raised the minimum wage and signed off on increased Social Security benefits. (p.29)

    She becomes the first writer to accent the showdown between Kennedy and the steel industry since Gibson. She rightly pictures the conflict as a battle. One between Kennedy trying to control inflation, the steel companies initially agreeing, but then reneging on the deal and confronting the president with an accomplished fact: they were raising their prices.

    As Gibson introduced the episode through John Blair:

    The April 1962 face-off between President Kennedy and US Steel had been described as the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and a corporate management. (John Blair, Economic Concentration, p. 635)

    Kennedy felt he needed the steel company/labor union agreement to keep inflationary forces from spiraling throughout the economy. He figured his increase in minimum wages would be eaten up by what he called “the cruel tax of inflation.” (Wiesak, p 29) Kennedy thought he had an agreement that the workers would not demand higher wages and the company would not raise prices. But four days after the labor contract had been signed, on April 10th, Roger Blough, Chairman of US Steel, visited Washington. He then handed the president a PR release: the company would announce a 3.5 % price increase at midnight. (Gibson, Battling Wall Street, p.10) Kennedy reportedly said, “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.” (Wiesak, p. 30).

    After five other companies joined US Steel to break the agreement, Kennedy decided that, if his economic policy was going to have any impact or credibility, he would have to begin a counter-attack. Which he did. This was through Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The former stated that no company that broke the agreement would be given any more Pentagon contracts. The latter began investigating charges of collusion and price fixing by issuing subpoenas, some at 3 AM. (Ibid). Kennedy also used the bully pulpit to hit back. On April 11th, he said that he thought the American people would find it difficult to accept,

    A situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interest of 185,000,000 Americans. (Gibson, p. 13)

    Within 48 hours of handing over the announcement, big steel had taken back the price rise. Her synopsis of the crisis is fine, I just wish she had done a bit more with the part of Gibson’s book that deals with Kennedy’s struggle against the CFR globalists.

    From here, she goes on to describe Kennedy’s advocacy of Rachel Carson’s work against the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Although Carson was attacked for Silent Spring, Kennedy formed a committee that vindicated the book in May of 1963. (Wiesak, p. 31) Kennedy also backed the work of Dr. Frances Kelsey against the drug thalidomide, and this then led to the FDA having approval over when a drug could be marketed. (ibid., p 32)

    With the banks, steel companies and big pharma, Kennedy was not looked upon as a friend of big business.

    III

    After adroitly laying out this backdrop, Wiesak now shifts over to the assassination itself. She begins with an examination of the alleged assassin, Lee Oswald. Was Oswald really a self-declared Marxist? There is a lot of evidence to indicate the contrary: namely that he was really an agent provocateur. And she wastes little time in mounting a case showing that he was. She includes the puzzle about Oswald’s 201 file, or the lack of the CIA opening one for the first 13 months after he defected to the Soviet Union. (p. 45). She adds that James Angleton’s successor, George Kalaris, gave a possible answer as to why it was finally opened: Oswald had made queries “concerning possible reentry into the United States.” (p. 45) This would suggest that Oswald understood he had failed to gull the KGB and wanted to return for reassignment.

    So once Oswald returned to Texas, he kept up this image by subscribing to communist and socialist newspapers. (p. 48). But at the same time, he is ingratiating himself with the White Russian community in Dallas, who all loathe communism and want a return to a monarchy. In the face of this returned Soviet defector and his strange behavior, inexplicably, the FBI closed their file on Oswald in October of 1962. Then they reopened it in March of 1963, allegedly based on communist periodical subscriptions that the Bureau already knew he had.

    Wiesak discusses the enigmatic figure of George DeMohrenschildt, nicknamed the Baron. Since he figured right into the midst of this whole contradictory White Russian/Oswald milieu. And she notes that the majority of the Baron’s contact with Oswald was during that six-month period when the FBI closed down their Oswald file. She also discusses the Baron’s acquaintance with Jean de Menil, president of the Schlumberger Corporation, which had close ties to the CIA; and through the Agency to the OAS, which was trying to overthrow French president Charles de Gaulle. DeMohrenschildt and his father also met and worked with Allen Dulles. (p. 49) In early 1963, DeMohrenschildt left for a reputed CIA assignment in Haiti. And now Ruth and Michael Paine have become the best friends of Lee and his wife Marina. And she examines their rather interesting connections to the higher circles. (p. 51)

    She concludes that Oswald appears “to be some sort of intelligence asset, either witting or unwitting, who James Angleton closely monitored.” (ibid)

    From here, the book segues into what she calls the “Lead Up to the Crime”. Jim Garrison thought the early announcement that Kennedy would be coming to Dallas, which was in the Dallas Times Herald in late April, marked the beginning of the maneuvering of Oswald away from the White Russians. (p. 53). In a bit over two weeks, Oswald would be looking for a job at Reilly Coffee Company in the Crescent City. She makes note that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison found out how some of Oswald’s cohorts moved on to the NASA base at Michoud. She then adds that Oswald thought he was going there also. (p. 54). Importantly, she also relates the heist by Oswald’s friend David Ferrie of arms from Schlumberger, which was operated by DeMohrenschildt’s friend Jean de Menil. These arms were then rerouted through Guy Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street, an office at which several witnesses saw Oswald. It was also the address that Oswald placed on some of the pro-Castro literature he was handing out that summer.

    She turns to Clay Shaw and notes the fact that he was reliably identified by the local sheriff as being seen with Ferrie and Oswald in the Clinton/Jackson area in the late summer of 1963. (p. 57) Through the work of Whitney Webb and Michelle Metta, she then links Shaw with DeMenil and Canadian lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield through Permindex. About Permindex, she advances the case that it was a hydra-headed creation: CIA, Italian intelligence and the Mossad. She fingers Bloomfield as a key figure in Permindex because he had access to the majority of the shares in that enigmatic company. (p. 59) She also states that those associated with Permindex were globalists in their views of a world economy, e.g., Bloomfield, Edmond de Rothschild and Shaw. She points out, briefly, that this was opposed to Kennedy’s nationalist views.

    She then offers both views of Oswald in Mexico City: that he may have been there, and he might not have been. But when he returned to Dallas, the FBI’s Marvin Gheesling took the FLASH warning on him off the Watch List. (p. 65). If he had not done that, Oswald likely would not have been on the motorcade route. Also, if Ruth Paine had told Oswald about a job offer that came in from Robert Adams of the Texas Employment Commission, he also would likely not have been on the route.

    IV

    About the assassination itself, in Chapter 4, she does a nice synoptic job of gathering the evidence that Kennedy was undoubtedly killed by a conspiracy. She does this in a microscopic way, but says we should always keep our eye on the Big Picture. (p. 83)

    She then turns to Jack Ruby, the slayer of Oswald. We know that Ruby was the original Man for All Seasons. A guy who had connections in many different directions. She connects him to Meyer Lansky, and uses Seth Kantor’s biography to do so. (p. 110) She also notes that Lansky had worked with the ONI and OSS to help create Operation Underworld, where the Mob helped the war effort during World War II. Lansky had large investments in Cuba before the revolution, and she notes he was also involved with the Haganah, a kind of umbrella paramilitary group devoted to the establishment of Israel. (p. 110). Ruby was also known to Mayor Earle Cabell, who ended up being exposed as a CIA asset.

    Wiesak notes the connection between PR man Sam Bloom and Ruby. Ruby had Sam Bloom’s contact information scribbled down on a card in his apartment. Bloom was also the PR man for Judge Joe Brown at Ruby’s trial. Ruby’s lawyer Melvin Belli commented that “Bloom was making legal history—the first public-relations counselor to a judge in the history of jurisprudence.” (p. 115)

    With Oswald dead and the world seeing Ruby as his killer on TV, the media and the Power Elite were able to fashion and snap on a cover-up almost instantly. To say that it was effective and all-consuming does not do it justice. Wiesak discusses the phone calls from Eugene Rostow and Joseph Alsop to the White House urging Johnson to appoint a blue ribbon commission, because no one was believing what was coming out of Dallas. She also writes that Earle Cabell labeled the assassination “the irrational act of a single man.” (p. 122) And, most pungently, how the New York Times labeled Oswald as the assassin of Kennedy after Ruby killed him. This about a man who always insisted on his innocence and never had a lawyer. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach then cooperated with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to close the case in about 48 hours. (p. 125)

    What made that so problematic is that, from the beginning, the case against Oswald was full of question marks. And any serious journalist or investigator could have found them. Mark Lane did so in his article published in The Guardian on December 19, 1963. (Lane, Plausible Denial, pp. 335-60). When Lane asked to represent Oswald before the Warren Commission, he was turned down by J. Lee Rankin, the Chief Counsel. (Lane, p. 22) As Wiesak shows throughout Chapter 6, that was purely a decision made upon expediency, not on proper procedure or in the interests of justice. For the Commission’s case, as she demonstrates, was hapless. It would never have withstood the challenge of a properly prepared defense counsel.

    V

    She closes the book with chapters on the murder of Robert Kennedy, attempts to reopen the JFK case and a brief chapter on John F. Kennedy Jr.

    Her chapter on the facts of the RFK case is sharp and compelling. But I wish she had used more of David Talbot’s book on that issue. To give her credit, she does say at the beginning that critics usually consider the two cases as separate matters; but if one thinks that powerful forces killed JFK, then those same forces should be suspects in the removal of Robert. (p. 140) And she repeats this motif at the end of the chapter. (p. 192). If it had been me, I would have spent some more time on this issue, for example, showing that Bobby knew his brother had been killed by a large domestic conspiracy and that Dallas was the perfect place to execute such an action. Also, that he sent such a message to Moscow pertaining to this. (Talbot, Brothers, pp. 29-34)

    But I should mention something that I think was quite striking and relevant in this chapter. Quoting from the trial, Sirhan was asked what he thought about John Kennedy:

    I loved him, sir. More than any American could have….He was working sir, with the leaders of the Arab governments, the Arab countries, to bring a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. And he promised these Arab leaders that he would do his utmost and his best to force or to put some pressure on Israel to comply with the 1948 United Nations Resolution sir, to either repatriate those Arab refugees or give them back, give them the right to return to their homes. And when he was killed that never happened. (p. 186)

    As we have seen previously, Sirhan was correct on this.

    In her review of attempts to reopen the JFK case, she treats Jim Garrison and his case against Clay Shaw with respect. She then describes the figurative earthquake that took place when ABC showed the Zapruder film in 1975 and how that caused the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). She has notable disdain for the HSCA. Commenting that their version of the Magic Bullet is as bad or worse than the Warren Commission’s. (p. 205) She is one of the very few writers to note the almost thunderous irony of the alleged plot against Jimmy Carter in May of 1979. Which just happened to involve two men: one named Raymond Lee Harvey and the other Osvaldo Espinoza-Ortiz.

    Her chapter on JFK Jr. hits the important points in relation to the topic at hand. She mentions Meg Azzoni, a former girlfriend, who said, “His heartfelt quest was to expose and bring to trial who killed his father and who covered it up.” (p. 213) She also adds that George magazine was really a presidential platform for him. Interestingly, she describes how he was very interested in the Yitzhak Rabin assassination and published an article on that case, which he himself edited, containing lengthy interviews with shooter Yigal Amir’s mother. She believed that Amir had been manipulated by the Shin Bet.

    The capper to all this? JFK Jr. was going to run for governor in 2002. (p. 217)

    She concludes that what Americans have been handed on the JFK case by the MSM and the political establishment is a counterfeit history. One that its citizens should resist. She also says that she has little doubt that America would be a different place if JFK had lived. And she ends in reference to Kennedy more or less what Kennedy said about Dag Hammarskjold before the United Nations, “Let us not allow his efforts to have been in vain.”