good news about Darnell and Wiegman

First topic message reminder :

I just watched a news conference with Jeff Morley, Judge Tunnheim, and the two lawyers on the MFF lawsuit.  The subject came about new records not currently in the JFK Collection.

My new best friend, Larry Schnapf, one to the lawyers, spoke up to say it's not just government agencies withholding but NBC, a news organization, is too.  I expected a repeat of what he said on Tucker Carlson Friday about NBC hiding the records of the aide to RFK.

But no!!!  He was talking about Darnell!!  A film, he said, that might be able to establish Oswald's whereabouts.  But NBC won't let anyone examine it.

Regardless of what NARA says to me about my request to add Darnell and Wiegman, it seems clear these guys are going to ask for the films should their suit get that far.

Red flags...

At first the alleged informant "believed" that the CIA was involved. That belief soon morphed into "were involved". There is a world of difference between those two claims.

RO:  Not exactly.  Carlson said his source told him the CIA was involved in the JFKA.  The next night he went further and said that some of the withheld documents showed their involvement.  Not so much difference, though I doubt the truth of the second statement in particular.  In fact, I, too, am skeptical of the source story itself (see below), but neither do I think it matters much (except of course if it is used as a diversion from what Carlson said). 

I'm going from memory so I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong, but what I recall is the qualifer "believes" being used in itially and then later being dropped.

Larry has said the Fox people "trust" him because he is a Republican. There goes the call that everyone at the 13 inch emporium is making of bipartisanship. Ask any world-watcher outside the US and they will tell you that the US is the most partisan-driven - and riven  - of all western democracies. It is not even close for second. So, by that alone, Carlson's take is part of Fox's agenda and they have no taste for a bipartisan approach.

RO:  Larry thinks being a Republican helps him with both Carlson's people and with the House oversight committee, which will now be run by a Republican, who Larry wants to hold a hearing into the performance of Biden and NARA.

Which is partisanship. My impression from fawners at EF is that unless you get onboard with Carlson, you're being partison. Meanwhile, it is partisanship that is helping to drive this thing.

RO:  But this in no way supports the claim the Carlson is somehow pushing a FOX agenda.  Do you think Murdoch or Hannity is on board with what he said?

Depends on what the actual end game turns out to be.

Carslon has never done a show that is NOT part of some hidden agenda. 

RO  Do you watch him?  Neither do I.  But I have seen more of him lately because he has interviewed people I do follow about things I'm interested in, and which the other corporate shows won't touch.  All of the commentators have an agenda in the sense of pushing their views.  Those who now want to ignore the importance of what he said in order to pontificate about what he really means and whose interests he is serving are doing a disservice. 

What he said is only important if it is true AND leads to something positive happening. Nothing has come of it yet.

I don't believe the CIA as an agency took out JFK. They are more likely covered up unrelated ops that utilized LHO in a witting or unwitting capacity - or in one case, just used his background in the op.
 
As for watching him - I have seen many clips on youtube and before that, did watch his show occaionally back in the days when I had cable. 

He has the goofy look down pat. It comes out just after throwing shade on someone or something. Faux shock at his own fake take. A cross between a deer in a headlight and a comic trying to play both the straight man AND the second banana.

RO:  Or Rachel Maddow as another example.  The court said they were not reporting the news per se, but rather were offering opinions about it, which s why they couldn't be sued for libel

She can go fuck herself too. 

RO:  The source's statement set up Carlson to say what is the main point of his commentary, and which I suspect he believes, or at least is willing to explore further:  "Within our government are forces wholly beyond democratic control.  They are more powerful than the elected officials who supposedly oversee them.  They can affect elections and murder Presidents.  In short they can do anything they want.  They mock democracy by their very existence."
 
RO:  I wouldn't change a word of that.  Particularly the powerful last sentence summary.  It's now out there for millions to see and hear.  Some may think about it for a while.  It, and RFK Jr's backing of it, are there to be pursued. 

C;mon Roger. You can't see what this is really about?

That's a major accomplishment.  And certainly nothing you or I or anyone here or on EV could have accomplished.

Nothing tangible has been accomplished yet.

I once put my hopes and faith in another FOX superstar who was going to crack this thing wide open - O'Reilly.

I even got him hooked up again with the freelance cameraman he had used when he went to try and interview De Morehnschildt. I tracked the guy down and got him to contact O'Reilly. 

What came of that? O'Reilly's shitty book.

RO:  Deep state bullshit?

"Deep state" is a nebulous term that shifts and turns in meaning according to who is using it, in what context and with what personal agenda in mind.  There is no deep state.There is a particular culture with unwritten rules that permeates within certain areas of government.  
 

I also don't believe his show has had any influence on what other talking heads and journalists have said on various other platforms. To believe he was the catalyst for any floodgates to open, and that they have not spoken out based on their own views, is ludicrous.
 
RO:  You are mistaken.  Independent journalists and groups of journalists are growing in audience, particularly among the young, while corporate MSM is shrinking.  MSM is predictably trying to ignore what Carlson said, but some of these other writers chimed in; some can be found posted about the JFKA on EF.  I am having trouble keeping up with all of them 
 
It was apparent BEFORE the releases that media across the board was getting pissed ogff with the delays and the excuses
 
RO:  Delays and excuses for withholding was a minor part of what Carlson was saying.  Being pissed off about the withholding, even if it kept growing, was never likely to lead anywhere important, which is one reason why the MSM have been able (allowed) to voice it.

This hasn't gone aywhere tet either.

Is the hope of influencing the oversight committee replacing the idea of suing Biden?

If so, it will indeed have an impact. It will blow any hope of getting immediate releases.

- and Carlson is NOT the first in the media to talk about CIA complicity. Mainstream publications had given very positive reviews on certain books accusing the CIA over the last couple of years. 
 
RO:  What books, what reviews?.  What effect did they have?  

Check the reviews of The Devil's Chessboard.

What effect? Very similar I would say. Boosted sales of the book just like this has boosted ratings of Carlson's show.

So Carlson and his circus at Fox can go fuck 'emselves along with all the fawning bandwagon jumpers.
 
RO:  I think Carlson has clearly been important to the question of who killed JFK, why, and what has happened since.  Should I sign up with the fawning bandwagon jumpers?

You already have. But you're a smart and honest man who has done a fantastic job on the Darnell issue. As time drags on, I'm sure you'll start to realize you've been had on this. 

Just like I will eat humble pie and admit error if I'm wrong. 

But I'm not looking for a napkin just yet.

“I don't believe the CIA as an agency took out JFK. They are more likely covered up unrelated ops that utilized LHO in a witting or unwitting capacity - or in one case, just used his background in the op.”


I agree with this. Further, I have a problem with the CIA framing someone with any prior connection to the agency as Oswald almost certainly had. However, framing Oswald by either rogue insiders or those outside the agency who knew of Oswald’s ties to intelligence could count on the CIA running interference against any investigation into the assassination.

Mainstream publications had given very positive reviews on certain books accusing the CIA over the last couple of years.

IIRC even the CIA praised the Talbot's book on its site. They disagreed with the books claim that the CIA was behind the assassination, but said that the book was a valuable resource shedding light on their excesses of the past.

I see Morley as well as one of the other lawyers, Mark Zaid, are calling the alleged source into question and Zaid in particular seems to think the whole thing is a scam.

I guess it was only a matter of time before Morley and I were on the same side of an argument.

But the situation with the lawyers looks similar to how it was at the mock trial where none of them were on the same page about how to run the case - which led to the result they got.

If Larry is intent on pursuing the Carlson/oversight committee option instead of a court case, they'll save money and get what they've paid for. The destruction of all hope.

If anyone wants to check out the twitter thread, prepare to hold your nose. Commenters include a bunch of Antisemites (no not solely because they blame Mossad, but also because they insist on calling Ruby Rubinstein), some Jackie accusers and the usual mob on the trail of the ghosts of every big and idiotic "deep" conspiracy past. 

That's where this is going; dragged into the sewer, and there will be no Toxic Avenger emerging from that stench.

GP:  I'm going from memory so I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong, but what I recall is the qualifer "believes" being used in itially and then later being dropped.

 
RO:  You're on the right track.  Asked if the CIA had a hand in the JFKA, according to Carlson the source said:  "Yes. [period, end of sentence]  I believe they were involved."  Carlson then summarized what the source said.  The screen shows the same statement again, Yes.  I believe.... But Carlson on screen verbally leaves out "I believe":  Yes. They were involved, he says, characterizing it as an unequivocal answer.  The next day he ties this person's statement to withheld documents Carlson says the source has seen. 
 
Seeing it again, it does seem that Carlson took the source's statement--whatever it was, if it existed--and stretched it to grab attention for his show.  Which it did. 
 
But then you say  "C;mon Roger. You can't see what this is really about?" and "As time drags on, I'm sure you'll start to realize you've been had on this." I assume you mean I have been taken in by Carlson's sleight of hand.
 
No I haven't.  Nothing I have said depends on Carlson's character or integrity, or requires me to accept Carlson's rendering of the facts.  I repeat, the main value of Carlson's spiel, not yet much realized or commented on, is his focus on the damage to society the JFKA did.  Let me copy that again:  "Within our government are forces wholly beyond democratic control.  They are more powerful than the elected officials who supposedly oversee them.  They can affect elections and murder Presidents.  In short they can do anything they want.  They mock democracy by their very existence.". 
 
GP: What he said is only important if it is true AND leads to something positive happening. 
 
RO;  The most important part of what he said--about what has happened since--*is* true.  I think the part about the CIA murdering JFK will some day be seen as true.  But for now making the allegation of CIA involvement, discussing the damage since, and getting the attention he has, has been distinctly helpful.  Think about where things stood with the MSM gatekeepers just three weeks ago.  
 
I suppose it is possible to argue that if Carlson's duplicity, such as it is, is exposed, it will be a major setback to further searches for the truth.  Considering the abject failure for the last 59 years to break thru the MSM gatekeepers, I'll take that chance.

GP: I don't believe the CIA as an agency took out JFK. They are more likely covered up unrelated ops that utilized LHO in a witting or unwitting capacity - or in one case, just used his background in the op.
 
RO:  It's my turn to say, Oh, c'mon, Greg.  I don't know who you mean by "unrelated ops", rather than the CIA as an agency did it, but I'm going to vent my spleen on the idea anyway.
 
Are you saying Allen Dulles and his CIA gang knew nothing about the murder beforehand but quickly sprang into action to cover it up?  The coverup did in fact begin as soon as the shots rang out, including fingering and arresting Oswald.  I assume I don't have to detail all of that to you.  In fact the coverup began so quickly and was so widespread that, if you think only this band of rogue bastards(?) did the murder, the line between them and those who covered it up in the CIA and elsewhere becomes quickly blurred.  Who exactly knew what and did what when?
 
Let me focus on one point in the coverup:  the message to the plane carrying Kennedy officials coming back from Dallas.  The message was we've already caught the guy who did it and he was acting alone (something they obviously could not have known unless their message was pre-planned).  Most of the rest of the cabinet was at a conference in Hawaii  (coincidence?)  McGeorge Bundy was running the White House situation room that sent the message.  Was he part of the "unrelated ops"? 
 
Salandria translated the message to the plane for us:  No matter what you think you saw in Dallas, we already have the official story.  Don't interfere.  (Some of Kennedy's close aides were in a car right behind him and reportedly said, privately only, that they thought some shots came from the front.)   The message, of course, has disappeared but not before Theodore White Mentioned it in his book, The Making of the President, 1960.   
 
Who had the ability to organize and implement the coverup?  Who picked Oswald as the patsy and carried out that part of the plan, including quickly murdering him?  Just a sample of the many questions I think your claim would have a lot of difficulty answering.
 
I start with the assumption there would not have been an assassination of a President without a plan in place to cover it up and shift the blame elsewhere, and the confidence and power to carry it out.  But if you cling to the claim that some unrelated ops did it, you don't have to believe that.  Your band of rogue bastards either were confident that the CIA/war machine would protect them or they were crazy.
 
More importantly, we know too much to treat the JFKA as an isolated incident  from the other murders and coups that preceded and followed it.  Wouldn't you agree that it was the CIA, as an agency, that overthrew the governments of Iran and Guatemala and deposed and murdered Lamumba right before JFK took office?  Who, then, murdered MLK, RFK, Malcolm, and Fred Hampton, and with the FBI (remember the CIA is supposed to be prohibited from acting domestically) destroyed the Panthers and what had been a burgeoning Left?
 
Are you conceding CIA involvement in all of that, yet insisting that when it comes to the lynchpin incident, the JFKA, despite the overwhelming evidence that JFK was blocking their plans for the world, and that the CIA as an organization was the murder's primary beneficiary, the CIA was simply a bystander to the murder?
 
BTW, who at the moment is the public figure out front raising the question of what happened to society after the JFKA, what about those other murders, and what about the CIA itself?  That's right, Carlson.  Which is a strong argument for others to speak up. 
 
GP:  Nothing tangible has been accomplished yet.
 
RO!:  Actually real journos, not MSM stenographers, are coming are coming out of the woodwork to comment on the JFKA after Carlson and RFK Jr. It's been hard to keep track.  Some, it seems, for the first time. Greenwald is the latest and one of the biggest.  After just a few days.

GP: "Deep state" is a nebulous term that shifts and turns in meaning according to who is using it, in what context and with what personal agenda in mind.  There is no deep state.There is a particular culture with unwritten rules that permeates within certain areas of government.  

 
RO:  The concept is real.  Choose your preferred term.  Which CIA official (was it Helms?) who he advised CIA staff to say nothing to the House investigators in the 70s and wait them out?  Politicians come and go.  They are ineffective, and cowed by the CIA, anyway. 
 
GP:  Carlson is NOT the first in the media to talk about CIA complicity. Mainstream publications had given very positive reviews on certain books accusing the CIA over the last couple of years. Check the reviews of The Devil's Chessboard.
 

RO:  None of that has punctured the MSM boycott of the topic.  Talbott was effectively marginalized, i.e., ignored, by the major book reviewers.  He tells the story of how the NYTimes told his agent they wouldn't touch his book with a ten foot pool.  To the extent Talbott broke thru at all, it was because he already had a rep with the MSM.

The lawyers listed on the court filing, Oct. 17, are Bill Simpich, attorney for the plaintiffs, and Larry Schnapf, pro hac vice, application forthcoming.  I don't know what Mark Zaid's role in the proceeding is, if any.  He was mentioned on EF as one of a bunch of lawyers who helped prepare the case.   Ditto for Morley, except he is handling some of the PR.
 
Nor do I know what this claim of Zaid's means, directed at Carlson:  "You know who his lawyer is to compel release of #JFKassassination records: Me."  I never heard of this.  I guess he means that should Schnapf face some sort of legal reprisal for the filing, Zaid will represent him.  Even if that is true, it seems pretty remote, and isn't much of a basis for Zaid to have important input in the case itself.
 
I agree the mock trial, the one a few years ago in Texas?, was a mess, but this case looks to be on much more clear ground.
 

I think Bill and Larry see the pursuit of Congressional oversight, as parallel tracks not one instead of the other.  

RO:  It's my turn to say, Oh, c'mon, Greg.  I don't know who you mean by "unrelated ops", rather than the CIA as an agency did it, but I'm going to vent my spleen on the idea anyway.

Sorry for any confusion, Roger. 

What I mean is that they had used Oswald in ops that were entirely unrelated to the assassination - and in the case of MC, they had just used his background. That was enough to get them to participate in the cover up. 

Salandria translated the message to the plane for us:  No matter what you think you saw in Dallas, we already have the official story.  Don't interfere. 

Salandria might be right, but for the wrong reasons.

I would also argue that none of what occured in the immediate aftermath was anything to do with the CIA. It points to military intel and the Secret Service.

More importantly, we know too much to treat the JFKA as an isolated incident  from the other murders and coups that preceded and followed it.  Wouldn't you agree that it was the CIA, as an agency, that overthrew the governments of Iran and Guatemala and deposed and murdered Lamumba right before JFK took office?  Who, then, murdered MLK, RFK, Malcolm, and Fred Hampton, and with the FBI (remember the CIA is supposed to be prohibited from acting domestically) destroyed the Panthers and what had been a burgeoning Left?

I understand the need to connect dots, see patterns and come up with a unified theory. But that is not how things always work in real life.

I was the first person to put together the case for the CIA assassinating Jorge Gaitan in 1948. I also believe the CIA was complicit in the bloodless coup that took place in my own backyard in 1975.

The CIA does not just go straight to assassination. It is always a last resort. They are in the "influence" business, and the less messy ways are always preferred when it comes to influence.

Gaitan for example was only earmarked for assassination after refusing CIA sponsored bribes to go into self-imposed exile in Italy or France. 

As you yourself said, politicians come and go. The need to remove them with a poison pill or a bullet is usually only because they have resisted other ways of getting them out - and they are firmly entrenched - eg, overwhelmingly popular, or hold power by revolutionary means. 

None of that applies to Kennedy., The CIA had the option to use the Mighty Wurlitzer against him during the election, publishing details of his medical history and (alleged) infidelities that would flip the Puritan  heart of Middle America against him.

The urgency to dispatch him prior to the election speaks of rage and revenge, pure unadulterated and blind hatred OR the need to stop ceratain actions that would quickly follow his reelection - such as the withdrawal from Vietnam OR the investigation in Fred Korth et al. Both of those things ceased with the assassination. 

The Civil Rights assassinations, including MLK, were most likely carried out by FBI (possibly just rogue elements) and/or State/Local police and/or private groups - done under various operations including, but not limited to COINTELPRO. 

The RFK assassination is far more likely to have been carried out by CIA rogues and right wing groups, than JFK. I think they were emboldened by all the others being pinned successfully on a lone nut and were not prepared to go through the nicer was of removing him from the election in the first instance. Rogue elements are like that! Impatient for immediate results. Plus this hit was almost a carbon copy of Gaitan's 20 years earlier, right down to an AMORC adherent and self-hypnosis practiononer as patsy. 

I think Bill and Larry see the pursuit of Congressional oversight, as parallel tracks not one instead of the other.  

I truly hope you are right. 

Because if I only had one of those options to go with, I'm going with the courts every time over a clown like Carlson. You may as well take dietary tips from Ronald McDonald.

“ The CIA had the option to use the Mighty Wurlitzer against him during the election, publishing details of his medical history and (alleged) infidelities that would flip the Puritan  heart of Middle America against him.”


This certainly would have been a low risk alternative to commissioning an assassination. Particularly if the info was first released in the foreign media and then amplified by the Mighty Wurlitzer. Which strongly suggests that whoever was behind the assassination was not at the center of power in the US government, considered JFK’s presidency an existential threat and that time was of the essence.


I don’t agree with the alteration hypothesis for the body or the Zapruder film. I do believe that there definitely were pre-examinations of both because the CIA didn’t know what the hell happened and wanted to make sure actions weren’t taken that could result in a war with the Soviets.


By that time, the Dallas police were focused exclusively on Oswald. Oswald’s connections with the agency made him a poor candidate to frame as the assassin from the CIA’s perspective. But that’s what they had to work with.

Particularly if the info was first released in the foreign media and then amplified by the Mighty Wurlitzer. 

Not to derail this thread, but a similar ploy was used post-assassination on another issue.

The allegation that Oswald had been picked up in April over the alleged attempt and Walker and that RFK ordered Dallasn police to release him, was first published in Germany. It later appeared in the Dallas Morning News as a supplement. 

The reason for this would be twofold - firstly to give plausible deniability to the real source of that lie and secondly, to avoid being sued while also being able to amplify the claim. 

The CIA had media assets in Europe that could have "expose" Kennedy on several matters, allowing the story(ies) to break across the US. 

This certainly would have been a low risk alternative to commissioning an assassination.

Indeed. The idea that assassination is always the first and only option, is one that underpins "The-CIA-did-it" theorists. 

If they took a minute to think about the risks of that, not to mention the logic, I would hope many would start to look at alternatives. 

I mean, this is what they are supporting.

The CIA had a motive to kill JFK because of at least one the following two reasons:

he was a danger to national security
he intended to break up the agency

Neither of those reasons screams urgency to the extent that he had to be gotten rid of prior to the election.

If the election could not be influenced enough against him and he still wins, you might --- might start to think about assassination if no other viable alternatives are present and the two reasons are still there.

Ideally, if assassination was to take place in that second term... then you would be looking at the possibility of doing it in an overseas country, just as you would with character assassination, at least in the first instance. 

You need to look at those who needed him dead before commencing any second term. CIA does not fit the bill on any level.

You say the CIA, as an agency, was not behind the JFKA, but they had used Oswald in ops unrelated to it and that was enough for them to participate in the coverup. Apparently that is the extent you think they were involved.
 
The CIA, mainly but not entirely, through Allen Dulles, was a major player in the coverup, and ran parts of it, not just a participant.  I think that was because they, as an agency, planned and carried out the murder.  Uncovering that was an existential threat to their existence.  We now know of JFK's disagreement with the CIA, his attempts to rein them in, and the Schlesinger memo he asked for about what to do with them.  Your claim takes no account of these things.
 
Saying "as an agency" means to what extent the leader(s) were involved.  That focuses on Dulles, one of the most powerful men in Washington for years as head of the CIA beginning in 1953.  After JFK fired him in '61 he continued to run the CIA, in policy and most of its major functions, from his home in Georgetown, until his death a few years after the murder. The weekend of the murder he was at the CIA hideaway he had built for himself when he was director.  What was he doing?  Who was he talking to?
 
Was the CIA as an agency behind the JFKA is a question that turns in the first instance on what Dulles was saying and doing.  To borrow from Howard Baker during Watergate, what did Dulles know about the JFKA and when did he know it?
 
If Dulles knew about it prior to the murder, then it's clear, to me at least, that nothing would have happened without his input and approval. There goes your claim. If somehow he didn't know about it beforehand I have difficulty even considering someone would have killed the President on their own without his input. 
 
A plan of that magnitude doesn't happen without a coverup plan already in place.  And we know there was a coverup plan in place because it started from the moment of the shots.  Allen Dulles, it is clear, was indispensable to the design and implementation of the coverup.
 
The CIA's motive to get rid of JFK is clear, but I believe Dulles had a personal one as well.  He must have known he was near the end of his life.  His death wasn't sudden.  He was not going to leave behind JFK in charge to dismantle all of his dastardly deeds. 
 
You also say that nothing that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the JFK had anything to do with the CIA. Instead it points to "military intel and the Secret Service".  A bit broad, that.  I'm sure you didn't mean "nothing".  The CIA has become a monster but it was already very powerful back then.  It runs its own foreign policy, and gets involved in domestic policy as we can see, too, tho it's not supposed to be allowed to.  The President and Congress often don't  know what they're doing.  On the other hand, the Pentagon implements rather than makes policy; the Secret Service has no policy functions as far as I know.
 
This can seen at the moment in the Ukraine war.  The Pentagon has apparently been trying to be a moderating force on the war.  But the State Dept, run by neocon morons and the "intelligence community" insists that Biden push on with the sanctions and war. 


GP: The CIA does not just go straight to assassination. It is always a last resort. They are in the "influence" business, and the less messy ways are always preferred when it comes to influence.
 
RO:  As they have at times admitted, the CIA are professional liars.  I search your depiction of them in vain for any consideration of the ruthlessness and brutality of some of their staff.  Have you read the Devil Chessboard's depiction of Dulles, the man? 

GP:  As you yourself said, politicians come and go. The need to remove them with a poison pill or a bullet is usually only because they have resisted other ways of getting them out - and they are firmly entrenched - eg, overwhelmingly popular, or hold power by revolutionary means. 

None of that applies to Kennedy., The CIA had the option to use the Mighty Wurlitzer against him during the election, publishing details of his medical history and (alleged) infidelities that would flip the Puritan  heart of Middle America against him.
 
The urgency to dispatch him prior the election speaks of rage and revenge, pure unadulterated and blind hatred OR the need to stop ceratain actions that would quickly follow his reelection - such as the withdrawal from Vietnam OR the investigation in Fred Korth et al. Both of those things ceased with the assassination. 
 
RO:  Kennedy was going to run against Goldwater in 1964, a fringy right winger and a weak candidate.  The CIA/war machine knew that.  The options you suggest would have been insufficient to stop him and they knew that too.  He had to be removed before he could get a second term where he would be freer to do more of what he really wanted to do.  Getting out of Vietnam was just one example. 
 
Rage and revenge as a motive fits your culprits I guess, but not the CIA, whose motive was more substantive:  the survival of, not only their plans for the world, but the survival of the agency itself if JFK got a second term.  The stronger motive leads to the more likely culprit 

GP: The Civil Rights assassinations, including MLK, were most likely carried out by FBI (possibly just rogue elements) and/or State/Local police and/or private groups - done under various operations including, but not limited to COINTELPRO. 

The RFK assassination is far more likely to have been carried out by CIA rogues and right wing groups, than JFK. I think they were emboldened by all the others being pinned successfully on a lone nut and were not prepared to go through the nicer was of removing him from the election in the first instance. Rogue elements are like that! Impatient for immediate results. Plus this hit was almost a  carbon copy of Gaitan's 20 years earlier, right down to an AMORC adherent and self-hypnosis practioner as patsy. 
 
RO: Each of the victims I mentioned had a common vision and purpose directly opposed to what the CIA wanted.  It's no secret Hoover and the FBI, allied with the CIA, were out to decimate the Left.  Each official story about the murders had a similar patsy to blame. Sure each new killer was emboldened by the continued success of previous murders, but that doesn't point in any one direction.
 
The connection between the murder of the Kennedy brothers is the most clear  The CIA was never going to let Bobby make it to the White House.  It's now clear Bobby thought right from the start the CIA killed his brother and he had told associates he was going to reopen the JFKA once in the White House.  He even said that on a campaign stop in California when asked. Yes, he said, he was going to do that, removing all doubts the CIA might have had, which I suspect were few.  The story goes that, as he was being dropped of at the airport by Larry King, Garrison told King "they were going to kill Bobby too" (according to King). 
 
MLK's murder was not primarily about civil rights.  One year to the day before his murder, MLK gave a famous speech in which he branched out from civil rights to take on the damage being done by the Vietnam war.  The greatest purveyor of violence in the world was his own government, he said.  Young black men were being sent over there to guarantee liberties which they didn't have themselves at home. The war machine depended disproportionately on young blacks to fight in Vietnam.  There were actually a bunch of MSM editorials at the time decrying King's speech, saying or implying he should stick to the civil rights of black folks. 
 
The speech was effective.  But King had sealed his fate.  Before that speech the FBI tried to deal with him by, e.g., sending him a letter suggesting he commit suicide because they had recorded him with several women.  But King, like the Kennedy brothers, had become an impediment to the CIA's view of its role in the world.

Transcript of the Carlson show.

Not long after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on camera in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, a lot of Americans started to have some questions about the Kennedy assassination. It was, you’d have to admit, a pretty extraordinary sequence of events. A lone gunman murders the president of the United States. And then, less than 48 hours later, that lone gunman is himself murdered by another lone gunman.

What are the odds of that? It’s one thing if you get struck by lightning – rare but possible. But if every member of your family also gets struck by lightning, all on different days, you might begin to suspect these are not entirely natural events. But oh, replied the U.S. government, they are. This bizarre chain of killings was all entirely natural.”

So less than a year after the JFK assassination, the Johnson White House released something called the Warren Commission Report. And the report concluded that while their motives remained unclear, both Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby had acted alone. No one helped them. There was no conspiracy of any kind. Case closed. Time to move on.

And many Americans did move on. At the time, they had no idea how shoddy and corrupt the Warren Commission was. It would be nearly 50 years before the CIA admitted under duress that in fact, it had withheld information from investigators about its relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald.
But even then, at the time, before that was known, the government’s explanation didn’t seem entirely plausible. And some people started asking obvious questions about it. It was at that point, as Americans started to doubt the official story, that the term “conspiracy theory” entered our lexicon. As Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith points out in his book on the subject, “The term conspiracy theory did not exist as a phrase in everyday American conversation before 1964. In 1964, the year the Warren Commission issued its report, the New York Times published five stories in which ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared.”

Now, today, of course, the term “conspiracy theory” appears in pretty much every New York Times story about American politics. It’s wielded, now as then, as a weapon against anyone who asks questions the government doesn’t feel like answering. But despite 60 years of name-calling, those questions have not disappeared. In fact, they have multiplied with time.

And here’s one of them. In April of 1964, a psychiatrist called Louis Joylon West visited Jack Ruby in his isolation cell in a Dallas jail. According to West’s written assessment, he found that Jack Ruby was “technically insane” and in need of immediate psychiatric hospitalization. Those are conclusions that puzzlingly no one who had spoken to Jack Ruby previously had reached. Ruby had seemed perfectly sane to the people who knew him. Louis Jolyon West pronounced him crazy.

But what West did not say was that he was working for the CIA at the time. Louis Jolyon West was a contract psychiatrist for the spy agency. He was also an expert on mind control and a prominent player in the now infamous MKUltra program in which the CIA gave powerful psychiatric drugs to Americans without their knowledge.

So of all the psychiatrists in the world, what in the world was this guy doing in Jack Ruby’s prison cell? The media did not seem interested in finding out. In fact, the New York Times, in an extensive 1999 obituary of West, never mentioned the fact that he had worked for the CIA, much less his time in Jack Ruby’s cell, which seems relevant. So you can see why non-crazy people would wonder about what really happened. And of course, many have wondered.
In 1976, long forgotten, the House of Representatives impaneled a special committee to reinvestigate the JFK assassination. Their bipartisan conclusion? Jack Kennedy was almost certainly murdered as the result of a conspiracy. But the question is a conspiracy by whom? Well, the obvious suspect would be the CIA. Why else would the agency withhold critical evidence from investigators? Is there a benign explanation for that, for maintaining this level of secrecy for this many years? Not that we’re aware of. And it is illegal.

In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. That act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed. The last administration promised to comply fully with that law. But under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld, in the end, thousands of pages of CIA documents.

Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration. did exactly the same thing. That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved. But we still can’t see them. Clearly, it’s not to protect any person. They’re all dead. It’s to protect an institution. But why?

Well, today we decided to find out. We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President? And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”
It’s hard to imagine a more jarring response than that. Again, this is not a “conspiracy theorist” that we spoke to. Not even close. This is someone with direct knowledge of the information that once again is being withheld from the American public. And the answer we received was unequivocal. Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president. Now, some people will not be surprised to hear that they suspected it all along. But no matter how you feel about it or what you thought about the Kennedy assassination, pause to consider what this means.

It means that within the US government, there are forces wholly beyond democratic control. These forces are more powerful than the elected officials that supposedly oversee them. These forces can affect election outcomes. They can even hide their complicity in the murder of an American president. In other words, they can do pretty much anything they want. They constitute a government within a government mocking, by their very existence, the idea of democracy. As cynical as we have become after 30 years of watching government officials ignore the voters who employ them, we were shocked to learn this. It’s not acceptable.

Americans have trusted their government less with every passing year since the killing of John F. Kennedy. Maybe this is why. And people have known this for a long time. The people who knew would include every director of the CIA since November of 1963. And that list would include Obama’s CIA director, John Brenan  one of the most sinister and dishonest figures in American life.

That list would also include, we are sad to say, our friend Mike Pompeo, who ran the CIA in the last administration. Mike Pompeo knew this. We asked Pompeo to join us tonight, and though he rarely turns down a televised interview, he refused to come. We hope he will reconsider.

Around this time last year, he interviewed Mr Case Closed. None of this apparently occurred to him at that time.

So what's changed? 

The pro-Trump right wing narrative, that's all.

This isn't about JFK. It's about using the assassination to demonstrate the "reality" of the "deep state" and then draw a straight-line from the JFK assassination to the troubles Trump now faces.  

And also...there is no whistleblower. In writing fictional narratives based even loosely on real people/events, you sometimes need to invent characters to push the narrative along or give it credibility.

And that is the real reason some are crying out that the whistleblower needs to be protected. They know full well the person doesn't exist.

Nothing good can come of this. Nothing.

Roger, what you have put together is not much different to what others put together when making a case for their favorite Bogeymen. You've put together what you consider to be a strong motive.

I'm more of a nitty-gritty, get down into the dirt and grime type than what Leonard Cohen admonished in Beautiful Losers we should do - "learn to stop bravely at the surface".  

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right and try and work out how that works.

The CIA decides to terminate the prez before he can terminate it.

They decide to use a patsy and the patsy they choose has been used in the past as a low level asset. He is also surrounded by other CIA assets from around September 1962 to the date of the assassination - they when the plan is started to hatch - say from the time the trip to Dallas is put on the table, they decide they need to whittle down on all these connections back to them until it is really down to just the Paines. George de M has long gone to Haiti and none of the other White Russians now go anywhere near the Oswalds, they they were all over them up until they moved to New Orleans. 

But even having whittled away at the numbers, the record of association is still there - along with employment at a sensitive photographic company with possible CIA links. 

They then use a double in Mexico City which is so poorly done, it beggars belief that they continued with the plan. But they do. 

Then on the day, they allow him to wander freely around to the point that it may soon be proved that he was on the steps just seconds after the shots. 

They then use alien technology to alter every single known and unknown photo and film of the Big Event, play a shell game with the body of the victim in order to perform surgery to alter the wounds - again pretty well botched - and all of this using the Secret Service, FBI and Military to do their bidding. 

So you've got them using someone that could be easily traced back to them and making no attempt to control him on the day. 

I want the nit in the grit, Roger.

I want to know how Roy Truly becomes involved with the CIA because none of this works without him. 

I want to know why Oswald thought the only threat of a coup came from the Marines.

I want to know why Kennedy thought the Generals might revolt. 

I mean, how clever of the CIA to fool the two victims that weekend, that they were not a threat - the military was.   

A lone gunman murders the president of the United States. And then, less than 48 hours later, that lone gunman is himself murdered by another lone gunman.

What are the odds of that? It’s one thing if you get struck by lightning – rare but possible. But if every member of your family also gets struck by lightning, all on different days, you might begin to suspect these are not entirely natural events. But oh, replied the U.S. government, they are. This bizarre chain of killings was all entirely natural.”

Tho stranger things have happened, I agree that chances are it is no coincidence. In fact, in this case, I am positive it is not. I am equally positive that the two acts being a rarity is not evidence of who was responsible.

So less than a year after the JFK assassination, the Johnson White House released something called the Warren Commission Report. And the report concluded that while their motives remained unclear, both Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby had acted alone. No one helped them. There was no conspiracy of any kind. Case closed. Time to move on.

Again it does not point to any particular party. I personally believe the WWIII reason, in parralel with the ideology of American Exceptionalism - the idea that the US is morally and politically stronger and superior to all other nations and as such it is impervious to internal coups - unlike those pagan and backward Europeans.  Put another way... the WWIII narrative in conjunction with protecting another narrative.

RO:  Kennedy was going to run against Goldwater in 1964, a fringy right winger and a weak candidate.  The CIA/war machine knew that.  The options you suggest would have been insufficient to stop him and they knew that too.  He had to be removed before he could get a second term where he would be freer to do more of what he really wanted to do.  Getting out of Vietnam was just one example. 

Goldwater was not yet the nominee. There is some chance it may have been someone else and that he was offered up as a sacrificial lamb when it became obvious that LBJ would be the revipient of a masssive sympathy vote. 

But in any case, a drover's dog could have beaten JFK in the election if there had been sustained smear campaign run against him in the media. Propaganda, influence, dirty tricks... those were the CIA initial go-to tools. 

The CIA, mainly but not entirely, through Allen Dulles, was a major player in the coverup, and ran parts of it, not just a participant.  I think that was because they, as an agency, planned and carried out the murder. 

They covered up the use of Oswald in past ops. Just as any plotters would expect them to. 

It was the DPD who initiated the frame of Oswald and covered up doing so. 

But it was the Secret Service, FBI and DPD who continued that covered up, botched or failed to take up other leads and manipulated the evidence against the sole accused. The CIA was not involved in any of that. I repeat - they only covered up PAST associations with Oswald - associations that had nothing to do with the assassination.

The conflation involved in blaming the CIA for the assassination is regretable because it is far too sexy, far too alluring, and as sucj, inhibits the actual truth from coming out.

Schnapf says Mark Zaid is his attorney on a separate FOIA case. He and Simpich are running the MFF lawsuit.  Zaid is not involved. No need to be diverted worrying about his influence.

GP:  Indeed. The idea that assassination is always the first and only option, is one that underpins "The-CIA-did-it" theorists. 
 
If they took a minute to think about the risks of that, not to mention the logic, I would hope many would start to look at alternatives.
 
RO:   Who says they think the CIA did it because murder is always the first and only option with them? No one I know. The real underlying idea is that the CIA is so powerful and ruthless they will not hesitate to use assassination if they find it necessary.  As they did with Lamumba, the Kennedy brothers, MLK with the FBI, Allende, probably Hammarskjold and on and on.

GP:  I mean, this is what they are supporting.

The CIA had a motive to kill JFK because of at least one the following two reasons:

he was a danger to national security
he intended to break up the agency
 
RO:  Yep.  He was a clear danger to *their* view of national security.  Or more precisely, their view of how the world should be organized, and the US place in it.

GP: Neither of those reasons screams urgency to the extent that he had to be gotten rid of prior to the election. 
 
If the election could not be influenced enough against him and he still wins, you might --- might start to think about assassination if no other viable alternatives are present and the two reasons are still there.
 
RO: No. They couldn't wait and they knew it.  If Kennedy won in a landslide, as Johnson did in his place, *and* brought with him a super majority in Congress, as Johnson did, he would have been in a powerful position to do much of what he wanted. Breaking the CIA into a thousand pieces and scattering it to the wind would have been on the table, as would many things the CIA despised.   

GP:  If the election could not be influenced enough against him and he still wins, you might --- might start to think about assassination if no other viable alternatives are present and the two reasons are still there.
 
RO: The two reasons you gave *would* still be there. Another, smaller, reason not to wait until after the election.

GP: Ideally, if assassination was to take place in that second term... then you would be looking at the possibility of doing it in an overseas country, just as you would with character assassination, at least in the first instance. 

You need to look at those who needed him dead before commencing any second term. CIA does not fit the bill on any level.
 
RO:  You think waiting until JFK traveled abroad and murdering him there would have been preferable in their eyes to offing him on a public street in Dallas?  Or they could have just poisoned him in the White House and blamed a crazy person.  Maybe one of those guys pushing Operation Northwoods or a first strike on the Soviet Union before the nuclear capabilities caught up with the US.  Kennedy's administration was swarming with candidates.
 
Care to address Salandria's point that a main purpose of the murder was to say, to those in Washington and the rest of the country too, that we're in charge now and there is nothing you can do about it?  The Dallas slaughter was integral to the plan. The Oswald story was designed to fall apart, but by that time they would be entrenched in power.  It's looking like he was right isn't it, with the last piece being the collapse of the Warren Rep?  Maybe it will be fully realized after we're all gone.
 

When you started down this road of the CIA didn't do it, I thought you might be playing.  Maybe to see if the discussion would lead to further truth. Now I'm not so sure.  If you are serious, you need to think through how your band of others could have pulled off both the murder and the coverup and shifted the blame to Oswald so easily, without the CIA being involved in any important way.  Something similar to the way David Lifton imagined the way the original plan of the perps was supposed to work to shed further light on who did it. 

Had there been no assassination attempt on JFK or if he escaped uninjured or with minor injuries, the 1964 campaign would have been competitive even with Goldwater as the nominee. All the Republican candidate would have to do was win the states that Nixon won in 1960 plus the southern states sans Texas that Nixon lost in 1960.  If LBJ is dropped from the ticket, the Republican winning margin increases by also winning Texas. Goldwater is arguably a stronger candidate than any of the more moderate Republicans contesting the nomination as he avoids having a renegade southern Democrat run as a third party candidate syphoning off the southern states.

Movies that deal with directly the JFK assassination such as 1973’s “Executive Action” or indirectly such as Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” overplay JFK’s political strength in 1964.

JFK’s popularity steadily declined throughout 1963 despite the test ban treaty and the afterglow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A well orchestrated smear campaign based on health concerns, drug use, extramarital affairs, the secret deals made to end the missile crisis, the complicity of the administration in the Diem coup, claiming there was a missile gap in 1960 when he had been briefed by the CIA that it did not exist would have been withering. The CIA was well versed in fixing election results and certainly had more success in doing so than most of their other covert operations.

https://historyinpieces.com/research/jfks-presidential-approval-ratings

Interestingly, despite his huge electoral advantage in 1964, LBJ still had the CIA spy on Goldwater.

https://www.politico.eu/article/when-the-cia-infiltrated-a-presidential-campaign-barry-goldwater-lyndon-johnson-howard-hunt/

LM:  Had there been no assassination attempt on JFK or if he escaped uninjured or with minor injuries, the 1964 campaign would have been competitive even with Goldwater as the nominee. All the Republican candidate would have to do was win the states that Nixon won in 1960 plus the southern states sans Texas that Nixon lost in 1960.  If LBJ is dropped from the ticket, the Republican winning margin increases by also winning Texas. Goldwater is arguably a stronger candidate than any of the more moderate Republicans contesting the nomination as he avoids having a renegade southern Democrat run as a third party candidate syphoning off the southern states.
 
RO:  Let's look at some numbers from the 1964 election for perspective. Johnson won 61.1 % of the vote and 486 electoral votes, Goldwater won 38.5% and 52 electoral votes.  That was the largest share of the popular vote won by a Presidential candidate since 1820 and remains a record today.  A margin of 16 million votes out of 70 million cast!.  Goldwater won 6 states; 5 of the deep South and his home state of Arizona.  Most expected the deep South would turn on Kennedy because of his stand on civil rights for back folks and they did.  Johnson won every other state except Goldwater's home.
 
At that time, the conservative movement was in its infancy.  Goldwater got the nomination primarily by energizing them--a minority of a minority party--and because many had grown tired of "moderates" of the party who stood for nothing.  He would have been a decided underdog against Kennedy as he was against Johnson.
 
What was the magic wand you see to make Goldwater competitive if he was facing Kennedy?  Your "all he had to do" argument falls flat considering the actual outcome.  Greg thinks Johnson was the beneficiary of a "massive sympathy vote".
All those people voted for Johnson to be President and run the country because they were sorry Kennedy was murdered? 
 
OK, well let's look at the '64 Congressional elections, which wouldn't be affected much if at all by a sympathy vote for Kennedy, even if it existed in significant quantity. The situation in Congress that Kennedy would face in a second term was a key point for me.  The Democrats already had a strong majority in both houses:  Senate 66-34, House 259-176. If they could keep those majorities, combined with the usual freedom of action in a second term with no reelection to worry about, Kennedy could set out to do the things he really wanted.  Which certainly would have been a problem for the CIA and its plans. One could assume the switch from Kennedy to Johnson would not have a major impact on those races.
 
The Democrats majorities in both houses *increased*. They ended with veto proof super majorities, Senate 68-32, House, 295-140.Johnson quickly passed civil rights, voting rights, the war on poverty, etc. Kennedy would have been in position to do all of that and take on the war machine's activities around the world, starting with withdrawal from Vietnam. 


I thought a consensus had developed among researchers who thought about it, that the failure of the first two assassination attempts ramped up the pressure on the perps to kill JFK before the end of the year.  To avoid the chance of JFK getting another term.  I was surprised to see it argued here that they weren't worried about that or even that a 2nd term murder might be preferable. 

LM:  JFK’s popularity steadily declined throughout 1963 despite the test ban treaty and the afterglow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A well orchestrated smear campaign based on health concerns, drug use, extramarital affairs, the secret deals made to end the missile crisis, the complicity of the administration in the Diem coup, claiming there was a missile gap in 1960 when he had been briefed by the CIA that it did not exist would have been withering. The CIA was well versed in fixing election results and certainly had more success in doing so than most of their other covert operations.
 
RO:  A major smear campaign--you mean like the one the MSM and even many members of his own party, conducted on Trump when he first ran in 2016, which was more extensive and putatively damaging than the things you list here on Kennedy.  Some of your list aren't really smears and many would not be effective in a presidential campaign. Ended the missile crisis by a secret plan, had extramarital affairs, has health concerns, lied about a missile gap to get elected?  Oh boy, throw da bum out.

https://historyinpieces.com/research/jfks-presidential-approval-ratings
 

RO: Odd that you should post this in support of your argument that Kennedy was in electoral trouble, so the CIA had less to fear about waiting to kill him. The first sentence summarizes :  "President John F. Kennedy enjoyed very high public approval ratings compared with most modern presidents."  Backed by a chart showing Kennedy with average approval ratings superior to any President from Truman to Bush2, despite the ups and downs usual to most Presidents.

It’s a pretty reasonable assumption that the voters would not want 3 presidents in one year. Even the Nixon-Ford-Carter transition occurred in a period exceeding two years. Ford arguably would have won in 1976 except for his pardon of Nixon and a debate blunder.

While JFK’s popularity was high relative to other presidents during the first two years of his presidency, what’s relevant is the trend as the election approached. And if you look at the trend for 1963, it was trending downward. The Democratic sweep in the congress would not have likely happened if JFK was on the ticket as the party in power often loses congressional seats in presidential reelection years. LBJ got 1.1 million more votes in New York State than Robert Kennedy received in his senate campaign. The Republicans had no shortage of candidates vying for the nomination. Nixon himself would have probably entered the race except for his ignominious response to his defeat in the 1962 California race for governor.

I agree with the fact that Trump was spied on and the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign (irrespective of what I think of his political positions) by the CIA, FBI and the media which I think confirms the effectiveness of such techniques. The military actually defied Trump’s orders to withdraw from Syria and the media actually boasted about it. I am open to the possibility of election fraud and if Trump wasn’t so inept and surrounded by grifters and outright kooks, some hard evidence could have been produced. I say that because I remember reading a BBC piece on what signs election monitors look for when they are sent in to places that let’s say, have less than sterling reputations for honesty. Many of those signs apply to the US today and that’s not even getting into electronic voting machines.

In 1963, there was a scandal in the UK over a cabinet member, John Profumo’s dalliance with prostitutes. He was forced to resign even though the UK was far less prudish than the US at the time. I don’t know how old you are but public mores have shifted significantly since the early 1960s.

Sorry to derail the thread away from the Wegman film but I think it is futile to believe the CIA, in an official capacity, orchestrated the JFK assassination and then expect to find conclusive evidence of this by CIA document releases. I also find it unlikely that the media that indisputably participated in the coverup for nearly 6 decades is going to let a Tucker Carlson spill the beans.

lanceman wrote:

Sorry to derail the thread away from the Wegman film ......................

Oh, I think that ship sailed long ago.  

I thought a consensus had developed among researchers who thought about it, that the failure of the first two assassination attempts ramped up the pressure on the perps to kill JFK before the end of the year.

Sound like Wile E Coyote plotters. 

So to avoid failure in Dallas, they threw everything they could at it. An Italian army surplus rifle. They then relied on the DPD to kill their patsy and not arrest him (oops) and the Secret Service to steal the hahahaha Best Evidence and the military to play along with the autopsy. 

They then relied upon Bobby being so distraught, he was emotionally incapable of coming after them. Meanwhile no one passed on the lone nut memo to the CIA guys in MC who were busy using their assets to put  together a Castro-KGB did-it plot (oops)

Care to address Salandria's point that a main purpose of the murder was to say, to those in Washington and the rest of the country too, that we're in charge now and there is nothing you can do about it?

Sure Roger. It is supposition built onto other suppositions. It is scenario writing and having characters who can add explicaction to the script. It is the Conspiratocracy version of the nutter whose script has it that Oswald did it to make himself important. 

I'm not developing characters and supplying explication to or for them, for a script.  I'm doing my best just to follow actual evidence wherever it leads. 

There is no evidence suggesting any connection to alleged past plots, or that the failure of any previous plot created any urgency to do it in Dallas. Furher, consensus-building is just another way of saying "influencing" to attract others to your favored scenario. Explication then becomes imperitave to try and keep ahead of the logical flaws and narrative pot holes that will inevitably be found. In short, the Conspiratocracy in its "consensus-building" is just using the other side of the same propaganda coin flipped by the nutters. 

My aim is to rescue this case from the BS put out by both sides which just drags this case into the black-hole of history. It is, when stripped of all the bullshit, a cold case murder where the sole suspect died before having his day in court. 

Unfortunately, all major cases end up to some extent in this same vortex. Everyone want to be the one to solve them, from Jack the Ripper to Jonbenet Ramsey - and what you end up with is a potpouri of whackjobs trying to outdo each other in scenarios and cases against favored bad guys. 

Re the sympathy vote that went to LBJ. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, 60% of those polled claimed to have voted for Kennedy in 1960. That tranaslates as 12% additional sympathy votes for LBJ. 

I'm not trying to tell you who-did-it. But I can tell you that the sole accused did not - and that the case against the CIA - especially at the agency level, once devoid of all the supposition, misinformation and absolute claptrap driven by righteous (ie warranted) distrust, outright paranoia, or partisan political agendas that form parts of the "consensus" - is exceedingly weak.

Mick_Purdy wrote:

lanceman wrote:

Sorry to derail the thread away from the Wegman film ......................

Oh, I think that ship sailed long ago.  

It's like Question Time in parliament. The answers (or posts here) are in the same ballpark as the question (or OP here). 

It comes back to how much bullshit you're willing to swallow for the sake of a very slim chance that it may help your own cause. 

I have a zero tolerance policy. 

Here, former lone nutter Carlson, who had no issue with the CIA last year, suddenly does this year - and Lo -- it miraculously lines up with the GOP pro-Trump faction of building a consensus about "the Deep State" taking down The Don... the assassination - if done by the action arm of The Deep State (ie the CIA), then becomes a straightline between the two ex presidents. 

Of course, you're not swallowing bullshit if you're a true believer as Roger is and as he has a right to be. 

I don't think there is anything personal about the debate. Roger is handling himself with great aplomb and patience, imo. I'll let others judge me.

If the “CIA did it” theory is the truth, did the CIA ever expect to have to spend this much time and effort on the cover up?

Why did they forget to have the Secret Service let their guard down in Tampa?

lanceman wrote:If the “CIA did it” theory is the truth, did the CIA ever expect to have to spend this much time and effort on the cover up?

Why did they forget to have the Secret Service let their guard down in Tampa?

I just read some comments from the daughter of Judy Johnson - a TSBD employee who passed away earlier this year. Her statement is in CE 1381. According to the daughter, her mother felt intimidated when speaking to the DPD, Secret Service and FBI and said that her statement was watered down. Who didn't interview her, intimidate her or water her statements down? The CIA. They couldn't, even if they wanted to. So you're right. It has to be explained how and why all these other agencies suddenly got on board the CIA plan in Dallas and nowhere else. 

Meanwhile, the only actual covering up by the CIA was all about CYA in regard to any past association with the patsy, and while the CIA station in MC was busy trying to lay the foundation of Oswald as Cuban or Soviet agent, the rest of it was going alng with the lone nut scenario. No unity of purpose there at all.

greg_parker wrote:

Mick_Purdy wrote:

lanceman wrote:

Sorry to derail the thread away from the Wegman film ......................

Oh, I think that ship sailed long ago.  

It's like Question Time in parliament. The answers (or posts here) are in the same ballpark as the question (or OP here). 

It comes back to how much bullshit you're willing to swallow for the sake of a very slim chance that it may help your own cause. 

I have a zero tolerance policy. 

Here, former lone nutter Carlson, who had no issue with the CIA last year, suddenly does this year - and Lo -- it miraculously lines up with the GOP pro-Trump faction of building a consensus about "the Deep State" taking down The Don... the assassination - if done by the action arm of The Deep State (ie the CIA), then becomes a straightline between the two ex presidents. 

Of course, you're not swallowing bullshit if you're a true believer as Roger is and as he has a right to be. 

I don't think there is anything personal about the debate. Roger is handling himself with great aplomb and patience, imo. I'll let others judge me.

I think this is absolutely spot on for why Carlson did what he did. 

The only place where I have a somewhat different albeit uninformed opinion is regarding Larry Schnapf. He at least seems competent enough to be able to figure out what’s really going on here and use it to his advantage. What I’m sort of picturing is Larry aligning with this “deep state vs. Trump” faction - knowing full well that their only actual goal is to make Biden look bad and legitimize ultra right-wing anti-establishment bullshit - and using their support and power to take real political action towards getting documents released. 

I have no idea what goes into an oversight hearing, or what the potential outcomes might be, but I’d hope that Larry has the foresight to pull the plug if necessary, and have contingencies on contingencies for how to deal with these people. Maybe my hope is misplaced. 

Did we ever get a clear answer on if the lawsuit and pursuit of an oversight hearing are two separate paths? If not then yes I think it’d be idiotic to put all the eggs in one basket full of fanatic right-wing douchebags. If yes, I guess it depends on what the worst case scenario is for an oversight hearing, and if Larry’s legal strategy is good enough to handle anything that might happen without setting back JFK research a decade or two. I guess we’ll find out.

Sorry Roger, meant to comment on this as well...

RO:  You think waiting until JFK traveled abroad and murdering him there would have been preferable in their eyes to offing him on a public street in Dallas? 

Getting a foreign patsy in place in the country of said patsy, would have given the CIA much greater sway in the investigation. Something they did not have much of in Dallas. 

Or they could have just poisoned him in the White House and blamed a crazy person. 

I'm on record as saying the backup plan was to poison his steak at the luncheon and blame Joe Molina and his wife.

I say this because the only real precaution the Secret Service was going to implement at the luncheon was to select Kennedy's steak at randon. 

However, in the raid of the Molina home, the only thing they took was his wife's list of servers for the luncheon. She and others from her church group were going to perform that duty.  Had things proceded to the luncheon, I think the Secret Service poisons the steak and makes sure it is Molina's wife who serves it up.

Maybe one of those guys pushing Operation Northwoods or a first strike on the Soviet Union before the nuclear capabilities caught up with the US.  Kennedy's administration was swarming with candidates.

Indeed. And one of those urging a nuclear strike during the missile crisis was Fred Korth.