These programs continue our series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about the Oliver Stone documentary JFK Revisited, for which Jim wrote the screenplay.
Yet another area in which JFK’s policy outlook ran afoul of the prevailing wisdom of the Cold War was with regard to the Congo. A Belgian colony which was the victim of genocidal policies of King Leopold (estimates of the dead run as high as 8 million), the diamond and mineral-rich Congo gained a fragile independence.
In Africa, as well, Kennedy understood the struggle of emerging nations seeking freedom from colonial domination as falling outside of and transcending stereotyped Cold War dynamics.
In the Congo, the brutally administered Belgian rule had spawned a vigorous independence movement crystallized around the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. Understanding of, and sympathetic to Lumumba and the ideology and political forces embodied in him, Kennedy opposed the reactionary status quo favored by both European allies like the United Kingdom and Belgium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the United States.
In 1961, there was another assassination that overlapped events leading up to JFK’s killing. U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was on the same page as JFK with regard to Congolese independence from Belgium, negation of the Belgian-sponsored attempt at getting mineral-rich Katanga province to secede and was of the same mind as JFK with regard to assuring Patrice Lumumba’s survival.
Hammarskjold’s 1961 death in a plane crash was not the accident it was represented as being:
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; Introduction Copyright 2022 by Oliver Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 105.
. . . . The photos of Hammarskjold show his body as the only one not burned or charred. And he had a playing card, reportedly the ace of spades, stuffed into his shirt collar above the know in the tie. Now, due to Susan Williams’ book and new evidence offered by Desmond Tutu and the Union of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are controversial document that indicate Allen Dulles was involved in the sabotage of the plane. The project was called Operation Celeste and was to be carried out through a secret white supremacist group called SAMIR.
Kennedy’s old mentor Edmund Gullion advised JFK that Hammarskjold’s death was not the accident it was represented as being.
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; Introduction Copyright 2022 by Oliver Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 402–403.
. . . . Suspicions were everywhere that there had been foul play. The first person on the scene was the US air attache. And there were bullets that he said were in the victims including Hammarskjold. And a close friend of President Kennedy, Edmund Gullion, sent a cable home saying: Contrary to the official explanation for this tragic incident, this was an assassination . . . .
In the Congo, LBJ reversed JFK’s policy stance, and the corporate looting of the Congo resulted under General Joseph Mobutu, himself a beneficiary of the piracy.
LBJ also reversed JFK’s policy toward Indonesia.
In 1955, Sukarno hosted a conference of non-aligned nations that formalized and concretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nationalism of some Dutch industrial properties, led the U.S. to try and overthrow Sukharno, which was attempted in 1958.
Kennedy understood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indonesia in 1964 to forge a more constructive relationship with Sukharno. Obviously, his murder in 1963 precluded the trip.
In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aided coup in which as many as a million people were killed.
Of particular interest in connection with Indonesia, is the disposition of Freeport Sulphur, a company that had enlisted the services of both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie in an effort to circumvent limitations on its operations imposed by Castro’s Cuba.
It should be noted that Freeport had set its corporate sights on a very lucrative pair of mountains in Indonesia, both of which had enormous deposits of minerals, iron, copper, silver and gold in particular.
Cuba was an area of major conflict between JFK and the Powers That Be.
When JFK gave a green light to the attempted overthrow of Castro via the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had understood that the plan itself was destined to work.
In fact, Allen Dulles knew the plan as formulated would fail, and expected Kennedy to authorize the military to step in and neutralize Castro.
Realizing that he had been lied to, JFK dismissed Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and General C.P. Cabell.
He also spoke of shattering the CIA into a thousand pieces. It is grimly, morbidly ironic that it was Kennedy’s head that was shattered, and that he was “decapitated.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK rebuffed the pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, thereby avoiding the confrontation with Soviet tactical nuclear weapons that had been provided to Castro, unbeknownst to the U.S.
Opting for a blockade, Kennedy also established a quid-pro-quo with Nikita Khrushchev, agreeing to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey.
This was followed by a number of back-door diplomatic attempts at normalizing relations with Cuba.
At the moment that Castro heard JFK had been killed, he was meeting with French journalist Jean Daniel, who had functioned as one of those back-door diplomatic channels to Castro.
After discussion of the “dual front” 531 Lafayette Place/544 Camp Street in New Orleans run by “private investigator” Guy Banister, we review the alleged “leftist” Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement with that organization and his apparently contrived altercation with Carlos Bringuier, the anti-Castro Cuban and member of the DRE, part of the CIA-sponsored fronts operating against Castro.
As we have seen in past programs, George Joannides directed the DRE for CIA during Bringuier’s tenure with the organization. Researcher Jefferson Morley filed a FOIA suit against CIA to precipitate more disclosure about Joannides, who had been the Agency’s liaison with the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Appellate Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh cast a deciding vote negating Morley’s appeal.
Discussion concludes with analysis of how two visual events keyed major events in the investigation of JFK’s assassination: a 1975 TV program, on which Geraldo Rivera–featuring comedian Dick Gregory and Robert Groden–aired the Zapruder film. The uproar following that led to the formation of the House Select Committee on Assassination.
The “crawl” at the end of Oliver Stone’s JFK, informing the audience that the HSCA had classified key documents until 2029, generating further outrage and leading to the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board.
Beginning with discussion of the genesis of JFK Revisited, we highlight a 2013 conference in Pittsburgh, PA, at which Jim DiEugenio delivered a power point presentation about President Kennedy’s foreign policy program and the decisions that resulted from that.
Because the address drew a standing ovation from the audience, one of the attendees brought the material in the presentation to the attention of Oliver Stone, which, in turn, led to the launching of this documentary project.
Citing the routine rhetorical dismissal of the realities of the JFK assassination as a coup d’etat, journalists and politicians routinely employ the rhetorical device “Conspiracy Theory.” Meaning, in effect, a “deranged, lone nut,” the term has its applied origins in an internal CIA discussion about how to counteract Warren Commission critics!
We discuss the MSM’s conflation of the Q‑Anon types with researchers such as Mr. DiEugenio and Mr. Emory.
Immediately following the release of the documentary (along with the DVD’s of the material and the book JFK Revisited), author Tim Weiner penned a piece for Rolling Stone magazine in which he represented the arguments presented in the film (and in the accompanying book, by extension) as stemming from Soviet disinformation.
We note that this type of misrepresentation is in line with the widely distributed propaganda assertion scapegoating Russia and Vladimir Putin for this country’s problems and those of the world in general.
Suffice it to say that none of the material in the documentary is Soviet/Russian.
By way of demonstrating the nonsensical nature of the contention that “Soviet/Russian propaganda” underlies the arguments presented by Stone/DiEugenio, we review a key element from Jim’s magnum opus Destiny Betrayed.
When Richard Helms, head of the CIA at that time, convened a group to discuss Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, Ray Rocca, the top aide to Agency Counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, opined that Garrison would obtain a conviction of Shaw. Rocca was the acknowledged expert at CIA on Garrison/JFK assassination.
Not even Tim Weiner could dismiss the CIA’s number two counterintelligence official as “a Soviet agent/propagandist.”
Attempts at portraying the JFK assassination as a Soviet conspiracy continue to this day with former CIA chief James Woolsey having authored the recently-released Operation Dragon, which uses the allegations of a former Romanian intelligence agent to pin responsibility for the assassination on the U.S.S.R.
Attempts to attribute the JFK assassination on the Soviet Union and/or Fidel Castro’s Cuba are not new.
The war in Ukraine is a direct echo of an aspect of attempting to “paint Oswald Red.”
The Nazis and fascists in control of the reins of national security power in Ukraine are directly descended from the OUN/B of Stephan Bandera, whose forces collaborated with the Third Reich during World War II.
This political and historical dynamic is set forth in a number of programs, including FTR#876.
After Oswald’s return to the U.S., he was met by Spas T. Raikin, Secretary General of the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. This despite the fact that Oswald had proposed giving military secrets to the Soviet Union.
After the death of Bandera, the OUN/B was headed by Yaroslav Stetzko, the head of the WWII Nazi collaborationist government, which implemented Hitler’s ethnic cleansing programs. The OUN/B dominated the ABN, which was originally named the Committee of Subjugated Nations, when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943.
Echoes of the Bandera organization and the ABN are present in the destabilization of China, as well.
LBJ successfully used the fears of a Third World War that might stem from the perception that the USSR and/or Cuba was behind the assassination in order to persuade Earl Warren, among others, that they should serve on the commission. We discussed “the painting of Oswald Red” in numerous programs, including FTR#‘s 925, 926.
For much of this year, the nation’s attention has been focused on the January 6 Hearings. Noteworthy is the fact that the nation’s lawful government was overthrown on 11/22/1963.
When Biden intones that “our democracy is under fire,” he is “a day late and a dollar short.”
“Our democracy” was, literally, under fire on that Friday in Dallas, and democracy has been a mere façade in the time since.
Members of Congress have sounded grave warnings about the Secret Service and apparently “lost” communications concerning the assaults of 1/06/2021.
As these talks progress, we will highlight the Secret Service and their performance vis a vis the assassination of JFK. Congress, too, is “a day late and a dollar short.”
As will be detailed later in this series, both Presidents Trump and Biden delayed release of the ARRB records at the designated junctures.
Another interesting “Team Trump” link to the assassination investigation concerns Jefferson Morley’s FOIA suit to learn more about George Joannides, who managed the Carlos Bringuier-linked DRE for the CIA.
Morley’s appeal was turned down by an appeals court, with Brett Kavanaugh casting the deciding voter, just before decamping for his hearings on his qualifications for the Supreme Court.
One of JFK’s stances that put him greatly at odds concerning national security and foreign policy was his view toward, and actions in conjunction with, the former Soviet Union.
In that regard, we note: Kennedy’s authorization of the atmospheric test ban treaty, the first substantive arms limitation agreement with the former Soviet Union—bitterly opposed by key members of the national security establishment; JFK’s refusal to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, combined with his refusal to utilize the military to assist the Bay of Pigs invasion, cemented the view among key national security players that he was a traitor/Communist; Kennedy’s June 1963 speech at American University, in which he recognized the USSR’s enormous contribution toward the defeat of Nazi Germany and called for a new relationship with the USSR; JFK’s proposal that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. undertake joint space exploration.
Bridging discussion that will be continued in our next programs, we note a key quote from the book and documentary by Lisa Pease, noting that JFK stood apart from the Eisenhower/Dulles view that non-alignment among the former colonial territories that achieved independence was the equivalent of pro-Communist orientation.
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 352.
. . . . Lisa Pease: His [JFK’s] approach was a radical break from his predecessor. In an oral history interview that Sukarno gave after John Kennedy’s death, he said words to the effect that what made Kennedy special is that he believed non-alignment was not amoral as it had been under John Foster Dulles. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. . . .
Mr. Emory is doing three, one-hour plus Patreon talks, accompanied by machine-generated transcripts. In the most recent talks, he details the strategic situation in Ukraine, including the sabotage of the pipelines and the referenda in Ukraine’s Eastern provinces, as well as detailing the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A new schedule features once-a-week talks analyzing a key aspect of contemporary affairs. On October 2, we discussed mind control, a vitally important and overlooked dynamic. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In the latest Patreon talks, Mr. Emory goes through the Western print edition of “The New York Times,” presenting the deep political and historical context underlying the articles and op-ed pieces. On Sunday, 6/12, Dave discusses the psychological and sociological aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, including speculation concerning the “Bio-Psy-Op-Apocalypse’s effect on the public reaction to the Ukraine War. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
On Sunday, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Monday, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memorial Day Weekend by featuring Dave Emory’s research on the fundamental interrelationship of fascism, money, war and murder. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In the latest Patreon talk, recorded on French Election Day, 4/24/2022, we explore the history of French fascism from the transnational corporate links of the early 20th century to the rise of the Front National. Particular emphasis is on the continuity from the Pre-WWII Cagoule, through the SS-aligned Vichy fascist milieu to the operations of the post-WWII fascist international. The talk highlights some of the French fascists in Dallas, Texas, 11/22/1963. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In the latest Patreon talk, Mr. Emory delves into manifestations of political lying, with the assassination of President Kennedy as foundation/centerpiece of discussion. The role of the Ukrainian fascist OUN/B and overlapping Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations in the JFK assassination comprise the bulk of the presentation. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The top intelligence officers whose activities shaped the political landscape of the 20th century and the foundations of political and economic reality of the 21st wore the dual hats of prominent corporate lawyers and executive-level spooks. Sullivan & Cromwell partners John Foster and Allen Dulles were Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively. Highlights Include: CIA officer Frank Wisner’s role as director of the Office of Policy Coordination under the Foster/Allen Dulles stewardship; Wisner’s previous work for Carter, Ledyard and Milburn—another key Wall Street law firm that was the general counsel for the Dow Jones Corporation (the parent firm of the New York Stock Exchange); OSS chief William Donovan’s work as a leading Wall Street lawyer; Donovan’s 1923 “sympathetic” lunch with Adolf Hitler. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
Supplementing the observations Mr. Emory has made concerning the Ukraine War and the attendant media coverage as a “philosopher’s stone” alchemically turning the West, both as individuals and institutions, into the same fabric as the Ukraine Institute of National Memory, we [again] highlight a commentary on Ukraine 24–one of the country’s premier television outlets. The announcer quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In a previous post, we set forth excerpts from “The Bormann Brotherhood” documenting the Third Reich genesis of the terms “Iron Curtain” and “Better Dead Than Red”–the latter the propaganda battle cry of Germany’s Radio Werewolf. Near the end of WWII, Gehlen set up the Werewolf guerilla organization, which recruited from the ranks of the UPA: “. . . . Gehlen provided [SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans] Prutzmann with a detailed blue-print for the organization of the Werewolves . . . . Prutzmann and his sub-commanders resorted to enlisting to enlisting members of the rapidly dissolving Vlassov Army and the Ukrainian UPA . . . . Gehlen had produced the original scheme for Werewolf . . . .” UPA combatants continued guerilla warfare until 1952, jumping to CIA: “. . . . In south-west Ukraine and eastern Poland bands of the nationalist UPA many still with their German SS officers, harassed the Soviet Army, the Polish militia of the communist-dominated Warsaw government and the local authorities set up in the liberated territories. . . . Trained in guerilla warfare by the Germans, they ambushed Soviet road convoys, used hit-and-run tactics, and carried out innumerable sabotage actions. Indeed, some of the Ukrainian insurgents held out in the forests of the Carpathian mountains until 1952. . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
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