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Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

Intro­duc­tion: We begin with read­ing and analy­sis of an arti­cle by Jere­my Kuz­marov about David H. Byrd and his pur­chase of stock in LTV on the run-up to the Viet­nam War (that stock appre­ci­at­ed enor­mous­ly due to the Viet­nam War).

Byrd was also the founder of the Civ­il Air Patrol. A unit of the CAP was also the first asso­ci­a­tion between David Fer­rie and Lee Har­vey Oswald, as well as Iran-Con­tra drug smug­gler Bar­ry Seal, who may have been fly­ing a get­away plane from Dal­las on 11/22/1963.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

  • “. . . .Byrd’s right-wing sen­si­bil­i­ties were evi­dent when he trav­eled to Nazi Ger­many sev­er­al years before World War II and had a brief meet­ing with Hitler. When Byrd returned to the U.S. after that encounter, he spoke pos­i­tive­ly of Hitler’s ‘sin­cer­i­ty’ and ‘basi­cal­ly sound poli­cies.’. . .”
  • “. . . .Byrd sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped a close friend­ship with one of Hein­rich Himmler’s for­mer assas­sins, Wern­er von Alvensleben, a dou­ble agent in World War II who owned and oper­at­ed the big game hunt­ing com­pa­ny that Byrd alleged­ly trav­eled to Mozam­bique with at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Byrd was also friends with Ernest Udet, the #2 man at the Ger­man Nazi Luft­waffe appoint­ed by Her­man Goer­ing. Udet was in charge of research and devel­op­ment for the Luft­waffe dive-bomber [the JU87 or ‘Stu­ka,’ a favorite air­craft of Hans Ulrich Rudel–D.E.]. . . .”

Gen­er­aloberst Ernst Udet
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

Not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast, we present excerpts of Luft­waffe Gen­er­al Ude­t’s Wikipedia entry. As out­landish as it might ini­tial­ly appear, the curi­ous deaths of high-rank­ing Luft­waffe offi­cers who were on their way to attend Ude­t’s funer­al fol­low­ing his Novem­ber, 1941 sui­cide should be viewed with sus­pi­cion. Was the “sui­cide” used to mask Ude­t’s pos­si­ble defection/collaboration with the West?

Note that Udet was accus­tomed to hunt­ing in East Africa, as were D.H. Byrd and the younger Wern­er von Alvensleben.

Note also Albensleben’s asso­ci­a­tion with Nazi cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Len Riefen­stahl and his pilot­ing of a Cur­tis air­craft. In AFA#1, we not­ed how the Navy tech­nique of dive bomb­ing was betrayed to the Axis through demon­stra­tions using such air­craft.

  • ” . . . . Ernst Udet (26 April 1896 – 17 Novem­ber 1941) was a Ger­man pilot dur­ing World War I and a Luft­waffe Colonel-Gen­er­al (Gen­er­aloberst) dur­ing World War II. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Udet and anoth­er wartime comrade—Suchocky—became pilots to an African film­ing expe­di­tion. The cam­era­man was anoth­er vet­er­an, Schnee­berg­er, whom Udet called ‘Flea,’ and the guide was Sieden­topf, a for­mer East African estate own­er. . . . Udet engaged in hunt­ing while in Africa. . . .”
  • ” . . . . He appeared with Leni Riefen­stahl in three films: The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (1930), and S.O.S. Eis­berg (1933). . . .”
  • ” . . . . In the Berlin 1936 Sum­mer Olympics Udet entered the arts com­pe­ti­tion lit­er­a­ture cat­e­go­ry with his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Mein Fliegerleben (My Fly­ing Life) (pub­lished 1935). . . .”
  • ” . . . . Udet joined the Nazi par­ty in 1933 when Her­mann Göring promised to buy him two new U.S.-built Cur­tiss Hawk II biplanes (export des­ig­na­tion of the F11C‑2 Goshawk Hell­div­er). The planes were used for eval­u­a­tion pur­pos­es and thus indi­rect­ly influ­enced the Ger­man idea of dive bomb­ing aero­planes, such as the Junkers Ju 87 (Stu­ka) dive bombers. They were also used for aer­o­bat­ic shows held dur­ing the 1936 Sum­mer Olympics. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Udet became a major pro­po­nent of the dive bomber, tak­ing cred­it for hav­ing intro­duced it to the Luft­waffe. On 9 June 1936 he had, through his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions, been named Chief of the Tech­ni­cal Office, T‑Amt, (the devel­op­ment wing of the Reich Min­istry of Avi­a­tion). . . .”
  • ” . . . . On 17 Novem­ber 1941, Udet shot him­self in the head. . . . On their way to attend Ude­t’s funer­al, the World War II fight­er ace Wern­er Mölders died in a plane crash in Bres­lau, and the high Luft­waffe exec­u­tive Gen­er­al der Flieger Hel­muth Wilberg died in anoth­er plane crash near Dres­den. . . .”

Next, we present a mas­ter­ful analy­sis by the bril­liant Russ Bak­er decon­struct­ing D.H. (“Dry Hole”) Byrd’s cov­er sto­ry of being on Safari in Mozam­bique at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

We then excerpt a very impor­tant analy­sis by Dan Alcorn, link­ing David H. Byrd with a milieu involv­ing a for­mer assas­sin for the S.S. and David H. Byrd. Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

  • ” . . . . The sec­ond [FOIA] request  is  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben,  who  had  been  an intel­li­gence asset – a dou­ble agent  for the  U.S.  OSS  in  World  War  II, and  who  was  asso­ci­at­ing  with  David  Harold  Byrd,  the  own­er  of  the  Book  Depos­i­to­ry  build­ing  around  the  time  of  the  assas­si­na­tion. . . .”
  • ” . . . . We have  not  been  able  to  get  access  to  the  oper­a­tional  files  of  the  CIA;  they’ve  refused  to  give  us  access  to  any  of  the  oper­a­tional  files  about  these  three  sub­jects  of  the  inves­ti­ga­tion.  This  is  impor­tant  to  us  because  we  have  sourc­ing  from  the  Dal­las  Morn­ing  News  that  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  was  in  Dal­las  in  late  1963  as  the  guest  of  David  Harold  Byrd. And  this  is  impor­tant  as  we  get  into  the  back­ground  of  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  because  at  one  time,  ear­li­er  in  his  career  in  1933,  he  had  been  an  assas­sin  for  Hein­rich  Himm­ler,  the  Nazi  leader  in  Hitler’s  Ger­many,  and  that  makes  it  rel­e­vant  to  explor­ing  what  was  going  on  in  1963. . . .”
  • ” . . . . Among oth­er  peo­ple,  our  research  has  found–  were  known  to  David  Harold  Byrd,  was  an  Ernst  Udet.  U ‑D ‑E ‑T, and he  was  the  num­ber  two  in  the  Luft­waffe  to  Her­mann  Göring  in  Nazi  Ger­many.  Byrd  describes  Udet  as  a  close  friend  in  Byrd’s  auto­bi­og­ra­phy,  and  Udet  was  in  charge  of research  and  devel­op­ment  for  the  Luft­waffe,  which  is  the  theme  that  seems  to  run  through  some  of  these  con­nec­tions:  the  for­ward ‑look­ing  research  and  devel­op­ment  process  for  avi­a­tion  and  aero­space.  Avi­a­tion  was  the  basis  for  the  rela­tion­ship  between  Byrd  and  Ernst  Udet  of  the  Luft­waffe. . . .”
  • ” . . . . In  research­ing  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  and  his  big  game  hunt­ing  oper­a­tion,  I  came  across  the  infor­ma­tion  that  von  Alvensleben ‘s  favorite  rifle  was  the  Mannlich­er-Schoe­nauer  rifle. Of  course,  I  was  famil­iar  with  the  Mannlich­er ‑Car­cano  because  that’s  the  rifle  said  to  have    been  used  to  kill  Pres­i­dent  Kennedy.  I  wasn’t  aware  of  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer.  I  did  some  research  and  it  turns  out  that  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  was  the  finest  hunt­ing  rifle  of  that  era,  it  was  an  Aus­tri­an  rifle. . . .”
  • ” . . . . It  was  said  on  numer­ous  sites  devot­ed  to  guns  and  ammu­ni­tion.  that  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  and  the  Mannlich­er-Car­cano  rifles  used  essen­tial­ly  iden­ti­cal  ammu­ni­tion. Very  dif­fi­cult  to  tell  the  two  car­tridges  apart.  There  are  sources  among  the  blogs  that  say  the  ammu­ni­tion, some  ammu­ni­tion  was  man­u­fac­tured  with  the  pur­pose  of  being  used  inter­change­ably  between  the  two  rifles.  Well, this  rifle  was  the  favorite  rifle  of  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben,  the  big  game  hunter.  It  was  also  favored  by  oth­er  big  game  hunters  of  the  time because  of  its  abil­i­ty  to  stop  large  ani­mals;  that  was  what  it  was  par­tic­u­lar­ly  effec­tive  for.  In  research­ing  the  Mannlich­er-Schoe­nauer  rifle  I  came  across  tes­ti­mo­ny  to  the  War­ren  Com­mis­sion; it came  up  before  the  War­ren  Com­mis­sion in the fol­low­ing way: War­ren  Com­mis­sion­er  John  McCloy  was  at  a  ses­sion  in  which  the  FBI  bal­lis­tics  expert, Robert  Fra­zier,  tes­ti­fied.  John  McCloy  inter­rupt­ed  the  ques­tion­ing  to  ask  his  own  ques­tion,  which  was  whether  the  three  hulls (car­tridges)  that  were  found  on  the  sixth  floor  of  the  Book  Depos­i­to­ry  build­ing  could  have  been  fired  by  a  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  rifle  rather  than  a  Mannlich­er-Car­cano  rifle.  . . .” 

The pro­gram con­cludes with an excerpt from Joseph McBride’s book Into the Night­mare: My Search for the Killers of John F. Kennedy and Offi­cer J.D. Tip­pit con­cern­ing the role of tele­vi­sion in cog­ni­tive­ly and polit­i­cal­ly shap­ing the pub­lic’s view of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

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Dave Emory's weekly For The Record program examines the interconnecting historical processes, people and institutions which shape the complex geopolitical landscape.

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Pterrafractyl's Nest

Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution Did you hear? President Trump is going to be running for a third term in office. And he's not joking. Who knows how serious he is, but as we're going to see, the constitutionality of third presidential term may not be as set in stone as many suspect. Along with the rest of the US Constitution. A constitutional convention could be just around the corner. Just a lawsuit away. And we can thank the DC austerity lobby and their fellow travelers at the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC) for this looming threat. The same austerity lobby that has spent years trying to roll back Obamacare, eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid through block-grants, and generally erode what's left of the US's social safety-nets as more and more Americans are forced to take any work available just to qualify for increasingly meager government assistance. That austerity lobby. It's back with a big sneaky plan: a lawsuit purporting to prove that the 34 state threshold for an Article V constitutional convention has already been met. David M. Walker - the former US Comptroller for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush - is leading the legal effort, with legal support from NRA lawyer (and CNP member) Charles "Chuck" Cooper. If the lawsuit succeeds, get ready for a new constitution written by and for the oligarchy. But this story isn't just about this new lawsuit. It's also about how the DC austerity lobby has been working with CNP to push these constitutional convention ambitions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC austerity lobbying had failed in achieving a "grand bargain" of slashed entitlements. A round of lobbying that began in earnest as the 2008 financial crisis was still playing out with David Walker - then President and CEO of the newly formed austerity-centric Pete Peterson Foundation - taking on a lead role as public austerity advocate. The Great Recession was a great opportunity for a "grand bargain". And it almost worked. But didn't work, at least not entirely, and it wasn't long after that failure became clear that we saw the austerity lobby and the CNP begin hatching far more ambitious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we're also going to see, if a constitutional convention does happen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be running it. The DC austerity lobby really is just a lawsuit away from winning everything. Read more »

Books for Download

The New Germany and The Old Nazis Book written in 1961 asks: Has Germany really changed? If so, where are the hundreds of thousands who once faithfully and eagerly served Hitler's reign of terror? And what is life like today for the Jews who are still in Germany? Read more »