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FTR#1216 The Dealey Plaza Blues

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­­­FTR #1216 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Revis­it­ing the event that pro­pelled Mr. Emory into this field of endeav­or, this pro­gram reflects on the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on the 58th anniver­sary of his killing.

One source of Mr. Emory’s “Dealey Plaza Blues” is a depress­ing piece in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine from 11/22/2021.

In addi­tion to the minor styl­is­tic sin of end­ing a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion, Tim Wein­er tars those who have grasped the doc­u­men­tary truth of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as vic­tims of Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da.

In the midst of the red-bait­ing, Wein­er does offer one unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, true state­ment: “ . . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .”

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go.

This sto­ry, too, was pub­lished by Times on the anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion.

Pre­sent­ing the pre­dictable ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.

(What does not occur to U.S. media out­lets, is that Chi­na’s pro­pri­etary advances in this area are an alto­geth­er com­pre­hen­si­ble strat­e­gy for con­tin­ued indus­tri­al expan­sion in the cen­tu­ry to come, while mov­ing to reduce green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tion in keep­ing with the inter­na­tion­al legal and diplo­mat­ic tar­gets for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.)

Below, we present infor­ma­tion fea­tured in FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.

The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects:

  1. Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.
  2. Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–per­mit­ted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources.
  3. Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” (In the Con­go, as in so many coun­tries, the World War II Allies reneg­ing on their ini­tial pledge to grant inde­pen­dence to Euro­pean colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that had been occu­pied by Axis coun­tries, pro­pelled colo­nial prop­er­ties into the Cold War meat-grinder in an attempt to gain inde­pen­dence.)

Per­spec­tive on this unhap­py anniver­sary comes from The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. . . .”

The Times pub­lished the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion enshrined as the War­ren Report.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights parts of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion that sup­port Gar­rison’s the­sis.

” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .” 

The excerpt comes from anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent book on the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion–Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy. The book was the focus of FTR#190.

The lat­ter por­tion of the broad­cast high­lights the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

” . . . .  [CIA Direc­tor Richard] Helms want­ed the group to ‘con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency’ of what Gar­ri­son was doing in ‘New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw.’. . . [CIA offi­cial Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt ‘that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.’ This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .”

We con­clude with a sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approaches–this is anoth­er gen­er­at­ing force behind “The Dealey Plaza Blues.”

The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire.

For a nation that has cho­sen to ignore what is per­haps the deci­sive event in Amer­i­can his­to­ry–the assas­si­na­tion of JFK (Sr.) in Dal­las, Texas–the goth­ic fan­ta­sy dri­ving a dis­turbing­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple is, per­haps, a fas­cist after-din­ner drink.

Kool-Aid?

1a.  One source of Mr. Emory’s “Dealey Plaza Blues” is a depress­ing piece in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine from 11/22/2021.

In addi­tion to the minor styl­is­tic sin of end­ing a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion, Tim Wein­er tars those who have grasped the doc­u­men­tary truth of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as vic­tims of Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da.

In the midst of the red-bait­ing, Wein­er does offer one unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, true state­ment: “ . . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .”

“This Is Where Oliv­er Stone Got His Loony JFK Assas­si­na­tion The­o­ries From” by Tim Wein­er; Rolling Stone; 11/22/2021.

Oliv­er Stone once made bril­liant movies like Pla­toon, which won Oscars for best pic­ture and best direc­tor. These days, he’s a tin­foil-hat­ted fab­ri­ca­tor. His new doc­u­men­tary — JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass, pre­mier­ing on Show­time on, you guessed it, Nov. 22 — is root­ed in a big lie. It comes 30 years after the pre­miere of JFK, a film unri­valed in the annals of Amer­i­can cin­e­mat­ic pro­pa­gan­da. Both are based on the undy­ing delu­sion that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was mur­dered by the Deep State: The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, backed by the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex.

Do you believe that the CIA killed JFK? Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans sus­pect so. Let me ask you, then: Why do they believe it?

The tale can be traced to a Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tion. . . .

. . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .

1b. Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go.

Pre­sent­ing the pre­dictable ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.

(What does not occur to U.S. media out­lets, is that Chi­na’s pro­pri­etary advances in this area are an alto­geth­er com­pre­hen­si­ble strat­e­gy for con­tin­ued indus­tri­al expan­sion in the cen­tu­ry to come, while mov­ing to reduce green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tion in keep­ing with the inter­na­tion­al legal and diplo­mat­ic tar­gets for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.)

Below, we present infor­ma­tion fea­tured in FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.

The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects:

  1. Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.
  2. Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–per­mit­ted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources.
  3. Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” (In the Con­go, as in so many coun­tries, the World War II Allies reneg­ing on their ini­tial pledge to grant inde­pen­dence to Euro­pean colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that had been occu­pied by Axis coun­tries, pro­pelled colo­nial prop­er­ties into the Cold War meat-grinder in an attempt to gain inde­pen­dence.)

“How The U.S. Lost Ground to Chi­na in The Race for Clean Ener­gy” by Eric Lip­ton and Dianne Searcey; The New York Times; 11/22/2021.

. . . . Freeport-McMoRan had been deter­mined to sell. The com­pa­ny, one of the world’s largest cop­per-min­ing out­fits, had made a cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly bad bet on the oil and gas indus­try just before oil prices tanked and the world began to shift to renew­able ener­gy. With debt pil­ing up, the com­pa­ny had no option but to unload its Con­go oper­a­tions. . . .

. . . . It had been a decade since Zaire, now the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, had secured inde­pen­dence from Bel­gium, and as the leader of a coun­try abun­dant in nat­ur­al resources, Mobu­tu found him­self with con­sid­er­able glob­al clout.

Not only did he con­trol those con­trol those resources, but he had emerged as a key inter­me­di­ary for the Unit­ed States in its efforts to keep the Sovi­et Union from mak­ing inroads in Africa. . . .

. . . . Ura­ni­um, cobalt, cop­per and oth­er ores from the Con­go are cov­et­ed for their extra­or­di­nary puri­ty. They are of such high grade that waste piles from old mines often con­tain more cobalt and cop­per than most active mines else­where in the world.

By the mid-1960s, the C.I.A. had set up one of its most exten­sive oper­a­tions in the coun­try, secret­ly bankrolling a small army of mer­ce­nar­ies and Con­golese troops. The agency ran mis­sions with the help of U.S. war­planes to sup­press Sovi­et-backed rebels. . . .

. . . . Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca saw the U.S. inter­ven­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make mon­ey while pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can-style cap­i­tal­ism. Citibank, Gen­er­al Motors, Goodyear and oth­ers set up man­u­fac­tur­ing out­posts or offices in the Con­go. . . .

2. LBJ 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:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

3. As not­ed above, LBJ reversed Kennedy’s pol­i­cy vis a vis Sukarno. 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.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 374–375.

. . . . Short­ly after, his aid bill land­ed on John­son’s desk. The new pres­i­dent refused to sign it. . . .

. . . . In return for not sign­ing the aid bill, in 1964, LBJ received sup­port from Both Augus­tus Long and Jock Whit­ney of Freeport Sul­phur in his race against Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter. In fact, Long estab­lished a group called the Nation­al Inde­pen­dent Com­mit­tee for John­son. This group of wealthy busi­ness­men includ­ed Robert Lehman of Lehman Broth­ers and Thomas Cabot, Michael Paine’s cousin. . . . Then, in ear­ly 1965, Augus­tus Long was reward­ed for help­ing John­son get elect­ed. LBJ appoint­ed him to the For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board. This is a small group of wealthy pri­vate cit­i­zens who advis­es the pres­i­dent on intel­li­gence mat­ters. The mem­bers of this group can approve and sug­gest covert activ­i­ties abroad. This appoint­ment is notable for what was about to occur. For with Sukarno now unpro­tect­ed by Pres­i­dent Kennedy, the writ­ing was on the wall. The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency now bean to send into Indone­sia its so called “first team.” . . . .

. . . . Suhar­to now began to sell off Indone­si­a’s rich­es to the high­est bid­der. Includ­ing Freeport Sul­phur, which opened what were per­haps the largest cop­per and gold mines in the world there. . . . Freeport, along with sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies, now har­vest­ed bil­lions from the Suhar­to regime. . . .

4. 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.

 Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 28–29.

. . . . By 1960, a native rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader named Patrice Lumum­ba had gal­va­nized the nation­al­ist feel­ing of the coun­try. Bel­gium decid­ed to pull out. But they did so rapid­ly, know­ing that tumult would ensue and they could return to col­o­nize the coun­try again. After Lumum­ba was appoint­ed prime min­is­ter, tumult did ensue. The Bel­gians and the British backed a rival who had Lumum­ba dis­missed. They then urged the break­ing away of the Katan­ga province because of its enor­mous min­er­al wealth. Lumum­ba looked to the Unit­ed Nations for help, and also the USA. The for­mer decid­ed to help. The Unit­ed States did not. In fact, when Lumum­ba vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton July of 1960, Eisen­how­er delib­er­ate­ly fled to Rhode Island. Rebuffed by Eisen­how­er, Lumum­ba now turned to the Rus­sians for help in expelling the Bel­gians from Katan­ga. This sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles. The pres­i­dent now autho­rized a series of assas­si­na­tion plots by the CIA to kill Lumum­ba. These plots final­ly suc­ceed­ed on Jan­u­ary 17, 1961, three days before Kennedy was inau­gu­rat­ed. 

His first week in office, Kennedy request­ed a full review of the Eisenhower/Dulles pol­i­cy in Con­go. The Amer­i­can ambas­sador to that impor­tant African nation heard of this review and phoned Allen Dulles to alert him that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was about to over­turn pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy there. Kennedy did over­turn this pol­i­cy on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1961. Unlike Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles, Kennedy announced he would begin full coop­er­a­tion with Sec­re­tary Dag Ham­marskjold at the Unit­ed Nations on this thorny issue in order to bring all the armies in that war-torn nation under con­trol. He would also attempt top neu­tral­ize the coun­try so there would be no East/West Cold War com­pe­ti­tion. Third, all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers being held should be freed. Not know­ing he was dead, this part was aimed at for­mer prime min­is­ter Lumum­ba, who had been cap­tured by his ene­mies. (There is evi­dence that, know­ing Kennedy would favor Lumum­ba, Dulles had him killed before JFK was inau­gu­rat­ed.) Final­ly, Kennedy opposed the seces­sion of min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province. . . . Thus began Kennedy’s near­ly three year long strug­gle to see Con­go not fall back under the claw of Euro­pean impe­ri­al­ism. . . . 

5. In the Con­go, as in Indone­sia, LBJ reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy stance, and the cor­po­rate loot­ing of the Con­go result­ed under Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pira­cy.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 372–373.

 . . . . But in Octo­ber and Novem­ber [of 1963], things began to fall apart. Kennedy want­ed Colonel Michael Greene, an African expert, to train the Con­golese army in order

to sub­due a left­ist rebel­lion. But Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, with the back­ing of the Pen­ta­gon, man­aged to resist this train­ing, which the Unit­ed Nations backed. In 1964, the com­mu­nist rebel­lion picked up steam and began tak­ing whole provinces. The White House did some­thing Kennedy nev­er seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed: uni­lat­er­al action by the USA. John­son and McGe­orge Bundy had the CIA fly sor­ties with Cuban pilots to halt the com­mu­nist advance. With­out Kennedy, the UN now with­drew. Amer­i­ca now became an ally of Bel­gium and inter­vened with arms, air­planes and advis­ers. Mobu­tu now invit­ed Tshombe back into the gov­ern­ment. Tshombe, per­haps at the request of the CIA, now said that the rebel­lion was part of a Chi­nese plot to take over Con­go. Kennedy had called in Edmund Gul­lion to super­vise the attempt to make the Con­go gov­ern­ment into a mod­er­ate coali­tion, avoid­ing the extremes of left and right. But with the Tshombe/Mobutu alliance, that was now dashed. Rightwing South Africans and Rhode­sians were now allowed to join the Con­golese army in a war on the “Chi­nese-inspired left.” And with the Unit­ed Nations gone, this was all done under the aus­pices of the Unit­ed States. The right­ward tilt now con­tin­ued unabat­ed. By 1965, Mobu­tu had gained com­plete pow­er. And in 1966, he installed him­self as mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor. . . . Mobu­tu now allowed his coun­try to be opened up to loads of out­side invest­ment. The rich­es of the Con­go were mined by huge West­ern cor­po­ra­tions. Their own­ers and offi­cers grew wealthy while Mobu­tu’s sub­jects were mired in pover­ty. Mobu­tu also sti­fled polit­i­cal dis­sent. And he now became one of the rich­est men in Africa, per­haps the world. . . .

6. Per­spec­tive on this unhap­py anniver­sary comes from The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. . . .”

The Times pub­lished the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion enshrined as the War­ren Report.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 383–384.

 . . . . As the Con­go cri­sis reached its cli­max, a new cor­re­spon­dent for The New York Times showed up in Leopoldville with a dis­tinct­ly anti-Lumum­ba bias. Paul Hof­mann was a diminu­tive, sophis­ti­cat­ed Aus­tri­an with a col­or­ful past. Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. The Angle­ton fam­i­ly helped place Hof­mann in the Rome bureau of The New York Times, where he con­tin­ued to be of use to his friends in U.S. intel­li­gence, trans­lat­ing reports from con­fi­den­tial sources inside the Vat­i­can and pass­ing them along to Angle­ton. Hof­mann became one of the Times’s lead­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dents, even­tu­al­ly tak­ing over the news­pa­per’s Rome bureau and para­chut­ing from time to time into inter­na­tion­al hot spots like the Con­go. . . .

7. The pro­gram high­lights parts of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion that sup­port Gar­rison’s the­sis.

” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .” 

The excerpt comes from anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent book on the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion–Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy. The book was the focus of FTR#190.

Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy; Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Jor­dan Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 0–9669716‑0–4; p. 202.

. . . . HSCA Chief Coun­sel, G. Robert Blakey, once referred to the Com­mit­tee’s work as ‘the last inves­ti­ga­tion.’ As such, it is only prop­er that the HSCA have the last word on Clay Shaw. On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . . 

8.  The lat­ter por­tion of the broad­cast high­lights the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

” . . . .  [CIA Direc­tor Richard] Helms want­ed the group to ‘con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency’ of what Gar­ri­son was doing in ‘New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw.’. . . [CIA offi­cial Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt ‘that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.’ This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .”

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.

 . . . . Helms want­ed the group to “con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency” of what Gar­ri­son was doing in “New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw.” It is cru­cial to keep in mind the phrase: before, dur­ing, and after. As we will see, the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor Helms was think­ing not just of some short term fix, but of for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy for the long haul. Accord­ing to the very sketchy memo about this meet­ing, [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton dis­cussed his deal­ings with the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA direct­ly. [Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt “that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

9. A sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approaches–this is anoth­er gen­er­at­ing force behind “The Dealey Plaza Blues.”

The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire.

For a nation that has cho­sen to ignore what is per­haps the deci­sive event in Amer­i­can his­to­ry–the assas­si­na­tion of JFK (Sr.) in Dal­las, Texas–the goth­ic fan­ta­sy dri­ving a dis­turbing­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple is, per­haps, a fas­cist after-din­ner drink.

Kool-Aid?

“QAnon Believ­ers Flock to Dal­las for the Grand Return of JFK Jr.” by EJ Dick­son; Rolling Stone; 11/02/2021

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists appar­ent­ly think that the Kennedy scion, who died in 1999, will appear today in Dealey Plaza, where his father was killed in 1963

Fans of ear­ly-1990s tabloid cul­ture, rejoice: John F. Kennedy Jr. is set to return. The lush-haired scion and for­mer George pub­lish­er is set to make an appear­ance at Dealey Plaza in Dal­las, where his father was assas­si­nat­ed in 1963, for a spe­cial announce­ment this after­noon. The fact that the for­mer Peo­ple Sex­i­est Man Alive has been dead for more than two decades is of no con­se­quence.

This is the belief set forth by pro­po­nents of the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, which pos­tu­lates that Don­ald Trump is lying in wait to destroy a secret cabal of blood-drink­ing, child-sex-traf­fick­ing mem­bers of the lib­er­al elite. Dozens of QAnon sup­port­ers start­ed gath­er­ing in AT&T Dis­cov­ery Plaza in down­town Dal­las last night to com­mem­o­rate the glo­ri­ous return of JFK Jr. — a man who, again, it must be empha­sized, has failed to con­vert oxy­gen into car­bon diox­ide since 1999.

“Trump rein­stat­ed as 19th pres­i­dent calls up a new vice pres­i­dent, JFK Junior” wrote a promi­nent QAnon influ­encer with more than 250,000 fol­low­ers on the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing app Telegram. The influ­encer added that Trump’s rein­state­ment stems from the fact that “every­thing from 1871 was ille­gal and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,” a ref­er­ence to a con­vo­lut­ed far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry aimed at inval­i­dat­ing Biden’s pres­i­den­cy by sug­gest­ing that an obscure law from the late-19th cen­tu­ry ren­ders every law passed and pres­i­dent elect­ed since then as ille­git­i­mate. “Trump will step down. John will become Pres­i­dent,” the post reads, adding that dis­graced for­mer gen­er­al and QAnon celebri­ty Michael Fly­nn will become his vice pres­i­dent. The fever­ish fan­ta­sy con­cludes by claim­ing that Trump will become “1 of the 7 new Kings. Most like­ly the King of Kings,” a ref­er­ence to a bib­li­cal pas­sage in Rev­e­la­tions 17.

There is cur­rent­ly a large crowd of what appears to be QAnon believ­ers at the AT&T Dis­cov­ery Plaza in down­town Dal­las. A pop­u­lar QAnon the­o­ry recent­ly is that JFK Jr. of the Kennedy fam­i­ly will be mak­ing a big announce­ment at Dealey Plaza by the grassy knoll some­time tomor­row. pic.twitter.com/8L0Lw09wH7

— steven mona­cel­li (@stevanzetti) Novem­ber 2, 2021

The renais­sance of JFK Jr. is an increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar cor­ner­stone of the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, though it has his­tor­i­cal­ly been some­thing of a fringe belief in the move­ment. The the­o­ry pos­tu­lates that JFK Jr. has been in hid­ing for years and will even­tu­al­ly reveal him­self as Trump’s run­ning mate for the 2024 elec­tion, a belief that stems from a poster claim­ing to be JFK Jr. who con­tributed to an 8chan thread in 2018. Some pro­po­nents of the the­o­ry also believe that Vin­cent Fus­ca, a for­mer sales man­ag­er in Pitts­burgh, is secret­ly JFK Jr. in dis­guise, despite the fact that Fus­ca is inch­es short­er (and hon­est­ly, con­sid­er­ably less good-look­ing) than John F. Kennedy Jr. QAnon influ­encer Juan O. Savin has also been “sus­pect­ed” to be JFK Jr. in “dis­guise.” Plat­forms like Etsy and Ama­zon have also been called out for sell­ing merch pro­mot­ing the idea that JFK Jr. is still alive and will return as Trump’s run­ning mate, and many sup­port­ers at the Dealey Plaza event were pho­tographed wear­ing such merch.

In recent months (and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of Trump’s defeat in Novem­ber 2020, when QAnon lead­ers have been scram­bling to main­tain their rel­e­van­cy), some promi­nent QAnon influ­encers have expand­ed on this lore, most notably Michael Bri­an Protz­man, who also runs a pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel. Protz­man, who is based in Wash­ing­ton state and runs a demo­li­tion com­pa­ny, relies on an abstruse ver­sion of gema­tria, or numerol­o­gy, to pro­mote the idea that he is in direct con­tact with the Kennedy fam­i­ly (which he believes are direct descen­dants of Jesus Christ), and that they will make their tri­umphant return on Tues­day.

 

 

 

 

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