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FTR#1360 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1361 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­casts.

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.

1a. 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.]. . . .”

“LBJ Insid­ers D.H. Byrd and James Ling Bought 132,000 Shares of Stock in Defense Con­trac­tor LTV in Novem­ber 1963 Around Time of the JFK Assas­si­na­tion” by Jere­my Kuz­marov; Cover­tAc­tion Mag­a­zine; 11/21/2024.

In Novem­ber 1963, the month of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, two of Lyn­don B. Johnson’s clos­est friends, David H. Byrd and James Ling, bought 132,000 shares of Ling-Tem­co-Vought (LTV) stock at approx­i­mate­ly $16 per share through the Alpha Omega Cor­po­ra­tion invest­ment vehi­cle.

Byrd already owned 19,948 shares of LTV stock at this time, and his wife Mat­tie owned anoth­er 15,796 shares, which were col­lec­tive­ly worth about $571,904. As a founder of one of the com­pa­nies that merged to become LTV, Ling also (like Byrd) owned thou­sands of shares before the Novem­ber 1963 pur­chase.

Hous­ing plants in Dal­las, Gar­land and Greenville, Texas, LTV was a defense con­trac­tor that made Cor­sair air­planes for the U.S. Navy and, accord­ing to Byrd, became a “for­mi­da­ble pres­ence in the aero­space indus­try” after it absorbed the Chance Vought Cor­po­ra­tion.^[1]

By 1967, in the mid­dle of the Viet­nam War, LTV stock rose to a whop­ping $169 per share and had a total val­ue of $22,308,000 (which in 2024 dol­lars would be equal to approx­i­mate­ly $207.3 mil­lion).

David Byrd and his wife thus made an absolute for­tune, both from the Alpha-Omega invest­ment vehi­cle pur­chas­es and from 35,744 shares of LTV stock they owned sep­a­rate­ly from Alpha Omega.

LTV’s stock was boost­ed by Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. Johnson’s grant­i­ng a large defense con­tract to LTV in Feb­ru­ary 1964 to build the A‑7 Cor­sair II, a light attack air­craft equipped with auto-can­non and MK-82 bombs, which was used exten­sive­ly in the Viet­nam War.^[2]

Con­fir­ma­tion of Byrd and Ling’s stock purchases—discussed in Peter Dale Scott’s 1971 man­u­script The Dal­las Con­spir­a­cy and 1996 book, Deep Pol­i­tics and the Death of JFK—is found in the 1964 Val­ue Line Invest­ment Sur­vey, which is acces­si­ble at the Library of Con­gress.

The stock pur­chas­es are sig­nif­i­cant in point­ing to the like­ly involve­ment of Ling and Byrd in the JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy. It shows they were ready to prof­it from JFK’s death and may have known about it in advance.

The buys occurred at a time when LTV stock was head­ing down­ward in the face of antitrust lit­i­ga­tion.^[3] Fur­ther­more, Defense Sec­re­tary Robert McNa­ma­ra said to brace for cuts in the defense indus­try and the busi­ness press was writ­ing bear­ish arti­cles on the prospects for defense stocks as the year 1963 was com­ing to a close.

On Octo­ber 7, 1963, Newsweek pub­lished an arti­cle titled “What Can Indus­try Do As Pen­ta­gon Cuts Back?” By August 2, 1965, Newsweek pub­lished an arti­cle called “War’s Widen­ing Rip­ples” and wrote that “the shock waves from the esca­lat­ed war in Viet­nam were spread­ing through U.S. busi­ness last week.”

Byrd was the own­er of the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry (TSBD) build­ing on a cor­ner of Dealey Plaza in down­town Dal­las from which Lee Har­vey Oswald is alleged to have shot JFK.

The TSBD com­pa­ny was owned by Jack Cason, head of a Dal­las post of the right-wing Amer­i­can Legion and a friend of J. Edgar Hoover.

The TBSD dis­trib­uted text­books to schools in Dal­las. It appears to have func­tioned as an intel­li­gence front, which covert­ly shipped mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence-relat­ed items in book car­tons.^[4]

Elzie Glaze, a reporter for the Austin Amer­i­can-States­man, researched and inter­viewed Bill Shelly, Oswald’s super­vi­sor, and not­ed, “Mr. Shelly claims to have been an intel­li­gence offi­cer dur­ing World War II and there­after joined the CIA.”^[5]

Oswald was him­self an under­cov­er intel­li­gence agent who had covert­ly infil­trat­ed the left-wing Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee as part of an oper­a­tion to pro­vide him with a cov­er that made it pos­si­ble to blame the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion on a left-wing com­mu­nist.

Evi­dence indi­cates that Oswald could not actu­al­ly have been one of the snipers as he was seen by two wit­ness­es (police offi­cer Mar­rion Bak­er and TSBD super­in­ten­dent Roy Tru­ly) calm­ly drink­ing a coke on the sec­ond floor of the TSBD two min­utes after the assassination—which would have been impos­si­ble if he had shot JFK from the sixth floor.

Also, Oswald received at best aver­age grades for marks­man­ship in the military—when the sniper would have had to have been a top expert to have hit Kennedy from the TSBD 6^th floor. Fur­ther, evi­dence indi­cates that Kennedy was shot from the front from the grassy knoll, and that there were more bul­lets than Oswald is alleged to have shot from the TSBD.

For years after the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Byrd kept a repli­ca of the sniper’s nest from the TSBD in his man­sion as a souvenir/trophy.

Byrd had been essen­tial to the JFK assas­si­na­tion plot as the one who helped enable Oswald’s hir­ing and owned the build­ing used in the plot.

After­wards, to pre­vent crit­i­cal scruti­ny into his actions, Byrd cre­at­ed a fake ali­bi that he was in Mozam­bique on a hunt­ing safari at the time of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion.^[6]

Byrd was such a close friend of LBJ—the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the JFK assas­si­na­tion who had a rag­ing hatred for the Kennedys—that John­son allowed him to land his plane at the LBJ ranch any time he want­ed.^[7]

Byrd was also very close with Clint Murchi­son, Sr., a wealthy Texas oil­man con­nect­ed to orga­nized crime, Cur­tis LeMay, a right-wing mil­i­tarist who hat­ed the Kennedys, and Mal­colm “Mac” Wal­lace, one of LBJ’s alleged hatch­et men who worked for Byrd at LTV after he avoid­ed jail time on a mur­der charge.^[8]

Byrd, addi­tion­al­ly, had employed George de Mohren­schildt, a CIA oper­a­tive who served as Oswald’s han­dler.

A cousin of Gov­er­nor and then Sen­a­tor Har­ry F. Byrd (D‑VA), who was described as “the leader of con­ser­v­a­tive opin­ion in the U.S.,”^[9] David Byrd was born on April 24, 1900, in Detroit, Texas, and dropped out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas after his sopho­more year to work in the oil fields where he became a mil­lion­aire by age 30.

Byrd recounts in his mem­oir, pub­lished in 1978, that he gained the nick­name “dry hole” because he drilled 56 dry holes before strik­ing it rich. He became the largest inde­pen­dent pro­duc­er in the oil busi­ness after he was men­tored by Colonel A.E. Humphreys, “king of the Texas wild­cat­ters.”

Cred­it­ing the Texas oil indus­try with help­ing to cat­a­pult the U.S. out of the Depres­sion and enabling the defeat of the Axis pow­ers in World War II, Byrd wrote that he was “tired of being the whip­ping boy or object of envy because he made mon­ey at an hon­est trade,” and that his cen­tral con­cern “is to shout from the rooftops when I still can against the gov­ern­ment med­dling that has now beset the oil busi­ness for so long…the coun­try is now chok­ing in gov­ern­ment con­trols.”^[10]

Byrd and oth­er Texas oil wild­cat­ters, who staked their for­tunes in part on Lyn­don B. Johnson’s polit­i­cal rise, hat­ed John F. Kennedy because of his threat to remove the oil deple­tion allowance, or spe­cial tax sub­sidy that oil com­pa­nies received because oil is a finite resource.

A mem­ber of the CIA front groups, The Dal­las Coun­cil on World Affairs and The Cru­sade For a Free Europe,^[11] Byrd was a nation­al secu­ri­ty insid­er heav­i­ly invest­ed in the aero­space indus­try.

He owned two major CIA con­trac­tors, Collins Radio, which devel­oped ear­ly radio sys­tems for the CIA, and E‑Systems, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­ized in build­ing spy equip­ment. In 1975, at the CIA’s request, E‑Systems pur­chased the CIA pro­pri­etary air­line, Air Amer­i­ca, which had flown arms and opi­um in sup­port of CIA backed para­mil­i­tary groups in the Indochi­na War.^[12]

John Mintz wrote in The Wash­ing­ton Post that E‑Systems was “almost indis­tin­guish­able from the CIA because it oper­ates so secret­ly, lacks account­abil­i­ty and is loaded with retirees from the CIA and oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies. For decades a fix­ture in clas­si­fied work, it is accus­tomed to sell­ing its wares only to the intel­li­gence community—and doing it secret­ly.”^[13]

Oswald and Fer­rie in the Civ­il Air Patrol
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

In the late 1930s, Byrd co-found­ed the Civ­il Air Patrol (CAP), an Air Force aux­il­iary used for covert oper­a­tions. As a CAP recruit, Lee Har­vey Oswald was sent to the Army Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence School in Mary­land to “be taught the Russ­ian lan­guage, Russ­ian mil­i­tary tac­tics, Russ­ian pol­i­tics and all char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Russ­ian peo­ple.”^[14]

Byrd was close with Gen­er­al James Doolit­tle, an avi­a­tion pio­neer who wrote a report on the CIA in 1954, which con­cluded that: “it is now clear that we are fac­ing an implaca­ble ene­my whose avowed objec­tive is world dom­i­na­tion by what­ev­er means and at what­ev­er cost. There are no rules in such a game… If the Unit­ed States is to sur­vive, long stand­ing con­cepts of ‘fair play’ must be recon­sid­ered.”

The Doolit­tle Report called for more aggres­sive CIA covert activ­i­ties that had pre­vi­ous­ly been believed to be repug­nant and con­trary to Amer­i­can val­ues.

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.^[15]

Byrd’s mem­oir, amaz­ing­ly, makes no men­tion of Kennedy or the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

He alludes to his friend­ship with LBJ, fea­tur­ing a pho­to of him with LBJ at a Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas foot­ball game at the Cot­ton Bowl in Dal­las, but bare­ly men­tions any details of their sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship and how John­son helped to make him rich.^[16]

A Cover­tAc­tion Mag­a­zine inves­ti­ga­tion detailed how LBJ was almost cer­tain­ly a cen­tral fig­ure in coor­di­nat­ing the JFK assas­si­na­tion through inter­me­di­aries such as his lawyer, Ed Clark, whom Reader’s Digest had called the “secret polit­i­cal boss of Texas.”

Clark pri­vate­ly bragged to his fel­low lawyer Barr McClel­lan about his involve­ment in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. His moti­va­tion was that he derived a lot of his mon­ey (lucra­tive oil leas­es and large legal retain­er fees) and pow­er from his long-time asso­ci­a­tion with LBJ, who award­ed Clark with the ambas­sador­ship to Aus­tralia (a key Amer­i­can ally dur­ing the Viet­nam War).^[17]

Johnson’s motive in orches­trat­ing the plot to kill Kennedy stemmed from the fact that the Kennedys were plot­ting to remove John­son as Vice Pres­i­dent on the 1964 Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et for the elec­tion and destroy him.

The Kennedys were leak­ing to the media and Repub­li­cans in Con­gress infor­ma­tion about Johnson’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ties that could have put him in prison for the rest of his life.

John­son had become an embar­rass­ment because of his asso­ci­a­tions with two white-col­lar crim­i­nals who served as his finan­cial bagmen—Billie Sol Estes and Bob­by Baker—who were both being brought down in finan­cial scan­dals and fac­ing long prison terms.

Clay­ton Bur­kett Van Kirk, chief coun­sel in 1963 for the Repub­li­can minor­i­ty on the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, told jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh that Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy was feed­ing dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion on Johnson’s cor­rup­tion to the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee in fall 1963, in an attempt to destroy LBJ. Van Kirk told Hersh that “Bob­by was feed­ing infor­ma­tion to whis­per­ing Willie [nick­name for Sen­a­tor John Williams]. The Kennedy broth­ers,” Van Kirk said, were “dump­ing John­son.”^[18]

By the fall of 1963, Lyn­don John­son was acute­ly aware of and extreme­ly agi­tat­ed about the Kennedys’ plan to polit­i­cal­ly destroy him with coor­di­nat­ed media exposés into his epic cor­rup­tion. [Source: twitter.com]

As part of Johnson’s inner-cir­cle, Byrd looks to have played a piv­otal role in help­ing to con­sum­mate the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion in which the TSBD was obvi­ous­ly crit­i­cal.

Byrd also owned the Dal-Tex build­ing adja­cent to Dealy plaza where snipers alleged­ly shot at JFK and a radio oper­a­tor con­nect­ed to the mafia, Eugene Hale Brad­ing, helped coor­di­nate the assas­si­na­tion hit team. Accord­ing to Sara Jor­dan-Heintz, Byrd had allowed the CIA and the Israeli Mossad to run ops from the Dal-Tex build­ing and store weapons in it.^[19]

Byrd was part of the so-called Suite 8F Group, a col­lec­tion of right-wing busi­ness­men who held meet­ings in Suite 8F of the Lamar Hotel in Hous­ton.

Oth­er mem­bers of this group includ­ed: George and Her­man Brown, key John­son bene­fac­tors who found­ed Brown & Root, a com­pa­ny which built mil­i­tary bases in Viet­nam;^[20] Jesse H. Jones, for­mer chair­man of the Recon­struc­tion Finance Cor­po­ra­tion; future Texas Gov­er­nor John Con­nal­ly; and Ed Clark.

Bil­lie Sol Estes wrote in his mem­oir that a slush fund of more than $1 mil­lion was raised to fund the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion by peo­ple affil­i­at­ed with the Suite 8F Group, includ­ing Byrd, who played pok­er at Brownie’s Restau­rant on East Grand Avenue in Dal­las, a favorite gam­bling place of the local busi­ness elite and Dix­ie mafia ele­ments since the 1940s.

The men were con­cerned that, if John­son were dumped, the state of Texas would be with­out a pow­er base in Wash­ing­ton, and the oil deple­tion allowance and defense con­tracts would be in dan­ger.^[21]

Accord­ing to Spar­ta­cus Edu­ca­tion­al, a web­site devot­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Byrd was con­nect­ed to key CIA fig­ures linked to the JFK assas­si­na­tion plot through his mem­ber­ship in the Dal­las Petro­le­um Club.

The fig­ures included: George de Mohren­schildt; David Atlee Phillips, who told his broth­er on his deathbed that he had been in Dal­las at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion (like­ly an admis­sion to his involve­ment); and George H. W. Bush.

Researcher Richard Bartholomew has sug­gest­ed that Byrd knew David Fer­rie, a CIA oper­a­tive pros­e­cut­ed by New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­ri­son for his alleged involve­ment in the JFK plot, via the Civ­il Air Patrol (CAP) whose Texas wing Byrd com­mand­ed.

The stock trades car­ried out around the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion give fur­ther weight to the belief that Byrd was involved in the assas­si­na­tion in some way or was aware of the plot—from which he ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ed great­ly.

1.–David Harold “Dry Hole” Byrd, I’m an Endan­gered Species: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of a Free Enter­pris­er (Hous­ton, TX: Pace­set­ter Press, 1978), 69. LTV also pro­duced elec­tron­ics. By the fall of 1963, LTV stock was a pure play on the defense indus­try with its only prod­ucts being air­planes and elec­tron­ics. ↑

2.–According to Peter Dale Scott (The Dal­las Con­spir­a­cy), Johnson’s pur­chase was paid for out of the 1965 bud­get which had not yet been approved by Con­gress. ↑

3.–Byrd, I’m an Endan­gered Species, 69. Byrd says he absorbed a loss of $15 mil­lion because of the antitrust lit­i­ga­tion. ↑

4.–Russ Bak­er, “JFK Assas­si­na­tion: 60 Years Lat­er, Cru­cial Ali­bi Dis­man­tled.” ↑

5.–Baker, “JFK Assas­si­na­tion: 60 Years Lat­er, Cru­cial Ali­bi Dis­man­tled.” ↑

6.–Baker, “JFK Assas­si­na­tion: 60 Years Lat­er, Cru­cial Ali­bi Dis­man­tled,” WhoWhatWhy.org, Novem­ber 15, 2023. In Novem­ber, tem­per­a­tures in Mozam­bique reached 117 degrees Fahren­heit and was not a time for­eign­ers took safaris. The man Byrd alleged­ly went with, who paint­ed Byrd’s name on ele­phants, did not exist. ↑

7.–Mack Roy­al, the son of leg­endary Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas foot­ball coach Dar­rell Roy­al (UT head coach 1957–1976; two nation­al cham­pi­onships), who was very close with John­son, recount­ed an inci­dent where Byrd land­ed the plane at the LBJ ranch when he and his wife were vis­it­ing over his and Johnson’s objec­tions (John­son was then pres­i­dent and had told Byrd he had com­pa­ny over and was busy). See Mack Roy­al, Four­teen Years on Fnord‑L (Austin, TX: Bozo Tex­i­no Press, 2010). ↑

8.–Various sources iden­ti­fy Wallace’s fin­ger­prints as being in the sniper’s nest at the TBSD on the day of the JFK assas­si­na­tion and believe that he was a sub­sti­tute for Oswald as a shoot­er. ↑

9.–See Alden Hatch, The Byrds of Vir­ginia: An Amer­i­can Dynasty, 1670 to the Present (New York: Holt, Rine­hart and Win­ston, 1969). ↑

10.–Byrd, I’m an Endan­gered Species, 1, 2, 91. Byrd found­ed Byrd-Frost, Inc., in 1931; it was even­tu­al­ly bought out by Mobil (now Exxon­Mo­bil). He used his oil prof­its to build a finan­cial empire that includ­ed recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, man­u­fac­tur­ing, real estate, com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al ven­tures and farm­ing and ranch­ing enter­pris­es. At the end of his mem­oir, Byrd attacked the Carter admin­is­tra­tion from a right-wing per­spec­tive, stat­ing that “we have elect­ed an admin­is­tra­tion and a Con­gress that seem hell-bent on throw­ing the fight [in the Cold War] to the social­ist side.” (p. 86) Byrd at the same time expressed great admi­ra­tion for con­ser­v­a­tive econ­o­mist Mil­ton Fried­man. ↑

11.–Sara Jor­dan-Heintz, The Incred­i­ble Life and Mys­te­ri­ous Death of Dorothy Kil­gallen (Page Turn­er Books Inter­na­tion­al, 2023), 285. ↑

12.–In 1995, E‑Systems, which pro­duced recon­nais­sance gear used in spy planes and com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy that could process enhance and com­pare spy satel­lite pho­tos, was bought by the giant Mass­a­chu­setts-based defense con­trac­tor, Raytheon. For years, its Board of Direc­tors includ­ed Admi­ral William F. Raborn, CIA Direc­tor under Lyn­don B. John­son. For years, the head of E‑Systems research divi­sion was Lloyd K. Laud­erdale, anoth­er for­mer high-rank­ing CIA offi­cial. Peter Mari­no, a six­teen year CIA vet­er­an was chief of one of the company’s oth­er divi­sions. ↑

13.–John Mintz, “The Secrets Out: Covert E‑Systems Inc. Cov­ets Com­mer­cial Sales,” The Wash­ing­ton Post, Octo­ber 23, 1994. Dan Alcorn, “Talk at the JFK Assas­si­na­tion at 60 con­fer­ence,” Cyril H. Wecht Insti­tute of Foren­sic Sci­ence and Law, Duquesne Uni­ver­si­ty, Novem­ber 2023 referred to Mintz’ arti­cle. E‑Systems built the E‑4B, nick­named the “Dooms­day Plane,” an air­borne com­mand post for the White House and Pen­ta­gon in a nuclear attack. It had a miles-long trail­ing anten­na to com­mu­ni­cate with the U.S. sub­ma­rine fleet. ↑

14.–Baker, “JFK Assas­si­na­tion: 60 Years Lat­er, Cru­cial Ali­bi Dis­man­tled.” Oswald was a Soviet/Russian defec­tor. ↑

15.–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 that was used in the Lon­don blitzkrieg. ↑

16.–Byrd makes it seem that Pres­i­dent John­son was unwill­ing to assist his busi­ness enter­pris­es. He describes going to see him at his ranch when he was pres­i­dent to try to gain his sup­port for an invest­ment in Mex­i­co, but says that John­son told him that there was no way the pres­i­dent of the U.S. could inter­vene in a pri­vate dis­pute. Byrd, I’m an Endan­gered Species, 67. ↑

17.–See Barr McClel­lan, Blood, Mon­ey, & Pow­er: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K. (New York: Sky­horse, 2011). ↑

18.–James Wagen­vo­ord, the edi­to­r­i­al busi­ness man­ag­er and assis­tant to Life magazine’s Exec­u­tive Edi­tor in 1963, said that his mag­a­zine was cre­at­ing a three-part exposé set to be pub­lished, begin­ning in the Decem­ber 6^th issue focus­ing on Johnson’s rela­tion­ship with Bob­by Bak­er, the inten­tion of which was to end “Johnson’s polit­i­cal career, and pos­si­bly send him to prison.” ↑

19.–Jordan-Heintz, The Incred­i­ble Life and Mys­te­ri­ous Death of Dorothy Kil­gallen, 284. Accord­ing to Jor­dan-Heintz, Eugene Hale Brad­ing was a mafia couri­er with a long rap sheet going back to the 1930s who was appre­hend­ed by deputy sher­iffs in the Dal-Tex build­ing after the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Though he was a two-bit hood, in Feb­ru­ary 1964, Brad­ing sud­den­ly came into con­sid­er­able mon­ey, help­ing to fund a well known coun­try club near San Clemente, Cal­i­for­nia. In 1968, Brad­ing was inter­viewed by the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment because of his pres­ence in L.A. near where Robert Kennedy was mur­dered. ↑

20.–The con­sor­tium of which Brown & Root was part received more than $2 bil­lion in gov­ern­ment con­tracts dur­ing the Viet­nam War. On the sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between John­son and George and Her­man Brown, see Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyn­don John­son: The Path to Pow­er (New York: Vin­tage, 1990). Brown’s col­lege room­mate, Albert Thomas, was a Texas con­gress­man who was pho­tographed wink­ing at LBJ when LBJ was being sworn in as pres­i­dent on Air Force One after JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. ↑

21.–Billie Sol Estes, Bil­lie Sol Estes: A Texas Leg­end (Granbury, TX: BS Pro­duc­tions, 2005), 146, 147.

1b. 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;” Wikipedia.org.

• ” . . . . 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. . . .”

2. 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.

“JFK Assas­si­na­tion: 60 Years Later, Cru­cial Ali­bi Dis­man­tled” by Russ Bak­er; WhoWhat­Why; 11/25/2023.

3. Next, we present 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.  . . .” 

“DAN ALCORN: BYRD, von ALVENSLEBEN and the DOOLITTLE REPORT” by Dan Alcorn; AARCLibrary.org.

4. 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.

Into the Night­mare: My Search for the Killers of John F. Kennedy and Offi­cer J.D. Tip­pit by Joseph McBride; High­tow­er Press [SC]; Copy­right 2013 by Joseph McBride; ISBN 978–1939795250; pp. 70–74.

5. Not includ­ed in the actu­al broad­cast is a warn­ing about the effects of watch­ing TV com­ing from the late sci­ence fic­tion write Philip K. Dick.

“We have a dan­ger­ous blur: Philip K. Dick’s cult essay about false real­i­ties is as rel­e­vant as ever” by Emi­ly Tem­ple; lithub.com; 11/15/2024.

. . . . How to Build a Uni­verse That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Lat­er, pub­lished in 1978 but begun around the time of Richard Nixon’s res­ig­na­tion, has achieved cult sta­tus for its explo­ration of man­u­fac­tured real­i­ties and insti­tu­tion­al pow­er. In the book, Dick exam­ines how media sys­tems can cre­ate “pseu­do-worlds” deliv­ered direct­ly into people’s minds. His analy­sis of how “spu­ri­ous real­i­ties are man­u­fac­tured by the media, by gov­ern­ments, by big cor­po­ra­tions, by reli­gious groups, polit­i­cal groups” strikes an eeri­ly famil­iar chord in our hyper-dig­i­tal age.

Eerie indeed. Get your copy here, and in the mean­time, read an excerpt from Dick’s essay below:

The basic tool for the manip­u­la­tion of real­i­ty is the manip­u­la­tion of words. If you can con­trol the mean­ing of words, you can con­trol the peo­ple who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his nov­el 1984. But anoth­er way to con­trol the minds of peo­ple is to con­trol their per­cep­tions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do. Com­pre­hen­sion fol­lows per­cep­tion. How do you get them to see the real­i­ty you see? After all, it is only one real­i­ty of many. Images are a basic con­stituent: pic­tures. This is why the pow­er of TV to influ­ence young minds is so stag­ger­ing­ly vast. Words and pic­tures are syn­chro­nized. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of total con­trol of the view­er exists, espe­cial­ly the young view­er. TV view­ing is a kind of sleep-learn­ing. An elec­troen­cephalo­gram (EEG) of a per­son watch­ing TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, and it goes into a hyp­noidal twi­light state, emit­ting alpha waves. This is because there is such lit­tle eye motion. In addi­tion, much of the infor­ma­tion is graph­ic and there­fore pass­es into the right hemi­sphere of the brain, rather than being processed by the left, where the con­scious per­son­al­i­ty is locat­ed. Recent exper­i­ments indi­cate that much of what we see on the TV screen is received on a sub­lim­i­nal basis. We only imag­ine that we con­scious­ly see what is there. The bulk of the mes­sages elude our atten­tion; lit­er­al­ly, after a few hours of TV watch­ing, we do not know what we have seen. Our mem­o­ries are spu­ri­ous, like our mem­o­ries of dreams; the blanks are filled in ret­ro­spec­tive­ly. And fal­si­fied. We have par­tic­i­pat­ed unknow­ing­ly in the cre­ation of a spu­ri­ous real­i­ty, and then we have oblig­ing­ly fed it to our­selves. We have col­lud­ed in our own doom. . . .