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Reflections On The Fun and Games of 1/6/2021

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ January 9, 2021Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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Gen­er­al Smed­ley But­ler

COMMENT: Reflect­ing on this week’s events in Wash­ing­ton D.C., a num­ber of things impressed them­selves upon us.

Even Paul Krug­man of the staid New York Times char­ac­ter­ized the storm­ing of the Capi­tol Build­ing by Trump back­ers as “fas­cism.”

Nei­ther he, nor—frankly—anyone else in this coun­try should be sur­prised.

Not only has the polit­i­cal momen­tum of these events been build­ing for decades, but the phe­nom­e­non has been pro­pelled in no small mea­sure by amne­sia.

In FTR #602—among oth­er programs—we detailed the 1934 coup attempt direct­ed against Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt by pow­er­ful indus­tri­al and finan­cial inter­ests. Hop­ing to enlist Dou­glas MacArthur as the leader of the plot, the con­spir­a­tors set­tled upon Gen­er­al Smed­ley But­ler of the Marine Corps.

But­ler betrayed the con­spir­a­cy, which was inves­ti­gat­ed by the McCor­ma­ck-Dick­stein Com­mit­tee. This chap­ter in Amer­i­can his­to­ry has dis­ap­peared down the mem­o­ry hole.

The armed con­fronta­tion in the Capi­tol also remind­ed us of a con­fronta­tion that took place in Park­land Hos­pi­tal on 11/22/1963.

A con­tin­gent of Secret Ser­vice agents and Kennedy aide Ken­neth O’Donnell con­front­ed and threat­ened Park­land physi­cians who were going to autop­sy Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s body in accor­dance with law.

(Author Joseph McBride presents con­vinc­ing evi­dence that O’Donnell faced prob­a­ble indict­ment for cor­rup­tion. He helped arrange the Kennedy motor­cade route through Dealey Plaza, set­ting JFK up for assas­si­na­tion. O’Donnell suc­cumbed to alco­holism, dying in 1977.)

McBride—drawing on schol­ar­ship by numer­ous authors and researchers—concludes that the Fed­er­al agents were intent on pre­vent­ing an autop­sy in Dal­las, so that JFK’s body could be sur­gi­cal­ly altered to obscure the fact that Kennedy was killed in a cross­fire.

The “offi­cial ver­sion” of the murder—an insti­tu­tion­al­ized his­tor­i­cal fiction–maintains that Oswald—the lone assassin—slew Kennedy by fir­ing from the rear.

“ . . . . [Park­land physi­cian Dr. Charles] Cren­shaw recalled, ‘A man in a suit, lead­ing the [fed­er­al] group, hold­ing a sub­ma­chine gun, left lit­tle doubt in my mind who was in charge. That he wasn’t smil­ing best describes the look on his face . . . . Keller­man took an erect stance and brought his firearm into a ready posi­tion. The oth­er men in suits fol­lowed course by drap­ing their coat­tails behind the butts of their hol­stered pis­tols.’ When Dr. Rose insist­ed on hold­ing the body in Dal­las for autop­sy, explain­ing, ‘You can’t lose the chain of evi­dence,’ one of the men in suits screamed, ‘God­damit, get your ass out of the way before you get hurt,’ and anoth­er snapped, ‘We’re tak­ing the body now.’ . . . .”

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. 168–170.

. . . . What I found most reveal­ing at the time in The Death of a Pres­i­dent is its account of the Secret Ser­vice and Kennedy aides, led by the late President’s appoint­ments sec­re­tary, Ken­neth O’Donnell, steal­ing the president’s body from Park­land Hos­pi­tal. Dis­cov­er­ing that star­tling report of a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown event—including a vio­lent con­fronta­tion between the White House fac­tion and the Dal­las Coun­ty med­ical exam­in­er, Dr. Earl F. Rose—was one of the water­shed moments in my under­stand­ing of the case. . . .

. . . . If Dr. Rose had not been blocked from per­form­ing the autop­sy, the his­to­ry of the case might have been rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. The thor­ough­ness and integri­ty of the autop­sies Dr. Rose per­formed at Park­land Hos­pi­tal on both Tip­pit and Oswald have nev­er been ques­tioned, unlike that of the shod­dy, incom­plete, and dis­hon­est autop­sy of Kennedy by mil­i­tary doc­tors at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal in Mary­land, a key ele­ment in the coverup. . . .

. . . . When I read that remark­able and (bizarrely approv­ing) account of crim­i­nal behav­ior at Park­land Hos­pi­tal by fed­er­al agents and mem­bers of the late president’s own staff, a bru­tal act of aggres­sion against a pub­lic offi­cial try­ing to do his legal duty, I could no longer fail to rec­og­nize, by the spring of 1967, that “some­thing was rot­ten in the state of Den­mark.” . . . .

. . . . The threat of vio­lence in Manchester’s account was left large­ly implic­it. A more explic­it account was lat­er pro­vid­ed by Dr. Charles A. Cren­shaw, one of Kennedy’s attend­ing physi­cians at Park­land, who wit­nessed the con­fronta­tion. In his 1992 book, JFK: Con­spir­a­cy of Silence, Cren­shaw recalled, “A man in a suit, lead­ing the [fed­er­al] group, hold­ing a sub­ma­chine gun, left lit­tle doubt in my mind who was in charge. That he wasn’t smil­ing best describes the look on his face . . . . Keller­man took an erect stance and brought his firearm into a ready posi­tion. The oth­er men in suits fol­lowed course by drap­ing their coat­tails behind the butts of their hol­stered pis­tols.” When Dr. Rose insist­ed on hold­ing the body in Dal­las for autop­sy, explain­ing, “You can’t lose the chain of evi­dence,” one of the men in suits screamed, “God­damit, get your ass out of the way before you get hurt,” and anoth­er snapped, “We’re tak­ing the body now.”

“Strange, I thought, this Pres­i­dent is get­ting more pro­tec­tion dead than he did when he was alive,” writes Dr. Cren­shaw. “Had Dr. Rose not stepped aside, I’m sure they would have shot him. They would have killed me and any­one else who got in their way.” The inter­ven­ing years “nei­ther erased the fer that I felt nor dimin­ished the impres­sion that that inci­dent made upon me.”

Why were the con­spir­a­tors so adamant about tak­ing the body out of Dal­las that they were will­ing to resort to mur­der to do so, if it came to that?

Lifton’s Best Evi­dence, which caused one of the great par­a­digm shifts in my under­stand­ing of the case, assem­bles a wealth of fac­tu­al evi­dence to prove that Kennedy’s body was sur­rep­ti­tious­ly altered. The pur­pose of the alter­ation was to obscure the orig­i­nal wounds and make it appear that Kennedy was shot only from behind and not from the front. . . .

Discussion

6 comments for “Reflections On The Fun and Games of 1/6/2021”

  1. This is only a tan­gen­tial remark. The Democ­rats who are at this moment (17:00 hours EST Jan­u­ary 11) ini­ti­at­ing an impeach­ment process against the U.S. Pres­i­dent for incite­ment to insur­rec­tion. One after the oth­er, they’re express­ing their ire at Don­ald Trump because of the fact that “he with­held arms deliv­er­ies to Ukraine to pres­sure its offi­cials to inves­ti­gate Joe Biden and his son”. For the back­ground to the first Trump impeach­ment in which this was the cen­tral issue, see Dave Emory’s arti­cle at https://tinyurl.com/y6xorfry The first link inside the tar­get page is impor­tant, with an audio archive link, but has been changed, so I’ll put the cor­rect link here: https://tinyurl.com/y6kpby9s

    Posted by AtlantaBill aka Babouviste | January 11, 2021, 2:02 pm

  2. https://abcn.ws/2LonujZ

    Start­ing this week and run­ning through at least Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capi­tols and at the U.S. Capi­tol, accord­ing to an inter­nal FBI bul­letin obtained by ABC News.

    The FBI has also received infor­ma­tion in recent days on a group call­ing for “storm­ing” state, local and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment cour­t­hous­es and admin­is­tra­tive build­ings in the event Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is removed from office pri­or to Inau­gu­ra­tion Day. The group is also plan­ning to “storm” gov­ern­ment offices in every state the day Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden will be inau­gu­rat­ed, regard­less of whether the states cer­ti­fied elec­toral votes for Biden or Trump.

    “The FBI received infor­ma­tion about an iden­ti­fied armed group intend­ing to trav­el to Wash­ing­ton, DC on 16 Jan­u­ary,” the bul­letin read. “They have warned that if Con­gress attempts to remove POTUS via the 25th Amend­ment, a huge upris­ing will occur.”

    Posted by Mary Benton | January 11, 2021, 9:46 pm

  3. Near­ly one week since the attack at the Capi­tol, key fed­er­al agen­cies “have yet to brief the pub­lic direct­ly,” CNN’s Gene­va Sands, Jere­my Herb and Christi­na Car­rega report.

    The US Capi­tol Police is mute. The FBI, Depart­ment of Jus­tice and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty have all failed to hold a sin­gle press con­fer­ence. “The US expe­ri­enced a ter­ror­ist attack,” Jake Tap­per said on Twit­ter, “and yet not one fed­er­al law enforce­ment agency has held a press con­fer­ence to give even basic infor­ma­tion about what hap­pened. Not DOJ nor DHS nor the WH. A total dere­lic­tion of lead­er­ship.”

    Ques­tions are pil­ing up — but few offi­cials are answer­ing. I began hear­ing con­cerns about this late last week, and the com­plaints reached a crescen­do on Mon­day. “It has been five days since the most sig­nif­i­cant attack on a branch of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment since British forces set fire to the U.S. Capi­tol in 1814, and yet the Amer­i­can pub­lic has not heard from fed­er­al law enforce­ment author­i­ties,” Demo­c­ra­t­ic Reps. Joe Neguse of Cal­i­for­nia and Veron­i­ca Esco­bar of Texas said in a let­ter Mon­day.

    As if to prove the point, the US Capi­tol Police did not respond to CNN’s request for com­ment about this prob­lem. And DHS “did not respond to ques­tions on whether the depart­ment plans to hold a news con­fer­ence in the com­ing days and why it has­n’t done so already.”

    Posted by Mary Benton | January 11, 2021, 9:49 pm

  4. @Mary Ben­ton–

    What is the link/reference for this?

    That will be a wel­come addi­tion.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | January 11, 2021, 9:56 pm

  5. This arti­cle is from Wikipedia and is quite long but, well writ­ten and com­pre­hen­sive. To under­stand how far right the US has become, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­u­fac­tur­ers is now a mod­er­at­ing force in our Soci­ety. George Seldes used to clas­si­fy it as a fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol

    Some sec­tions from this include the fol­low­ing:

    Plan­ning of the storm­ing
    Trump announced plans for a ral­ly before the Jan­u­ary 6 vote count to con­tin­ue his chal­lenge to the valid­i­ty of sev­er­al states’ elec­tion results. On Decem­ber 18, Trump announced on Twit­ter, “Big protest in D.C. on Jan­u­ary 6th. Be there, will be wild!”[95][96] The “Save Amer­i­ca March” and ral­ly that pre­ced­ed the riots at the Capi­tol were large­ly orga­nized by Women for Amer­i­ca First, a 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion chaired by Amy Kremer.[97] Women for Amer­i­ca First invit­ed its sup­port­ers to join a car­a­van of vehi­cles trav­el­ing to the event.[97] Event man­age­ment for Trump’s speech was car­ried out by Event Strate­gies, a com­pa­ny found­ed by Tim Unes, who worked for Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial campaign.[97]

    Ali Alexan­der, a right-wing polit­i­cal activist who took part in orga­niz­ing the ral­ly and expressed sup­port for the storm­ing as “com­plete­ly peace­ful” was report­ed as say­ing in Decem­ber that Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Paul Gosar (R–AZ‑4), Andy Big­gs (R–AZ‑5) and Mo Brooks(R–AL‑5) were involved in the plan­ning of “some­thing big”.[98] Accord­ing to Alexan­der, “It was to build momen­tum and pres­sure and then on the day change hearts and minds of Con­gress peo­ples who weren’t yet decid­ed or who saw every­one out­side and said, ‘I can’t be on the oth­er side of that mob.’ ” His remarks received con­sid­er­ably more scruti­ny after the events of Jan­u­ary 6, caus­ing Big­gs to respond with a state­ment deny­ing any rela­tion­ship between him­self and Alexander.[99][100][101]

    Women for Amer­i­ca First, the 501(c)(4) orga­ni­za­tion chaired by Amy Kre­mer­which orga­nized the “Save Amer­i­ca March”, is fund­ed by Amer­i­ca First Poli­cies, a pro-Trump dark mon­ey­group chaired by Lin­da McMa­hon, the for­mer admin­is­tra­tor of the Small Busi­ness Administration.[97] Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist Alex Jones said his media com­pa­ny paid $500,000 to book the Ellipse for the pro-Trump ral­ly imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the riots and claimed that the Trump White House asked him to lead the march to the Capitol.[108]

    Char­lie Kirk, the founder of Turn­ing Point USA, said on Twit­ter that Turn­ing Point had sent over 80 bus­es to the U.S. Capitol.[109]

    Oth­er peo­ple attempt­ed to raise funds in Decem­ber via GoFundMe to help pay for trans­porta­tion to the ral­ly, with lim­it­ed success.[110] An inves­ti­ga­tion by Buz­zFeed News iden­ti­fied more than a dozen fundrais­ers to pay for trav­el to the planned ral­ly. GoFundMe has since deac­ti­vat­ed sev­er­al of the cam­paigns after the riot, but some cam­paigns had already raised part or all of their fundrais­ing goals pri­or to deactivation.[111]

    Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Zoe Lof­gren, who chairs a com­mit­tee respon­si­ble for Capi­tol secu­ri­ty, said Capi­tol Police chief Steven Sund lied to her before the event about the prepa­ra­tions he had made and the readi­ness of the Nation­al Guard.[11] Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Ryan(D–OH-17), the chair­man of the House Appro­pri­a­tions Sub­com­mit­tee on the Leg­isla­tive Branch (which has bud­getary author­i­ty over the Capi­tol Police), announced that he would begin an inquiry into secu­ri­ty laps­es that allowed the vio­lent mob to over­run the Capi­tol and breach the leg­isla­tive cham­bers. Ryan indi­cat­ed that he expect­ed some offi­cers in the Capi­tol Police to be fired, and cit­ed a “lack of pro­fes­sion­al plan­ning and deal­ing” and “strate­gic mis­takes” ahead of “the insur­rec­tion and the attempt­ed coup”.[431] U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Antho­ny G. Brown (D–MD‑4) called for the estab­lish­ment of a civil­ian over­sight­board for the Capi­tol Police.[430]

    The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­u­fac­tur­ers also request­ed Pence to “seri­ous­ly con­sid­er” invok­ing the 25th Amendment.[525]

    Inter­na­tion­al
    Inter­na­tion­al­ly, Trump’s alle­ga­tions of a “stolen” elec­tion found a small audi­ence among con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and fringe groups.[615] In Cana­da, a few dozen peo­ple ral­lied in sup­port of Trump in Toron­to, Van­cou­ver, and Calgary.[616]  At the Van­cou­ver ral­ly, CBC pho­to­jour­nal­ist Ben Nelms was assault­ed by one of the demonstrators.[617][618][619] In Japan, a few hun­dred peo­ple ral­lied in sup­port of Trump in Tokyo, with sev­er­al peo­ple car­ry­ing the U.S. flag and the Ris­ing Sun Flag, a con­tro­ver­sial sym­bol in East Asia due to its asso­ci­a­tion with Japan­ese impe­ri­al­ism. The gath­er­ing in Tokyo was backed by Hap­py Sci­ence, a new reli­gious move­ment that has been described as a cult, and took place sev­er­al hours before the ral­ly in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.[615]

    Posted by Mary Benton | January 11, 2021, 9:57 pm

  6. I found this arti­cle: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiakoerner/capitol-police-suicide
    to be inter­est­ing. Was there mind con­trol going on with­in the US Cap­i­tal Police force? Might explain some of the inad­e­qua­cies of the response?

    Posted by Johnny Cab | January 13, 2021, 4:05 pm

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