These programs continue our series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about the Oliver Stone documentary JFK Revisited, for which Jim wrote the screenplay.
Yet another area in which JFK’s policy outlook ran afoul of the prevailing wisdom of the Cold War was with regard to the Congo. A Belgian colony which was the victim of genocidal policies of King Leopold (estimates of the dead run as high as 8 million), the diamond and mineral-rich Congo gained a fragile independence.
In Africa, as well, Kennedy understood the struggle of emerging nations seeking freedom from colonial domination as falling outside of and transcending stereotyped Cold War dynamics.
In the Congo, the brutally administered Belgian rule had spawned a vigorous independence movement crystallized around the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. Understanding of, and sympathetic to Lumumba and the ideology and political forces embodied in him, Kennedy opposed the reactionary status quo favored by both European allies like the United Kingdom and Belgium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the United States.
In 1961, there was another assassination that overlapped events leading up to JFK’s killing. U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was on the same page as JFK with regard to Congolese independence from Belgium, negation of the Belgian-sponsored attempt at getting mineral-rich Katanga province to secede and was of the same mind as JFK with regard to assuring Patrice Lumumba’s survival.
Hammarskjold’s 1961 death in a plane crash was not the accident it was represented as being:
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; Introduction Copyright 2022 by Oliver Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 105.
. . . . The photos of Hammarskjold show his body as the only one not burned or charred. And he had a playing card, reportedly the ace of spades, stuffed into his shirt collar above the know in the tie. Now, due to Susan Williams’ book and new evidence offered by Desmond Tutu and the Union of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are controversial document that indicate Allen Dulles was involved in the sabotage of the plane. The project was called Operation Celeste and was to be carried out through a secret white supremacist group called SAMIR.
Kennedy’s old mentor Edmund Gullion advised JFK that Hammarskjold’s death was not the accident it was represented as being.
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; Introduction Copyright 2022 by Oliver Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 402–403.
. . . . Suspicions were everywhere that there had been foul play. The first person on the scene was the US air attache. And there were bullets that he said were in the victims including Hammarskjold. And a close friend of President Kennedy, Edmund Gullion, sent a cable home saying: Contrary to the official explanation for this tragic incident, this was an assassination . . . .
In the Congo, LBJ reversed JFK’s policy stance, and the corporate looting of the Congo resulted under General Joseph Mobutu, himself a beneficiary of the piracy.
LBJ also reversed JFK’s policy toward Indonesia.
In 1955, Sukarno hosted a conference of non-aligned nations that formalized and concretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nationalism of some Dutch industrial properties, led the U.S. to try and overthrow Sukharno, which was attempted in 1958.
Kennedy understood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indonesia in 1964 to forge a more constructive relationship with Sukharno. Obviously, his murder in 1963 precluded the trip.
In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aided coup in which as many as a million people were killed.
Of particular interest in connection with Indonesia, is the disposition of Freeport Sulphur, a company that had enlisted the services of both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie in an effort to circumvent limitations on its operations imposed by Castro’s Cuba.
It should be noted that Freeport had set its corporate sights on a very lucrative pair of mountains in Indonesia, both of which had enormous deposits of minerals, iron, copper, silver and gold in particular.
Cuba was an area of major conflict between JFK and the Powers That Be.
When JFK gave a green light to the attempted overthrow of Castro via the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had understood that the plan itself was destined to work.
In fact, Allen Dulles knew the plan as formulated would fail, and expected Kennedy to authorize the military to step in and neutralize Castro.
Realizing that he had been lied to, JFK dismissed Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and General C.P. Cabell.
He also spoke of shattering the CIA into a thousand pieces. It is grimly, morbidly ironic that it was Kennedy’s head that was shattered, and that he was “decapitated.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK rebuffed the pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, thereby avoiding the confrontation with Soviet tactical nuclear weapons that had been provided to Castro, unbeknownst to the U.S.
Opting for a blockade, Kennedy also established a quid-pro-quo with Nikita Khrushchev, agreeing to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey.
This was followed by a number of back-door diplomatic attempts at normalizing relations with Cuba.
At the moment that Castro heard JFK had been killed, he was meeting with French journalist Jean Daniel, who had functioned as one of those back-door diplomatic channels to Castro.
After discussion of the “dual front” 531 Lafayette Place/544 Camp Street in New Orleans run by “private investigator” Guy Banister, we review the alleged “leftist” Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement with that organization and his apparently contrived altercation with Carlos Bringuier, the anti-Castro Cuban and member of the DRE, part of the CIA-sponsored fronts operating against Castro.
As we have seen in past programs, George Joannides directed the DRE for CIA during Bringuier’s tenure with the organization. Researcher Jefferson Morley filed a FOIA suit against CIA to precipitate more disclosure about Joannides, who had been the Agency’s liaison with the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Appellate Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh cast a deciding vote negating Morley’s appeal.
Discussion concludes with analysis of how two visual events keyed major events in the investigation of JFK’s assassination: a 1975 TV program, on which Geraldo Rivera–featuring comedian Dick Gregory and Robert Groden–aired the Zapruder film. The uproar following that led to the formation of the House Select Committee on Assassination.
The “crawl” at the end of Oliver Stone’s JFK, informing the audience that the HSCA had classified key documents until 2029, generating further outrage and leading to the formation of the Assassination Records Review Board.
Continuing our discussion with Jim DiEugenio about JFK Revisited, we begin with analysis of comparison between the “stab in the back” hypothesis floated by reactionaries in Weimar Germany, denying that they lost World War I, with similar revisionism floated by the right wing concerning America’s defeat in Vietnam.
Bridging discussion that will be continued in our previous program, we note a key quote from the book and documentary by Lisa Pease, noting that JFK stood apart from the Eisenhower/Dulles view that non-alignment among the former colonial territories that achieved independence was the equivalent of pro-Communist orientation.
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [HC]; Copyright 2022 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 352.
. . . . Lisa Pease: His [JFK’s] approach was a radical break from his predecessor. In an oral history interview that Sukarno gave after John Kennedy’s death, he said words to the effect that what made Kennedy special is that he believed non-alignment was not amoral as it had been under John Foster Dulles. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. . . .
Exemplifying Kennedy’s understanding of how nationalist aspirations were at the forefront of struggles for national independence that were cast into the annihilating Cold War meatgrinder, we detail his trip to Indochina, where he networked with French generals, who told him that France was winning its struggle against the Viet Minh, and then with State Department professional Edmund Gullion, who opined that France was losing the war and would, in the end, lose.
Gullion also told Kennedy that, if the U.S. got involved, it would lose as well. It was Gullion’s conviction that the Vietnamese peoples’ desire for independence trumped anything the West could do.
We note that roughly 80% of the budget of the French war effort was bankrolled by the U.S. We also note that there was a contingency plan developed for a massive U.S. air support operation on behalf of the French called “Operation Vulture.” Part of that plan was the deployment of three atomic bombs for use against the Vietnamese.
For more about Kennedy’s early education about the realities of war in Southeast Asia, see—among other programs, FTR#1031.
This awareness guided JFK’s Vietnam policy, in which he not only resisted tremendous pressure to commit U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, but planned a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam.
Perhaps the most important change made after JFK’s assassination was Johnson’s negation of Kennedy’s plans to withdraw from Vietnam.
LBJ cancelled Kennedy’s scheduled troop withdrawal, scheduled personnel increases and implemented the 34A program of covert operations against North Vietnam. Executed by South Vietnamese naval commandos using small, American-made patrol boats, these raids were supported by U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, which were electronically “fingerprinting” North Vietnamese radar installations.
The electronic fingerprinting of North Vietnamese radar was in anticipation of a pre-planned air war, a fundamental part of a plan by LBJ to involve the United States in a full-scale war in Southeast Asia.
Despite having promised during the 1964 campaign that no American combat units would be committed to Vietnam, within three months of the election, the first combat units were dispatched to that unfortunate nation.
In addition to noting that Hubert Humphrey, contrary to popular misconception, was an opponent of Johnson’s war strategy, we note that Robert McNamara was also opposed to it, although he went along with the Commander in Chief’s policies.
McNamara did commission the Pentagon study of Vietnam policy that became the Pentagon Papers.
Jim notes that Noam Chomsky and Professor Howard Zinn initially opposed discussion of how JFK’s assassination changed U.S. Vietnam policy.
There is a clip in the film of a conversation between LBJ and McNamara where LBJ codifies his opposition to the JFK/McNamara policies in Vietnam.
The fledgling nation of Laos was also part of French Indochina, and Jim notes how outgoing President Eisenhower coached President-Elect Kennedy on the necessity of committing U.S. combat forces to Laos.
Again, Kennedy refused to commit U.S. ground forces and engineered a policy of neutrality for Laos.
Whereas JFK had implemented a policy affording neutrality to Laos–against the wishes of the Joint Chiefs, CIA and many of his own cabinet, LBJ scrapped the neutralist policy in favor of a CIA-implemented strategy of employing “narco-militias” such as the Hmong tribesmen as combatants against the Pathet Lao. This counter-insurgency warfare was complemented by a massive aerial bombing campaign.
JFK’s policy vis a vis the war of independence being waged by the French in Algeria is of particular importance.
The program reviews Kennedy’s stance on Algeria. A French colony in North Africa, Algerian independence forces waged a fierce guerrilla war in an attempt at becoming free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the Western consensus on Algeria, which sought to retain that property as a French possession.
The French people were divided over the Algerian struggle, and those divisions led to the fall of the Fourth Republic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle granted Algeria its independence and then faced down the lethal opposition of the OAS, a group of military officers grounded in the fascist collaborationist politics of Vichy France. De Gaulle survived several assassination attempts against him and there are a number of evidentiary tributaries leading between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.
Maurice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Banister’s investigators–boasted of having transferred a large sum of money from the CIA to the OAS officers plotting against De Gaulle. In addition, Jean Souetre–a French OAS-linked assassin was in the Dallas Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.
JFK, Algeria and operational links between JFK’s assassination and OAS attempts on De Gaulle’s life are discussed in FTR#1162.
Note that JFK told the French that he could not control his own intelligence services.
The program concludes with discussion of JFK’s policies with regard to Africa, the Congo in particular. This topic is presented at greater length in our next interview with Jim.
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?
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 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.The article has historical resonance on this 58th anniversary of JFK’s assassination in several respects; we present information from FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.) 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.” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
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