Continuing our series of interviews about JFK Revisited, we visit with both Jim DiEugenio and David Talbot, the author of Brothers and The Devil’s Chessboard. (We have highlighted information from the latter in FTR#‘s 894, 1162.)
Note that David Talbot is a major contributor to the commentary in JFK Revisited.
The broadcast highlights the many topics of discussion that David Talbot contributes during the program. We also highlight David’s problems getting The Devil’s Chessboard reviewed.
Of note, as well, is David’s discussion of a document that he and Lisa Pease discovered: On the weekend of JFK’s assassination, Allen Dulles had decamped to Camp Peary aka “The Farm”–a major CIA training facility. The document later disappeared.
Our ongoing series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio–selected by Oliver Stone to write the screenplay for the documentary JFK Revisited and to write and edit the book derived from the film—presents an extremely enriching guest, John Newman.
Discussion concludes with what Senator Richard Schweiker noted: that there were “the fingerprints of Intelligence all around Oswald.” An important consideration bracketing this discussion concerns the CIA’s counterintelligence search/obsession for a KGB mole within the Agency. John has written, and is writing, about that subject. Oswald’s “defection” to the USSR overlapped that dynamic.
Author of among other titles JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA, John was deeply involved with Stone’s 1991 opus JFK.
The interviews begin with review of topics previously discussed in this FTR series, including: President Eisenhower’s order to kill Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, reaching a crescendo with Ike’s outburst at a national security meeting demanding aloud Lumumba’s termination; Presidents Trump’s and Biden’s balking at the mandated release of documents pursuant to the ARRB’s mandate; discussion of Operation Northwoods, Lyman Lemnitzer’s and Maxwell Taylor’s planned series of provocations designed to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
Next, we review JFK’s Vietnam policy (this, too, has been covered in past talks, however we present added depth drawing on John’s expertise and published book JFK and Vietnam.)
We then highlight General Curtis LeMay’s attitude toward and behavior with regard to JFK.
Of particular note is John Newman’s disclosure that no recordings of the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have survived intact!
This broadcast continues our visits with Jim DiEugenio–author of Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliver Stone to write the screenplay for his latest documentary.
In these broadcasts, we are additionally privileged by the participation of Paul Bleau, a veteran JFK assassination researcher who is prominently featured in JFK Revisited.
The recent inquiries into the 1/6/2021 insurrection have yielded some journalistic coverage (Washington Post) of Secret Service destruction of records of 1963 threats to JFK from “white supremacist” groups. We begin by presenting Paul’s analysis of the Chicago plot against JFK’s life; with apparent shooters positioned in a high-rise building to eliminate JFK as he traveled in a motorcade.
Next, Paul analyzes the plot against JFK’s life in Tampa.
Following discussion of the previous plots against JFK in 1963, we turn to Oswald’s presence in New Orleans and the cast of characters revolving around Guy Banister’s “detective agency.”
In a previous program, we noted that the term “Conspiracy Theorist” was greatly elevated in its use and intellectual profile by stressing the utility of the moniker in discrediting Warren Commission critics.
Instead of “conspiracy,” the term “networking” is both accurate and resonates positively with the relationships that characterize the JFK assassination landscape.
Among Paul Bleau’s numerous articles available on kennedysandking.com is one about Oswald’s escorts. We delve into some aspects of the networking involving Oswald and the Camp Street milieu in New Orleans.
This broadcast continues our visits with Jim DiEugenio–author of Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliver Stone to write the screenplay for his latest documentary.
In these broadcasts, we are additionally privileged by the participation of Dr. Gary Aquilar, one of the experts featured in the Stone/DiEugenio documentary, as well as being one of the ground-breaking figures in the ongoing inquiry into the medical evidence in the assassination.
Dr. Aquilar highlighted the deep professional compromising of people who filled “expert” roles in the various medical examinations, the involvement of a number of them as “experts” in other, important intelligence-connected cases such as the assassination of Martin Luther King.
In particular, Dr. Aquilar parsed the inconsistencies in a review of the medical evidence in the JFK assassination case that was instituted by then Attorney General Ramsey Clark–“inconsistencies” which are difficult to ascribe to caprice or error.
In addition to his presentation of new material with which even Jim DiEugenio was unfamiliar, Gary was instrumental in discussion of the medical/forensic evidence in the JFK assassination case.
This broadcast continues our visits with Jim DiEugenio–author of Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliver Stone to write the screenplay for his latest documentary.
Correction: Mr. Emory misidentified journalist Anderson Cooper as the son of Cokie Roberts. He is the son of the late socialite Gloria Vanderbilt.
Expressing a sentiment that appears to have been shared by many in the government, Secret Service agent Elmer Moore branded JFK a “traitor” in a conversation with Jim Gochenaur:
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. 205.
. . . . Jim Gochenaur: Moore leaned back in his big comfortable leather chair and he said, “Who killed Jack Kennedy?” Then he said, “Well, I’ll tell you who didn’t. With 100 percent certainty. It wasn’t the Russians.” And my head is starting to swim, I wanted to break in right at that point. But then he said, “I’ll tell you why—JFK was the Russians’ boy. He was giving away everything he could. That man, for all intents and purposes, dare I say it? Jim, I will say it. JFK was a traitor.”
The bizarre saga of the convoluted journey of the “Magic Bullet” (CE399) is framed by Parkland Hospital O.P. Wright’s widow, who stated that “more than one nurse” had found bullets on stretchers at the hospital on the day Kennedy was shot.
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. 225.
. . . . [Josiah] Thompson gave an important speech at the 2003 Duquesne University JFK Assassination Conference. He revealed that, in a 1993 interview, O.P. Wright’s widow—who also worked at Parkland Hospital—said that more than one nurse had approached her I the twenty-four hours after the assassination because they had found bullets on gurneys. . . .
Additional Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: The lack of identifiable fingerprints on the rifle allegedly used by Oswald to kill JFK; Former police officer and Parkland Hospital security official O.D. Wright’s claim that the bullet he found on a stretcher at Parkland had a pointed tip, unlike CE399; Warren Commission members’ dissent from the official version of the assassination; The fact that the FBI’s and CIA’s analysis of the shooting differed from the Warren Commission’s thesis; The test firings of bullets into skulls from behind that produced results antithetical to the Warren Commission’s thesis; The discovery of skull fragments in both Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963 and in the limousine; Discovery of a bullet with a bent tip in JFK’s limousine; Admiral George Burkley (JFK’s personal physician) and his contravention of the Warren Commission’s thesis; Cover-up of Burkley’s analysis by the Warren Commission; Burkley’s family’s accounts of Burkley’s disagreement with the official version of the assassination; the curious–and ominous–reversal by Burkley’s daughter on her initial agreement to cooperate with independent investigators.
On Sunday, November 27th, at 1 pm Pacific Time, we will be visiting with prolific author Jim DiEugenio, who was selected to write the screenplay for Oliver Stone’s documentary “JFK Revisited.” We will have time for Mr. DiEugenio to interact with the audience. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In addition to periodic appearances by other researchers and authors on the Zoom Q & A talks, Mr. Emory’s Patreon site has covered the deep political history of the Philippines, the Port Chicago explosion, the lawsuit against the Biden administration to force the release of documents about the JFK assassination, possible false flag in Ukraine prior to the U.S. midterms. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
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.
A new feature of the Zoom Q & A Patreon talks concerns the periodic presentation of authors and researchers, in order that they can update us on developments in the relevant areas of political inquiry. Zoom attendees will be able to interact with them, posing questions and/or comments that are relevant to their respective areas of expertise. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
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