A Measure of the Current Malaise

We have dis­cussed the assas­si­na­tion of JFK for decades. The atten­tion devot­ed to that event is war­rant­ed. One could not exag­ger­ate the impor­tance of that event or its impact on our world. A sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approach­es. The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1210 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 17

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern  pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

In numer­ous pro­grams over the decades, we have doc­u­ment­ed the fact that Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion was a deci­sive event in the U.S. involve­ment in the Viet­nam War.

As laid out in NSAM #263 (craft­ed in Octo­ber of 1963), JFK had decid­ed to pull all U.S. forces out of Viet­nam by Christ­mas of 1965. Two days after his assas­si­na­tion, the Sun­day on which Ruby slew Oswald, Kennedy’s with­draw­al pro­gram was can­celed and the esca­la­tion pol­i­cy that became man­i­fest was put into effect, cod­i­fied in NSAM 273.

This is dis­cussed, in–among oth­er programs–FTR#978, as well as numer­ous pro­grams in our land­mark series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio.

The Zaprud­er Film, which dis­proves the Oswald cov­er sto­ry, was pur­chased by Time Inc. and han­dled by Life Mag­a­zine, plac­ing this cru­cial bit of evi­dence in the domain of Hen­ry Luce, a pri­ma­ry pro­mot­er of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang, aka Mae-ling Soong.

Thus,  Amer­i­ca’s eyes and ears on Chi­ang Kai-shek  were the same as Amer­i­ca’s eyes and ears on the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, which threat­ened to change the direc­tion on which the rail­way line described by Stan­ley Horn­beck was head­ed.

The Assas­si­na­tion Records Review Board accessed the per­spec­tive of a CIA pho­to­graph­ic expert, who opined that the Zaprud­er Film had been tam­pered with.

He viewed the film and saw what he believed was JFK react­ing to between six and eight dif­fer­ent shots, from at least three direc­tions.

Life’s pub­lish­er was C.D. Jack­son, a long­time intel­li­gence and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare asset. He large­ly over­saw the Luce pub­lish­ing out­let’s han­dling of the film.

Dur­ing the course of the Cold War, Hen­ry Luce had become “ . . . . a key CIA media asset.”

C.D. Jack­son “ . . . . who had been in charge of Life since 1960 . . . . was no ordi­nary pub­lish­er. . . . Jack­son had been a spe­cial­ist in psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare for the gov­ern­ment . . . and was an expert in Cold War pro­pa­gan­da . . . .”

The mag­a­zine delib­er­ate­ly struc­tured its pub­lish­ing of still frames from the film to mis­lead a naive observ­er about the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the film.

Life also pub­lished a cov­er pho­to­graph of Lee Har­vey Oswald that had obvi­ous­ly been doc­tored, with the shad­ows in the pho­to­graph going in dif­fer­ent direc­tions!

Numer­ous eye­wit­ness­es to the killing gave tes­ti­mo­ny to the effect that, at one point, the motor­cade actu­al­ly came to a com­plete halt, giv­ing the snipers a sta­tion­ary tar­get at which to fire.

Among those who tes­ti­fied to that effect were Dearie Cabell, the wife of Ear­le Cabell, the may­or of Dal­las. Cabel­l’s broth­er, Gen­er­al C.P. Cabell, had been a Deputy Direc­tor of the CIA, and was fired by JFK for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs inva­sion. 

(Anoth­er of those fired was Allen Dulles, who served on the War­ren Com­mis­sion.)

Pres­i­dent Biden con­tin­ued the sus­pi­cious han­dling of JFK evi­dence by fur­ther delay­ing release of infor­ma­tion about the mur­der.

The notion that the doc­u­ments could com­pro­mise mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty or law enforce­ment method­ol­o­gy at this stage of the inves­ti­ga­tion strains cred­i­bil­i­ty.

The JFK assassination–the key event to keep­ing Amer­i­can Far East­ern Pol­i­cy trav­el­ing the straight rail­road line described by Stan­ley Hornbeck–was also a cen­tral event in the career of Mort Sahl, the bril­liant stand-up come­di­an and one of the inspi­ra­tions for Mr. Emory’s life’s work.

“. . . . Mr. Sahl worked on radio and on local tele­vi­sion in Los Ange­les, but he didn’t help his cause with what some felt was on obses­sion with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. His per­for­mances began to include read­ing scorn­ful­ly from the War­ren Com­mis­sion report [pub­lished by The New York Times—D.E.]. And he worked as an unpaid inves­ti­ga­tor for Jim Gar­ri­son, the New Orleans dis­trict attor­ney, who claimed to have uncov­ered secret evi­dence that Lee Har­vey Oswald was not the assas­sin, and who accused a New Orleans busi­ness­man, Clay Shaw, of con­spir­ing to mur­der the pres­i­dent. No con­vinc­ing evi­dence secret or oth­er­wise, was pro­duced at Mr. Shaw’s tri­al, and the jury acquit­ted him in less than an hour.

‘I spent years talk­ing with peo­ple, Gar­ri­son notably, about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion,’ Mr. Sahl wrote in ‘Heart­land,’ a score-set­tling, dys­pep­tic mem­oir pub­lished in 1976, ‘and I was said to have hurt my career by being in bad com­pa­ny. . . . I don’t think that Jack Kennedy is bad com­pa­ny. I don’t think that Gar­ri­son is bad com­pa­ny. I learned some­thing, though. The peo­ple that I went to Hol­ly­wood par­ties with are not my com­rades The men I was in the trench­es with in New Orleans are my com­rades.’ He con­clud­ed, ‘I think Jack Kennedy cries from the grave for jus­tice.’ . . . .”

A con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant study of Viet­nam War crimes was authored by Nick Turse. A review by the U.S. Naval Insti­tute can be tak­en as an advi­so­ry in this regard.

Mr. Turse per­forms the remark­able feat of unspar­ing­ly sear­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the war crimes that were stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for much of the Amer­i­can (and allied) forces in Viet­nam by trac­ing the foun­da­tion of those crimes from the tech­no­crat­ic approach to mil­i­tary strat­e­gy pur­sued by the Pen­ta­gon and Robert McNa­ma­ra, through the re-social­iza­tion and re-pro­gram­ming of young, often teen-aged, recruits to turn them into reflex­ive killers, chron­i­cling the mas­sive fire­pow­er avail­able to U.S. forces, and doc­u­ment­ing the recal­ci­trant atti­tude of the offi­cer corps and Gen­er­al Staff, who were unwill­ing to coun­te­nance the pro­fes­sion­al and ide­o­log­i­cal dam­age that would result from pre­sen­ta­tion and adju­di­ca­tion of the truth.

In addi­tion, Mr. Turse–while avoid­ing self-right­eous posturing–highlights the doc­tri­naire racism of many U.S. com­bat­ants, who com­mit­ted war crimes behind the “MGR”–the “Mere Gook Rule.”

“ ‘An impor­tant addi­tion to Viet­nam war stud­ies . . . . Turse’s study is not anti-vet­er­an, anti-mil­i­tary, or anti-Amer­i­can. It does not allege that the major­i­ty of U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel in South Viet­nam com­mit­ted crimes. . . .” Pro­ceed­ings (U.S. Naval Insti­tute).

Nick Turse traces the strate­gic use of over­whelm­ing fire­pow­er and de fac­to coun­te­nanc­ing of civil­ian casu­al­ties owes much to the tac­ti­cal approach of Japan­ese forces dur­ing World War II in Chi­na: “ . . . . These efforts were com­mon­ly known as ‘paci­fi­ca­tion,’ but their true aim was to depop­u­late the con­test­ed coun­try­side. ‘The peo­ple are like water and the army is like fish.’ Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion, had famous­ly writ­ten. Amer­i­can plan­ners grasped his dic­tum, and also stud­ied the ‘kill-all, burn-all, loot-all’ scorched earth cam­paigns that the Japan­ese army launched in rur­al Chi­na dur­ing the 1930s and ear­ly 1940s for lessons on how to drain the ‘sea.’ Not sur­pris­ing­ly the idea of forc­ing peas­ants out of their vil­lages was embraced by civil­ian paci­fi­ca­tion offi­cials and mil­i­tary offi­cers alike. . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing the bru­tal real­i­ty of the crimes com­mit­ted by G.I.‘s in Viet­nam is the “dou­ble vet­er­an” man­i­fes­ta­tion. Before killing them and adding them to the body count of “ene­mies” killed, GI’s raped female “gueril­las.”

History, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln

In FTR#691, we set forth the Con­fed­er­ate Secret Ser­vice’s cen­tral role in the suc­cess­ful plot to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Lin­coln. Two Con­fed­er­ate Generals–one of Robert E. Lee’s cousins and one of his sons–appear to have been involved in the plot. A rel­a­tive by mar­riage also may have been involved in the gam­bit. In the Tues­day, 9/28/2021 West­ern Edi­tion of “The New York Times”, there is an op-ed col­umn by biog­ra­ph­er Allen C. Gueizo about the dilem­mas fac­ing some­one under­tak­ing to write about his­tor­i­cal fig­ures who have been vil­lain­ous in their con­duct. (He is deal­ing with that in con­junc­tion with writ­ing about Gen­er­al Robert E. Lee.) Cer­tain­ly, an ACCURATE telling of rel­e­vant events and facts would reduce the bur­den of his­tor­i­cal account­ing. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

Oswald World

In numer­ous pro­grams we have not­ed the deci­sive­ly impor­tant posi­tion of avowed Chi­na hawk Avril Haines. Ms. Haines is the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, and, as such, is in charge of the “inves­ti­ga­tion” into the “Lab-Leak The­o­ry.” The U.S. is now alleg­ing that Chi­na hacked key Microsoft email infra­struc­ture. Note in that con­text, that we have learned that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Chi­nese, among oth­er nation­al­i­ties. ” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . .”

He Couldn’t Breathe Either–Still Can’t–and Didn’t Get Resurrected

As the tri­al of George Floy­d’s alleged mur­der­er pro­ceeds in the glare of the spot­light of nation­al atten­tion, we recall (from FTR#1133) that Dr. Mar­tin Luther King could­n’t breathe either, when the breath­ing tube was removed from the grave­ly wound­ed, but still liv­ing, Dr. King and a pil­low was put over his face to suf­fo­cate him. ” . . . . This caused her [nurse Lula Mae Shel­by], on the way out, to glance back over her shoul­der, and see that the breath­ing tube had been removed and Dr. Bland put a pil­low on and over the face of Dr. King. . . .”

FTR #1174 Harvest Time, Part 1

The title refers to the U.S. and its cit­i­zens har­vest­ing the crops risen from dead­ly seeds sown for decades. The Capi­tol Riot was one of those. 

It is to the U.S. as the Beer­hall Putsch of 1923 was to Germany–a har­bin­ger of things to come.

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Richard Hof­s­tadter, whose the­o­ries have been bruit­ed about in the wake of the Capi­tol Riot. An icon of the main­stream media and the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, Hof­s­tadter’s work was under­writ­ten by the CIA.

In the con­text of Hof­s­tadter’s work being under­writ­ten by CIA, one of the fac­tors allow­ing the seeds of evil to grow has been the gov­ern­ment financ­ing of much of U.S. polit­i­cal life. 

Intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty has been damp­ened by finan­cial gain.

The armed con­fronta­tion in the Capi­tol 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.

Analy­sis of the Capi­tol Riot high­lights a “Before” and an “After.”

Even rel­a­tive­ly staid polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty insid­ers, as well as media out­lets open­ly expressed fear after a series of post-elec­tion shuf­fling by Trump at the Pen­ta­gon.

” . . . . there is spec­u­la­tion that more defense offi­cials may be on their way out and that this is just the begin­ning — even with only 70 days until the Biden admin­is­tra­tion takes over. . . . The flur­ry of depar­tures appar­ent­ly sent shock­waves through the Depart­ment of Defense. A defense offi­cial told CNN that the sit­u­a­tion was ‘unset­tling,’ adding that ‘these are dic­ta­tor moves.’ The Asso­ci­at­ed Press wrote that ‘unease was pal­pa­ble inside’ the Pen­ta­gon Tues­day. . . . ‘I’ve been shot at a lot. I’ve been near­ly killed a bunch of times. I’m not an alarmist. I try to stay cool under pres­sure. Mark me down as alarmed,’ retired four-star Gen. Bar­ry McCaf­frey said on MSNBC Wednes­day. . . .”

Unnamed offi­cials in NATO coun­tries have opined that the events of 1/6/2021 were a coup attempt by Trump’s forces.

In addi­tion, there is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of an active duty PSYOP offi­cer who oper­at­ed under the Spe­cial Forces com­mand struc­ture for lead­ing a con­tin­gent of 100 strong to the “ral­ly” on 1/6/2021.

As vet­er­an listeners/readers will no doubt real­ize, these events are to be seen against the back­ground of numer­ous pro­grams and posts high­light­ing Spe­cial­ized Knowl­edge and Abil­i­ties and Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

Notable among the croc­o­diles shed­ding tears over the Capi­tol Riot was for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Con­demn­ing the riot in one breath, he intoned that he would be attend­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion and that “ . . . . wit­ness­ing the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er is a hall­mark of our democ­ra­cy that nev­er gets old,’ he added. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of some of the Nazi con­nec­tions to the 9/11 attacks, as well as to the busi­ness rela­tion­ship between Dubya and the Bin Laden fam­i­ly.

Exit Stage Right: Eugenio Martinez Dies (What Was Richard Nixon Doing In Dallas, Texas, on 11/22/1963?)

In FTR #‘s 961, 962 and 963, we exam­ined the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Water­gate Break-in and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. The obit­u­ary of recent­ly deceased Water­gate bur­glar Euge­nio Mar­tinez con­tained a detail that opens up a vista onto the real Water­gate “op.” “. . . . In 1983, after his requests for clemen­cy had been reject­ed by Pres­i­dents Ger­ald R. Ford and Jim­my Carter, Mr. Martínez — who, it turned out, had still been on retain­er to the C.I.A. at the time of the Water­gate break-in — was par­doned by Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan. . . .”

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

In past pro­grams, we have spo­ken of the 1934 coup attempt against FDR, engi­neered by the most pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal forces in our coun­try. It was only foiled because Marine Corps Gen­er­al Smed­ley But­ler (right) betrayed the con­spir­a­tors. 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.

FTR #1163 Farewell America, Part 2

The pro­gram kicks off with a look at a full-page adver­tise­ment from The New York Times pledg­ing resis­tance to Trump admin­is­tra­tion attempts at elec­toral nul­li­fi­ca­tion. The orga­ni­za­tion behind the ad is RefuseFascism.org. We note the first two sig­na­to­ries:

1.–Cornel West–a mem­ber of the [Bernie] Sanders Institute–advised after the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion that the Sanders vot­ers had no choice but to cast their bal­lot for Jill Stein, the Green Par­ty can­di­date.
2.–Noam Chomsky–whose work on gen­er­a­tive lin­guis­tics (which estab­lished him as an aca­d­e­mi­cian) was financed large­ly by Navy and Air Force Intelligence–helped to neu­tral­ize recog­ni­tion of the deci­sive role in the Viet­nam War of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. JFK was in the process of pulling the U.S. out of Viet­nam. That was among the rea­sons he was killed. With his behav­ior fol­low­ing the Oliv­er Stone opus “JFK,” Noam Chom­sky did much to per­pet­u­ate the insti­tu­tion­al­ized fas­cism that has pos­sessed the U.S. since before the end of World War II. Gen­er­a­tive lin­guis­tics proved most use­ful in teach­ing per­son­nel at the Mon­terey Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute, one of whose grad­u­ates was Lee Har­vey Oswald.

On the back of the front sec­tion of that same edi­tion of The New York Times is an obit­u­ary of Sey­mour Top­ping. A lumi­nary of the “Gray Lady” for decades, he was South­east Asian Bureau chief from 1963 until 1966, dur­ing the time that JFK was mur­dered and the Viet­nam War, as a result, gained full momen­tum.

Much of the pro­gram sets forth mate­r­i­al from a con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant recent book: Chaos: Charles Man­son, the CIA, and the Secret His­to­ry of the Six­ties by Tom O’Neill.

O’Neill devel­ops a strong, albeit cir­cum­stan­tial, case that the crim­i­nal activ­i­ties of the Man­son Fam­i­ly were the core of a domes­tic intel­li­gence oper­a­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, it appears that the Man­son “op” was a key ele­ment of a domes­tic Phoenix program–an assas­si­na­tion and ter­ror cam­paign in the South dur­ing the Viet­nam War.

Designed to “win hearts and minds,” the Phoenix Pro­gram was real­ized by the CIA, and employed “false flag” ter­ror­ist inci­dents and the delib­er­ate mur­ders of non-com­bat­ants that were blamed on the Viet­cong and North Viet­namese.

” . . . . A Spe­cial Forces sol­dier, Antho­ny Her­bert, the sin­gle most dec­o­rat­ed com­bat vet­er­an of Viet­nam, pub­lished a best­selling book, Sol­dier, that detailed typ­i­cal orders from his Phoenix supe­ri­ors: “They want­ed me to take charge of exe­cu­tion teams that wiped out entire fam­i­lies and tried to make it appear as though the Viet Cong had done it them­selves. The ratio­nale was that the Viet Cong would see that oth­er Viet Cong had killed their own and . . . make alle­giance with us. The good guys. “. . . .” Chaos: Charles Man­son, the CIA, and the Secret His­to­ry of the Six­ties by Tom O’Neill; p. 228.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the fusion of CIA, Oper­a­tion Phoenix and the Los Ange­les law enforce­ment estab­lish­ment, Lieu­tenant Edward Her­rmann helped cre­ate a coun­terin­sur­gency pro­gram in L.A. and Cal­i­for­nia as a whole, inte­grat­ed and coor­di­nat­ed with fed­er­al intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies.

Edward Her­rman:

1.–Had a doc­tor­ate in psy­chol­o­gy.
2.–Specialized in quelling insur­gen­cies.
3.–Developed one of the first com­put­er sys­tems to track crim­i­nals and pre­dict vio­lent out­breaks in cities.
4.–Worked for many U.S. intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary agen­cies, includ­ing: the Air Force, the Secret Ser­vice, the Trea­sury Depart­ment, the Pres­i­den­t’s Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, the Insti­tute for Defense Analy­sis, the Defense Indus­tri­al Secu­ri­ty Clear­ance Office, the Defense Depart­men­t’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 
5.–Appears to have worked for the Phoenix Pro­gram in Viet­nam, using USAID for a cov­er.
6.–Worked for numer­ous defense con­trac­tors includ­ing: Elec­tro-Dash Opti­cal Sys­tems, Sys­tem Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and Con­trol Data Cor­po­ra­tion.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram con­sists of read­ing and analy­sis of O’Neil­l’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the career of one of the CIA’s most impor­tant MK-Ultra mind con­trol oper­a­tives.

Louis Joly­on West was Jack Ruby’s psy­chi­a­trist, and pre­sent­ed the unten­able hypoth­e­sis that Ruby killed Oswald because he had a brief psy­chomo­tor epilep­tic event in the base­ment of the Dal­las jail. In fact, the evi­dence sug­gests strong­ly that West had helped to erase Ruby’s mem­o­ry of hav­ing killed Oswald.

After detail­ing West­’s involve­ment with Sid­ney Got­tlieb of the CIA and one of the cen­tral fig­ures of its mind con­trol pro­grams, the broad­cast sets forth the mur­der of Chere Jo Hor­ton, a three-year-old girl whose muti­la­tion, rape and mur­der were pinned on 29-year-old Jim­mie Shaver.

An obvi­ous vic­tim of mind con­trol, appar­ent­ly imple­ment­ed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by Louis Joly­on West, Shaver was pro­grammed to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the killing, despite enor­mous con­tra­dic­tions in the evi­dence.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–Shaver’s unusu­al behav­ior and demeanor at the ini­tial scene of the crime: ” . . . . He was shirt­less, cov­ered in blood and scratch­es. Mak­ing no attempt to escape, he let the search par­ty walk him to the edge of the high­way. Bystanders described him as ‘dazed’ and ‘trance-like’ . . . .”
2.–Shaver’s appar­ent lack of aware­ness of the imme­di­ate cir­cum­stances of the crime: ” ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. He did­n’t seem drunk, but he could­n’t say where he was, how he’d got­ten there, or whose blood was all over him. Mean­while, the search par­ty found Hor­ton’s body in the grav­el pit. Her neck was bro­ken, her legs had been torn open, and she’s been raped. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Around four that morn­ing, an Air Force mar­shal ques­tioned Shaver and two doc­tors exam­ined him, agree­ing he was­n’t drunk. One lat­er tes­ti­fied that he ‘was not nor­mal . . . . he was very com­posed out­side, which I did not expect him to be under these cir­cum­stances.’ . . .”
4.–Shaver did­n’t rec­og­nize his own wife when she came to vis­it him. ” . . . . When his wife came to vis­it, he did­n’t rec­og­nize her. . . .”
Ini­tial­ly, he believed some­one else com­mit­ted the crime. ” . . . . He gave his first state­ment at 10:30 a.m., adamant that anoth­er man was respon­si­ble: he could sum­mon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tat­toos. . . .”
5.–Eventually, he signed a state­ment tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty: ” . . . . After the Air Force mar­shal returned to the jail­house, how­ev­er, Shaver signed a sec­ond state­ment tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty. Though he still did­n’t remem­ber any­thing, he rea­soned that he must have done it. . . .”
6.–Enter Jol­ly West: ” . . . . Two months lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber, Shaver’s mem­o­ries still had­n’t returned. The base hos­pi­tal com­man­der told Jol­ly West to per­form an eval­u­a­tion: was he legal­ly sane at the time of the mur­der? Shaver spent the next two weeks under West­’s super­vi­sion . . . While Shaver was under–with West inject­ing more truth serum to ‘deep­en the trance’–Shaver recalled the events of that night. He con­fessed to killing Hor­ton. . . .”
7.–West was a defense wit­ness who, instead, appears to have aid­ed the pros­e­cu­tion: ” . . . . At the tri­al, West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum con­fes­sion was more valid than any oth­er. And West was tes­ti­fy­ing for the defense . . . .”
8.–Shaver’s behav­ior at the tri­al is fur­ther sug­ges­tive of mind con­trol: ” . . . . One news­pa­per account said he ‘sat through the stren­u­ous ses­sions like a man in a trance,’ say­ing noth­ing, nev­er ris­ing to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smok­er. ‘Some believe it’s an act,’ the paper said, ‘oth­ers believe his demeanor is real. . . .”
9.–Shaver’s med­ical records at Lack­land Air Force base had van­ished. ” . . . . But, curi­ous­ly, all the records for patients in 1954 had been main­tained, with one excep­tion: the file for last names begin­ning with ‘Sa’ through ‘St’ had van­ished. . . .”
10.–” . . . . West had used lead­ing ques­tions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. ‘Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jim­my,’ he said. And try­ing to prove that Shaver had repressed mem­o­ries: ‘Jim­my, do you remem­ber when some­thing like this hap­pened before?’ Or: ‘After you took her clothes off, what did you do?’ ‘I nev­er did take her clothes off,’ Shaver said. . . .”
11.–” . . . . The inter­view [with Shaver] was divid­ed into thirds. The mid­dle third, for some rea­son, was­n’t record­ed. When the record picked up, the man­u­script said, ‘Shaver is cry­ing. He has been con­front­ed with all the facts repeat­ed­ly.’ . . .”

FTR #1133: The Plot to Kill King

In the after­math of the killing of George Floyd, there has been wall-to-wall cov­er­age of his mur­der and of the world-wide demon­stra­tions stem­ming from it. The advent of smart phone (with cam­eras) and the inter­net affords detailed and inti­mate expe­ri­ence of such an event.

How­ev­er, the orgias­tic cov­er­age of that event, the memo­r­i­al ser­vice led by FBI infor­mant and alleged [by the late War­ren Hinck­le] CIA oper­a­tive in Grena­da Al Sharp­ton stands in stark con­trast to the utter silence across the board on the cir­cum­stances of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion.

On the fifti­eth anniver­sary of King’s mur­der, Mr. Emory did a twelve hour pro­gram about the cir­cum­stances of the assas­si­na­tion, repris­ing AFA #8 (done in 1985 on the 17th anniver­sary of the killing) and FTR #46, record­ed a decade lat­er and sup­ple­ment­ed on 4/3/2018.

Despite exhaus­tive and per­ilous research done by the likes of Dr. William F. Pep­per, 4/4/2018 was notable for the absence of sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion of King’s mur­der.

The polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of such an event was pre­sent­ed by Dr. Pep­per in his third book about the King assas­si­na­tion, The Plot to Kill King: ” . . . . . . . . When one is con­front­ed with the assas­si­na­tion of a major leader who per­son­i­fies the most trea­sured val­ues of the species and it becomes clear that those respon­si­ble for the mur­der are offi­cials of his own gov­ern­ment act­ing with the sanc­tion of those in the shad­ows who actu­al­ly rule, sure­ly one should strive to under­stand what that means now and for the future. In oth­er words, when the removal of a leader who has offend­ed pow­er­ful forces and spe­cial inter­ests in the Repub­lic takes on the sta­tus of an act of state, cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

It seems that–for many–black lives mat­ter, but not Dr. King’s, appar­ent­ly, past a point.

Again, Dr. Pep­per not­ed that: ” . . . . cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

In said con­tem­pla­tion, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments our pre­vi­ous work on the killing.

Although Dr. Pep­per repris­es the stun­ning infor­ma­tion he set forth in Orders to Kill in The Plot to Kill King, we will not reprise that here, in the inter­ests of time. (We do recap a short excerpt from Orders to Kill com­pris­ing an appar­ent evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary between King’s mur­der and the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy, which occurred two months lat­er.)

The bulk of the dis­cus­sion in this pro­gram is pre­sen­ta­tion and analy­sis of the polit­i­cal machin­ery in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee that engi­neered Dr. King’s mur­der. (Dis­cus­sion of the Spe­cial Forces team that was in Mem­phis as a back-up unit in case the civil­ian sniper missed King is detailed in FTR #46.)

In Pep­per’s inves­ti­ga­tion of King’s mur­der­ers, he detailed the appar­ent role of the late Rus­sell Lee Adkins, a mem­ber of the Dix­ie Mafia in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. (The Dix­ie Mafia is dis­tinct from the Mafia, per se, that oper­at­ed in the South, although–as Pep­per makes clear–they worked with Mafiosi like New Orleans capo Car­los Mar­cel­lo and Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate Frank Lib­er­to, like Adkins, an oper­a­tor in Mem­phis.) 

His son Rus­sell Jr. took over exec­u­tive man­age­ment of the assas­si­na­tion machin­ery after his father’s death in 1967.

Note the coop­er­a­tion between the Ku Klux Klan and ele­ments of the Masons in Mem­phis. This should NOT be mis­un­der­stood as buy­ing into the myr­i­ad of anti-Mason­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries which have pro­lif­er­at­ed on the Inter­net. The bulk of Freema­son­ry are what they rep­re­sent them­selves as being–civic activists and phil­an­thropists. The Third Reich planned to exter­mi­nate the Masons, along with the Jews and oth­ers.

That hav­ing been said, there have always been net­works with­in the Masons which, due to to their clan­des­tine oper­at­ing struc­ture, have been uti­lized for con­spir­a­to­r­i­al pur­pos­es. In these broad­casts, we have not­ed the P‑2 lodge of Licio Gel­li as one such enti­ty.

The Rus­sell Adkins Klan/Mason nexus is anoth­er. Note Rus­sell Sr.‘s son Ron Adkins depo­si­tion about the deci­sive influ­ence of this insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist enti­ty and its pow­er­ful oper­a­tional con­nec­tions:

1.–It dom­i­nat­ed Mem­phis munic­i­pal pol­i­tics empow­er­ing May­or Hen­ry Loeb and Fire and Police Com­mis­sion­er Frank Hol­lo­man, among oth­ers fig­ur­ing in the mur­der of King.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu had long-stand­ing oper­a­tional links with the FBI. Num­ber two man in the bureau at the time, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s live-in lover, was close to Rus­sell Adkins and used him to dis­pense pay­ments to bureau oper­a­tives, includ­ing the Rev­erend Jesse Jack­son.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu net­worked with the Mafia, as stat­ed above.

3.–Ron Adkins, Rus­sell Sr.‘s son, deposed under oath that: ” . . . . Ron said that his father took him to his first lynch­ing when he was just six years old. . . .”

4.–The Adkins milieu was close to Dr. Breen Bland, whose alleged role in King’s death is dis­cussed below.

Next, we present the role of the Adkins machine as a con­duit for Hoover and Tol­son’s financ­ing for the escape of pat­sy-to-be James Earl Ray: ” . . . . . . . . [FBI offi­cial Clyde] Tol­son was a sub­stan­tial con­nec­tion for his [Ron­nie Adkins’] father . . . . Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to this case is that he brought the mon­ey which was to be paid to Harold Swen­son, the War­den of the Mis­souri State prison, in Jef­fer­son City, Mis­souri, in order for him to arrange for the escape of James in 1967. At Hoover’s request, James had been pro­filed as a poten­tial scape­goat, although the nature of the crime was not revealed. Ron told us about this assign­ment because he was an actu­al observ­er. He saw the mon­ey being deliv­ered by Tol­son and then, at his father’s invi­ta­tion, he rode to the prison where the mon­ey was paid to Swen­son by his father. . . Ray (who was always kept in the dark about this arrange­ment) suc­cess­ful­ly escaped from prison on April 23, 1967, and then . . . was mon­i­tored, con­trolled . . . . and moved around until the plans for the assas­si­na­tion and his use were final­ized. . . . .”

In the run-up to the assas­si­na­tion of king: ” . . . . In ear­ly 1968, two work­ers, thir­ty-five-year-old Echole Cole and twen­ty-nine-year-old Robert Walk­er were lit­er­al­ly swal­lowed by a mal­func­tion­ing ‘garbage pack­er’ truck. We would lat­er learn this was a planned mur­der by the Dix­ie Mafia fam­i­ly of Rus­sell Adkins, in coor­di­na­tion with Mem­phis Police Depart­ment Direc­tor of Police and Fire Frank Hol­lo­man, in order to com­pel Dr. King to return to sup­port the strik­ers. . . .” 

Sworn depo­si­tions by Lenny Cur­tis (a cus­to­di­an for the Mem­phis Police Depart­ment) and Nathan Whit­lock, a Mem­phis police­man named Frank Strauss­er was the actu­al shoot­er select­ed to exe­cute King: ” . . . . On that day, he [Strauss­er] broke to take lunch with [MPD Cap­tain Earl] Clark, and when he returned he resumed fir­ing. When he left at around 3:30 p.m., he put the top down on the con­vert­ible, took off his pow­der blue shirt, and threw it over the rifle in the back­seat, leav­ing only his white T‑shirt on. He ruf­fled his hair and put on a pair of sun­glass­es. When he left, May­or Loeb, Hol­lo­man, and the oth­er vis­it­ing police offi­cers were still there. They had met in Lieu­tenant Bullard’s office. . . .”

After high­light­ing the alleged role of Frank Strauss­er as the actu­al assas­sin, we present the oper­a­tional sequence of events on the ground in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. Again, note the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of the Adkins/Dixie Mafia/Klan machine in the pro­gres­sion of events. ” . . . . Also observed arriv­ing at the MPD fir­ing range build­ing where he met with the shoot­er and Earl Clark were Direc­tor Hol­lo­man and May­or Hen­ry Loeb. . . .”

Note, also, the roles of Jesse Jack­son and the Rev­erend Bil­ly Kyles in these maneu­vers. (As dis­cussed in FTR #1005, both were being paid by FBI offi­cial Clyde Tol­son, through the Adkins machine. Jack­son’s appar­ent role was to help secure Room 306 in the Lor­raine Motel, over­look­ing the pool and afford­ing a clear shot, as well as to maneu­ver the Invaders out of the area. (The Invaders were a local Black Pow­er group who were present for secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.) Kyles was there to help lure King out onto the bal­cony for the kill shot.

After King was shot, he was tak­en to St. Joseph’s hos­pi­tal, where, again the influ­ence of the Adkins machine came into play: ” . . . . . . . . Ron Adkins Tyler, under oath, told me that Dr. Breen Bland, who, remem­ber was also the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor, was in fact, the head sur­geon at the hos­pi­tal. . . . He said he was present and over­heard con­ver­sa­tions between his father and Dr. Bland, and then, fol­low­ing his father’s death, between his broth­er (Rus­sell Junior), Police and Fire Direc­tor Frank Hol­lo­man, and Dr. Bland about the impor­tance of Dr. King being tak­en to St. Joseph’s if he was still alive. . . . Ron Adkins Tyler has no doubt that they were deter­mined to make cer­tain that Dr. King would nev­er leave the emer­gency room at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal alive. Though he did not know the details of the final cause of death, it appears that he was cor­rect. . . .”

Next, we focus on events at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal on 4/4/1968:

1.–Among those events ” . . . . was the large pres­ence of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers who had tak­en up posi­tions in the hos­pi­tal well before the shot was fired. Accord­ing to Dr. Cause­way, who was on duty at the time, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers knew the names of all of the emer­gency room nurs­es and doc­tors on duty. . . .”

2.–The atten­tion giv­en to the grave­ly wound­ed Dr. King: ” . . . . He [Dr. Cause­way] observed that no con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to mov­ing the crit­i­cal­ly injured vic­tim to the oper­at­ing room and he saw no sur­gi­cal effort being made to save him. When he inquired about treat­ment, he was told that he was being treat­ed. . . .”

3.–According to sur­gi­cal aide Lula Mae Shel­by: ” . . . . there were many MPD offi­cers and army peo­ple milling about, in addi­tion to men in suits. . . . Dr. King was lying on a blood­ied gur­ney. She saw the huge hole in the low­er left side of his face, but heard one of the ER doc­tors say that he has a pulse. The ER doc­tors had per­formed a tra­cheoto­my and insert­ed a breath­ing tube. . . . in a while, the head of surgery (who appears to have been Dr. Breen Bland–the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor and col­lab­o­ra­tor dis­cussed ear­li­er) came into the emer­gency room with a cou­ple of men in suits and shout­ed at the staff work­ing on Dr. King, ‘Stop work­ing on the nig­ger and let him die. Now, all of you get out of here, right now. Every­body get out.’ . . . . as she was leav­ing, she heard three sounds of the men gath­er­ing or suck­ing up sali­va in their mouths–and then she heard two or three spit­ting sounds. This caused her, on the way out, to glance back over her shoul­der, and see that the breath­ing tube had been removed and Dr. Bland put a pil­low on and over the face of Dr. King. . . .”

After the mur­der, the above-men­tioned Lenny Cur­tis heard rumors about Frank Strauss­er being the assas­sin of King, as well as dis­cus­sion of Strauss­er being pres­sured to leave the MPD because of civ­il rights com­plaints being lodged against him.

Con­cerned that Cur­tis might dis­close infor­ma­tion about him to the FBI, Strauss­er con­front­ed him dur­ing a dri­ve and deliv­ered a warn­ing: ” . . . . ‘Lenny, you be care­ful now.’ The look he gave him was clear­ly threat­en­ing. . . .”

Fol­low­ing this inci­dent, Cur­tis expe­ri­enced strange, fright­en­ing things: ” . . . . . His gas was strange­ly turned on once when he was about to enter his house. He had lit a cig­a­rette, but as he opened the door he smelled gas and quick­ly put out the cig­a­rette. A strange Lin­coln was occa­sion­al­ly parked across the street from his apart­ment house. . . .  One morn­ing when the car was there, he got into his own car and quick­ly drove off, and the strange car pulled out and fol­lowed him. He man­aged to see the dri­ver. It was Strauss­er. At that time, new evi­dence in the case came up. He said that every time new evi­dence arose the offi­cer would pop up. He tried to move to a new house with­out notice but the land­lord of the new com­plex would report see­ing a man in the back of his house. When Lenny checked the area, he found a ‘tree stand,’ a V‑shaped stand where you could rest a rifle. When he put a stick in it, it focused on his kitchen and bath­room win­dows. He moved again, with­out notice. . . .”

Pep­per found Cur­tis to be inspir­ing, wait­ing until after his death in 2013 to come for­ward with his tes­ti­mo­ny out of fear for Lenny’s safe­ty. ” . . . . I safe­guard­ed his infor­ma­tion and his depo­si­tion for all of these years, fear­ful that the assas­s­in’s mas­ters would kill him if they learned about his coop­er­a­tion with me. . . .”

Before con­clud­ing the pro­gram, we revis­it the state­ment of one of the Spe­cial Forces offi­cers com­pris­ing the back-up fire team–a man Pep­per described under the pseu­do­nym “War­ren.” ” . . . .  . . . . War­ren said that on that occa­sion they also had a sec­ondary mis­sion, which was to do recon (recon­nais­sance of a home up in the West­ern Hills near the UCLA cam­pus.) The recon was to deter­mine the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a ‘wet insert ops deter­mined’ oper­a­tion. (‘Wet insert ops deter­mined’ means that the unit car­ries out a sur­rep­ti­tious entry at night into the tar­get­ed res­i­dence, kills every­one there, and leaves with­out a trace.)  He said that their recon deter­mined the fea­si­bil­i­ty of such an oper­a­tion. War­ren sub­se­quent­ly learned that the house was used by Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy when he was in Los Ange­les in 1967–68. . . .”

We end the pro­gram with a caveat deliv­ered to for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Wal­ter Faun­troy [of Wash­ing­ton D.C.]–a founder of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus. After inform­ing then Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Carl Albert that he wished to head what was to become the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions: ” . . . . Albert said to him, ‘Wal­ter, you don’t want that job.’ To which Faun­troy replied, ‘But I do want it; why not?’ Albert whis­pered, ‘Wal­ter, they will kill you.’ . . .”