Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Assassination' is associated with 152 posts.

FTR#1226 and FTR#1227 Microcosm, Parts 1 and 2

With the world demon­strat­ing all-encom­pass­ing dis­po­si­tion­al insta­bil­i­ty on numer­ous fronts, these pro­grams high­light the career of the late–alleged “liberal”–Luis Kut­ner, as a micro­cosm of con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion.

In addi­tion to his work on behalf of the Dalai Lama and Ezra Pound, Kut­ner:

Worked with the Chica­go Mob.
Net­worked with Jack Ruby.
Was involved with attempts at recruit­ing ele­ments of the mob to kill Fidel Cas­tro.
Net­worked with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations and Yaroslav Stet­sko.
Net­worked with the Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as.
Front­ed for Moi­se Tshombe.
Worked in tan­dem with ele­ments of what appeared to have been CIA in an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of attempts at replac­ing Chi­ang Kai-shek with some­one less embar­rass­ing.
Was involved in the betray­al of Fred Hamp­ton.
Was car­ry­ing water for Raoul Wallenberg–OSS agent and liai­son agent for SS gen­er­al Karl Wolff.

This descrip­tion also con­tains mate­r­i­al about Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s work on behalf of the Pinochet regime in Chile and its role in rein­forc­ing the canard about Iraqi troops dis­con­nect­ing Iraqi babies from life-sup­port sys­tems dur­ing the run-up to the first Gulf War.


FTR#1225 Further Analysis of Nazi Involvement in the Assassination of JFK

This broad­cast con­tin­ues a decades-long path of explo­ration that Mr. Emory has walked, once again uti­liz­ing mate­r­i­al from Coup in Dal­las:

We have detailed the fun­da­men­tal involve­ment of Nazis in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK in numer­ous pro­grams, over the decades, includ­ing: FTR#‘s 54, 168, 971, 1123, 1222, 1223, 1224, AFA #‘s 11, 12, 13, 15, 37, as well as The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 4.

Fur­ther explor­ing Nazi involve­ment in the JFK assas­si­na­tion,  we high­light net­work­ing between Thomas Eli Davis–linked to Jack Ruby and Lee Har­vey Oswald–and a vet­er­an spook named Vic­tor Oswald (no rela­tion to the JFK assas­si­na­tion pat­sy).

About Vic­tor Oswald:

1.–” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he became close friends with Alfred Barth, the vice-pres­i­dent for Mid­dle Euro­pean Affairs for the Chase Nation­al Bank in New York, owned by the Rock­e­feller fam­i­ly. Barth was a close friend of John McCloy . . . . who in 1964 would become a mem­ber of the War­ren Com­mis­sion. In 1950, Barth trav­eled to Madrid to meet with Gen­er­alis­si­mo Fran­co, and it was Vic­tor Oswald who accom­pa­nied him to the pri­vate meet­ing. Not long after­ward, Oswald became the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Chase Man­hat­tan Bank in Spain, hav­ing been appoint­ed by his friend Lawrence Rock­e­feller. Oswald was also a close friend and busi­ness part­ner with Pierre S. Du Pont III. . . .”
2.–”. . . . He was also a low-pro­file mem­ber of Madrid’s large coterie of for­mer Nazis, some of whom joined him in his var­i­ous busi­ness ven­tures . . . .”
3.–” . . . . Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Vic­tor Oswald was also a long­time busi­ness part­ner with fel­low Madrid res­i­dent Otto Sko­rzeny, who, more impor­tant­ly and to the point here, was present for Davis’s meet­ing with Vic­tor Oswald. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Sko­rzeny and Vic­tor Oswald had known each oth­er since at least 1951. This was the point dur­ing which Sko­rzeny was estab­lish­ing an inde­pen­dent engi­neer­ing office in Madrid. Intro­duc­tions between the two appear to have come through Johannes Bern­hardt, the for­mer senior SS intel­li­gence offi­cer who head­ed SOFINDUS, the cor­po­rate net­work used by the Nazis in Spain. Read­ers may recall that SOFINDUS assets were acquired by the Allies after the war. Vic­tor Oswald . . . was involved in the post­war acqui­si­tion of SOFINDUS, plac­ing him in close con­tact with Bern­hardt. . . .”

Much of the pro­gram con­sists of analy­sis of the high­ly sus­pi­cious “sui­cide” of Edward Grant Stock­dale, JFK’s ambas­sador to Ire­land and an indi­vid­ual who pos­sessed infor­ma­tion about a num­ber of sen­si­tive mat­ters that may have led to his elim­i­na­tion.

Much of that sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion con­cerned the large Nazi dias­po­ra which mate­ri­al­ized in Ire­land in the 1960’s, heav­i­ly cap­i­tal­iz­ing the Irish econ­o­my and aug­ment­ing a Nazi/fascist polit­i­cal base in that island nation.

Draw­ing on vir­u­lent anti-British sen­ti­ment in the “Emer­ald Isle,” as well as pro­found Vat­i­can influ­ence in that coun­try, a strong Third Reich under­ground fused with domes­tic fas­cist ele­ments such as the Blueshirts to cre­ate a strong ide­o­log­i­cal, oper­a­tional and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion for the Nazi dream of a “Euro­pean Argen­tine.”

“ . . . . A decade lat­er, accord­ing to his­to­ri­an Den­nis Eisen­berg in his thor­ough expose Re-Emer­gence of Fas­cism. ‘The ear­ly spring of 1961 saw one of the most impor­tant changes in plans for the fas­cist international’s future activ­i­ties. . . . It was decid­ed at this meet­ing to try and make Ire­land the future home for their activ­i­ties in the same way as the Argen­tine had been used in the days imme­di­ate­ly after the war. . . . The meth­ods used were the same as those which had been direct­ed against Per­on; the coun­try will be flood­ed with cap­i­tal in such a way that the Gov­ern­ment would become depen­dent on the men who con­trol the mon­ey purs­es. Now Ire­land was to become a kind of ‘refuge’ on the door-step of Europe for fas­cist-mind­ed extrem­ists.’ . . . .”

Stockdale’s “sui­cide” fol­lowed Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion by ten days.

“ . . . . On the morn­ing of Decem­ber 2, 1963, ten days after the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Edward Grant Stock­dale, a rugged­ly hand­some, forty-eight-year-old busi­ness­man and cohort of both Jack and Robert Kennedy, fell to his death from the thir­teenth floor of the Alfred I. DuPont Build­ing in down­town Mia­mi.

Stock­dale tum­bled eight floors from his busi­ness office win­dow before his body struck and land­ed on a fifth-floor ledge. . . .”

There is ample rea­son to believe that Stockdale’s death was not sui­cide.

“. . . . Inter­viewed in June 2004, Grant’s daugh­ter, Ann Stockdale—apparently acute­ly aware of the dan­gers of speak­ing can­did­ly about her father’s alleged sui­cide even four decades lat­er . . . . “[Pres­i­dent] Kennedy asked Dad­dy to go to the Air Force Base south of Mia­mi to see if (against Kennedy’s orders) bombs were being loaded on the planes. Bombs were being loaded on the planes! I believe one of the rea­sons Dad­dy was killed was because he knew that the Gov­ern­ment was being run by the Mil­i­tary Com­plex. . . .”

Stock­dale expressed fear for his life: “ . . . . Author and pub­lish­er David Tal­bot writes that Stock­dale flew to Wash­ing­ton and talked with Robert and Edward Kennedy about the assas­si­na­tion of their broth­er. On his return [to Mia­mi] Stock­dale told sev­er­al of his friends that ‘the world was clos­ing in.’ On Decem­ber 1, he spoke to his attor­ney, William Frates, who lat­er recalled: ‘He start­ed talk­ing. It didn’t make much sense. He said some­thing about ‘those guys’ try­ing to get him. Then about the assas­si­na­tion.’’ . . . .”

The authors spec­u­late that Stockdale’s “sui­cide” may have been arranged in part, to obscure his aware­ness of the pro­found Nazi pres­ence in Ire­land, includ­ing oper­a­tions of Otto and Ilse Sko­re­ny. Sko­rzeny, of course, may have been a key tac­ti­cal plan­ner for the JFK assas­si­na­tion as posit­ed by Albarel­li and his co-authors.

“ . . . . ‘Fre­quent­ly attend­ing these gath­er­ings in all their splen­dor were Otto and Ilse Sko­rzeny . . . With­out doubt, Stock­dale was amply famil­iar with for­mer Nazi SS offi­cer Sko­rzeny, who often vis­it­ed the embassy for meet­ings with var­i­ous Amer­i­can busi­ness­men, mil­i­tary offi­cers, and intel­li­gence offi­cials, as well as var­i­ous embassy staff mem­bers through­out 1960, 1961, and 1962. For­mer embassy per­son­nel vivid­ly recall Sko­rzeny com­ing to the embassy on a near ‘week­ly basis.’ Evi­dence also reveals that the Sko­rzenys were occa­sion­al din­ner guests join­ing the ambas­sador and his wife. . . .”

Both of JFK’s sur­viv­ing broth­ers made trips abroad in 1964, pos­si­bly to inves­ti­gate aspects of their brother’s mur­der.

Short­ly after announc­ing his can­di­da­cy for the Sen­ate, Ted Kennedy made a trip to Ire­land, short­ly after which he nar­row­ly escaped death in a plane crash: “ . . . . Six months after the mur­der of his broth­er in Dal­las, Sen­a­tor Edward Kennedy, the youngest of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s sons, flew to Ire­land. He had recent­ly announced his cam­paign to run for a six-year Sen­ate term in Mass­a­chu­setts . . . . He returned to the States, and less than three weeks lat­er, on June 19, 1964, he was a pas­sen­ger in a fatal plane crash that killed the pilot, Edward Zim­ny of Lawrence, MA. . . .”

Robert Kennedy trav­eled to Mex­i­co: “ . . . . Toward the end of 1964, his broth­er, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert F. Kennedy, made a trip to Mex­i­co City, osten­si­bly to observe the young rad­i­cal move­ment in the coun­try. Cov­er­age of the mys­te­ri­ous trip was tight­ly con­trolled, and it was only years lat­er that researchers began to spec­u­late on the real pur­pose of the trip. Some his­to­ri­ans argue he was pur­su­ing links between the assas­si­na­tion of his broth­er and a net­work oper­at­ing in Mex­i­co. . . .”


FTR#1224 Update on Nazi Connections to the JFK Assassination

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we set forth the deep polit­i­cal milieu span­ning the land­scape of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, as embod­ied by a French fas­cist net­work stretch­ing from the 1930’s up until the ear­ly 1990’s. Over­lap­ping dom­i­nant French and transna­tion­al fas­cist com­po­nents of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gence agen­cies and transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, these net­works exem­pli­fy the pow­er­ful forces that killed Pres­i­dent Kennedy and sit astride the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape.

In this pro­gram, we fur­ther devel­op some of the Nazi net­works involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion, in order to flesh out under­stand­ing of the struc­tur­al and oper­a­tional nature of the dom­i­nant ele­ments in our polit­i­cal cul­ture.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fas­cist con­nec­tions in the JFK assas­si­na­tion high­light­ed in Coup in Dal­las is the fact that Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar  Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter who was deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

Per­min­dex was involved with, among oth­er things, attempts on the life of French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of CIA and the OAS. 

he posi­tion of Hjal­mar Schacht’s rel­a­tive Robert as the New York admis­sions offi­cer of Albert Schweitzer Col­lege is the fact that Albert Schweitzer him­self was the hon­orary chair­man of Stille Hilfe—“Silent Help”—one of the post­war SS assis­tance orga­ni­za­tions, head­ed by Gudrun Bur­witz, Hein­rich Himmler’s daugh­ter. We have cov­ered Stille Hil­fe in pre­vi­ous pro­grams and posts.

When rail­road exec­u­tive Bill Thomp­son inquired of LBJ assis­tant Bob­by Bak­er about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of intro­duc­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy to alleged East German/Soviet spy Ellen Rometsch, Bak­er offered a very inter­est­ing reply, indi­cat­ing that Rometsch was a Nazi.

Impor­tant polit­i­cal con­text to the alleged “Com­mu­nist Spy” cov­er sto­ry of Ellen Rometsch con­cerns the polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions of the jour­nal­ist who was the pri­ma­ry shep­herd for the sto­ry. Clark Mol­len­hoff was an inti­mate of the ABN, OUN/B ele­ments who ascend­ed to a dom­i­nant role in the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment of the cur­rent Ukraine gov­ern­ment.

In AFA#15, as well as FTR#’s  777,  778 and 876, we set forth the role of OUN/B ele­ments in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, chiefly in gen­er­at­ing what Pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott termed the “Lev­el One Cover-up.”—putting the blame on “the Com­mu­nists” in order to deflect atten­tion from the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors.

In the above-cit­ed pro­grams, we not­ed how the assas­si­na­tion of Stepan Bandera—represented as part of a Sovi­et assas­si­na­tion pro­gram with which Lee Har­vey Oswald was alleged­ly affil­i­at­ed, we not­ed that the behav­ior of assas­sin Bog­dan [or “Bohdan”] Stashyn­sky sug­gest­ed that he was a dou­ble agent and that the Ban­dera assas­si­na­tion was—in effect—a provoca­tive gam­bit lend­ing grav­i­tas to the “Lev­el-One Cov­er-up” posit­ed by Pro­fes­sor Scott.

Research uncov­ered by author Albarel­li strong­ly rein­forces the prob­a­bil­i­ty that Stashynsky’s work for the Sovi­ets was a dou­ble agent, with his remark­able behav­ior ele­vat­ing the Ban­dera hit to the lev­el of Gehlen/Western pro­pa­gan­da.

(Stashyn­sky still had the shaft of the bro­ken key to Bandera’s apart­ment at the time of his arrest and the head of the key was still in the lock of Bandera’s apart­ment when dis­cov­ered by the Ger­man police, as was revealed at Bandera’s tri­al two years lat­er.)

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of Thomas Eli Davis.

Gun­run­ner Thomas Eli Davis appears to have been sub­ject­ed to a degree of mind con­trol at the Lafayette Clin­ic in Detroit. Ernst Rodin—his “therapist”—was an Aus­tri­an émi­gré with a Third Reich pedi­gree.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the fact that MK/ULTRA oper­a­tive extra­or­di­naire Louis Joly­on West was a pro­tégé of Rodin.

Davis was a gun­run­ning asso­ciate of Jack Ruby and was, appar­ent­ly, involved with Lee Har­vey Oswald’s sojourn in Mex­i­co.

In our next pro­gram, we will set forth Davis’s con­nec­tions to Vik­tor Oswald, an “Under­ground Reich” asso­ciate who net­worked exten­sive­ly with the milieu of Otto Sko­rzeny in Spain.


“Coup in Dallas”: Important New Book

The late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. has authored a lengthy tome, which draws togeth­er var­i­ous, dis­parate ele­ments involved in the Dal­las coup in an impor­tant, time­ly man­ner. In par­tic­u­lar, the book details the many ele­ments of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism that fig­ure in the land­scape of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union. “. . . . Of note, three months ear­li­er, Oswald had applied for admit­tance to the Albert Schweitzer Col­lege locat­ed in Switzer­land via cor­re­spon­dence with Robert Schacht, the college’s NY-based admis­sions. By coin­ci­dence, Robert was a blood rel­a­tive of . . . . Hjal­mar Schacht. . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


FTR#1216 The Dealey Plaza Blues

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?


A Blast From The Past–Literally

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.


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. . . .”