FTR #1162 Farewell America, Part 1

In the imme­di­ate after­math of the 2020 elec­tion, there was much beat­ing of the breasts and tear­ing of the hair by main­stream and “alter­na­tive” jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal forces.

Declar­ing the (pre­dictable) assault by Trump and much of the GOP on the integri­ty and accu­ra­cy of the elec­tion results to be an “attack” that “threat­ened Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy,” they might be seen as clos­ing the barn door after the horse had gone.

In fact, “Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy” had its brains blown all over the back of a lim­ou­sine in Dal­las, Texas on 11/22/1963.

This pro­gram presents aspects of the long-dead Amer­i­can demo­c­ra­t­ic process that have escaped wide­spread exam­i­na­tion.

Key­ing the dis­cus­sion is a quote from Anne Hidal­go, the may­or of Paris. “Wel­come back Amer­i­ca!” she wrote on Twit­ter. . . .

In 1968, Farewell America–a book pre­sent­ing an oblique, some­what enig­mat­ic account of the JFK assas­si­na­tion was pub­lished, alleged­ly authored by “James Hep­burn.” In the years since its pub­li­ca­tion, the book has come to be under­stood as some­thing of a response by French intel­li­gence to both the JFK assas­si­na­tion and over­lap­ping attempts by ele­ments of CIA and French fas­cist and revan­chist forces to over­throw and/or assas­si­nate Charles De Gaulle.

An excel­lent account of this impor­tant, but large­ly unrec­og­nized ele­ment of U.S. and world his­to­ry was pre­sent­ed in a remark­able tome titled The Dev­il’s Chess­board by David Tal­bot. We present Tal­bot’s account of the attempts at over­throw­ing De Gaulle and that even­t’s inter­sec­tion with the intrigue that took Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s life.

(With hol­i­day gift-giv­ing sea­son fast approach­ing, we emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mend The Dev­il’s Chess­board for those who tru­ly val­ue demo­c­ra­t­ic process and integri­ty.)

The World War II leader of the Free French forces and the French pres­i­dent for 11 years, De Gaulle had run afoul of pow­er­ful ele­ments of the French mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence forces, as well as Allen Dulles’s CIA. Out­raged at his attempt to grant Alge­ria its inde­pen­dence in order to con­clude a bru­tal gueril­la war, De Gaulle was viewed as an out­right trai­tor by the OAS (L’Or­gan­i­sa­tion de L’Armee Secrete–The Secret Army Orga­ni­za­tion).

Because of De Gaulle’s insis­tence on pur­su­ing con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary and nuclear inde­pen­dence from both the U.S. and NATO, and the belief that he was “soft on com­mu­nism,” ele­ments of Dulles’s CIA col­lab­o­rat­ed with the OAS forces, act­ing in tan­dem with Rein­hard Gehlen’s BND cadres.

The coup was led by Mau­rice Challe, a dec­o­rat­ed French Air Force gen­er­al, who planned to air­lift elite para­troop­er ele­ments into France, where they would join with oth­er armored and air­borne forces staged out­side Paris.

Alert­ed to the impend­ing coup, De Gaulle ral­lied the French pop­u­lace behind his besieged gov­ern­ment, and the coup lost momen­tum. Challe sur­ren­dered after his fel­low coup plot­ters lost enthu­si­asm for the oper­a­tion.

Ear­ly on in the coup attempt, cred­i­ble polit­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions set forth the assis­tance to the coup pro­vid­ed by ele­ments of the CIA and Pen­ta­gon, sup­ple­ment­ed by U.S. reac­tionar­ies.

Fol­low­ing the coup’s fail­ure, OAS gun­men ambushed De Gaulle, who escaped with his life due to the skill and loy­al­ty of his secu­ri­ty detach­ment.

Interestingly–and per­haps significantly–an OAS ter­ror­ist named Jean Sou­e­tre was arrest­ed in Dal­las on 11/22/1963 and deport­ed to Mex­i­co. Some ana­lysts believe that a French fas­cist and crim­i­nal ele­ment was involved with the oper­a­tional phase of the JFK assas­si­na­tion in Dal­las.)

In 2002, a book was pub­lished (after the death of its author) which pre­sent­ed De Gaulle’s point­ed analy­sis of the killing JFK, which he felt was alto­geth­er sim­i­lar to the attempts on his life.

De Gaulle’s analy­sis of the method­olog­i­cal tem­plate of both Kennedy’s mur­der and his own, very near brush with death is poignant­ly accu­rate and telling.
Pro­gram High­lights Include: Analy­sis of JFK’s 1957 speech endors­ing Alger­ian inde­pen­dence; Guy Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin’s claim to have car­ried a large sum of mon­ey from the CIA to French con­spir­a­tors plot­ting the over­throw of De Gaulle; Gatlin’s 1965 death in a fall from a high-rise hotel win­dow in Pana­ma.

FTR #1104 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 14: Lithium Coup in Bolivia, Part 1 and FTR #1105 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 15: Lithium Coup in Bolivia, Part 2

These pro­grams high­light fea­tures of an appar­ent coup d’e­tat in Bolivia, empha­siz­ing the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions fig­ur­ing in the coup itself, as well as the under­ly­ing dynam­ic of the devel­op­ment of Bolivi­a’s enor­mous lithi­um reserves. Cen­tral to the dis­cus­sion is the fact that lithi­um is essen­tial for the devel­op­ment of elec­tric car bat­ter­ies and that tech­nol­o­gy is impor­tant to any suc­cess­ful “Green­ing” of the glob­al econ­o­my.

Fas­cists from Latin Amer­i­ca and Europe net­worked with transna­tion­al cor­po­rate ele­ments and some U.S. intel­li­gence cut-outs to oust Evo Morales and his gov­ern­ment.

Although Morales had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al norms on term lim­its in order to extend his gov­er­nance, his polit­i­cal agen­da had great­ly ben­e­fit­ed Bolivi­a’s poor and its his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed indige­nous pop­u­la­tion, in par­tic­u­lar. The coun­try’s min­er­al wealth has been exploit­ed by for­eign com­pa­nies and select mem­bers of the Boli­vian elite to the detri­ment of much of the pop­u­la­tion. Even the con­ser­v­a­tive “Finan­cial Times” has not­ed that Morales restruc­tur­ing of the Boli­vian economy–mineral extrac­tion, in particular–has sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved the coun­try’s econ­o­my and reduced pover­ty.

This ele­ment of dis­cus­sion involves many sub­jects cov­ered at length over the decades and fea­tured in the archives:

1.–Material about Klaus Bar­bie and the Euro­pean fas­cists in his “Fiances of Death” (or “Bride­grooms of Death”) mer­ce­nar­ies can be found in, among oth­er pro­grams, AFA #‘s 19 and 27.
2.–The Vat­i­can’s rela­tion­ship to fas­cism, includ­ing Opus Dei and the Ustachi in Croa­t­ia, is high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams AFA #17.
3.–Information about the re-emer­gence of the Ustachi can be found in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 49, 154, 766, 901.

Key indi­vid­ual and insti­tu­tion­al play­ers in the devel­op­ment of, pre­lude to, and exe­cu­tion of the Boli­vian coup include:

1.–Luis Fer­nan­do Cama­cho, a wealthy Boli­vian described in the Pana­ma Papers, Cama­cho is: ” . . . . an ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist groomed by a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary noto­ri­ous for its racist vio­lence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy sep­a­ratist region of San­ta Cruz. . . .”
2.–He is heir to a tra­di­tion of wealth, the nation’s nat­ur­al gas busi­ness, in par­tic­u­lar: : ” . . . . Cama­cho also hails from a fam­i­ly of cor­po­rate elites who have long prof­it­ed from Bolivia’s plen­ti­ful nat­ur­al gas reserves. And his fam­i­ly lost part of its wealth when Morales nation­al­ized the nation’s resources, in order to fund his vast social pro­grams — which cut pover­ty by 42 per­cent and extreme pover­ty by 60 per­cent. . . .”
3.–Prior to the coup, Cama­cho: ” . . . . met with lead­ers from right-wing gov­ern­ments in the region to dis­cuss their plans to desta­bi­lize Morales. Two months before the putsch, he tweet­ed grat­i­tude: ‘Thank you Colom­bia! Thank you Venezuela!’ he exclaimed, tip­ping his hat to Juan Guaido’s coup oper­a­tion. He also rec­og­nized the far-right gov­ern­ment of Jair Bol­sonaro, declar­ing, “Thank you Brazil!’ . . .”
4.–A mar­gin­al fig­ure with lit­tle pub­lic grav­i­tas, includ­ing on social media, Cama­cho was mov­ing to neu­tral­ize the Morales gov­ern­ment before the coup itself. His polit­i­cal pres­ence and base of sup­port is a Chris­t­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion: ” . . . . Luis Fer­nan­do Cama­cho was groomed by the Unión Juve­nil Cruceñista, or San­ta Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion that has been linked to assas­si­na­tion plots against Morales. The group is noto­ri­ous for assault­ing left­ists, Indige­nous peas­ants, and jour­nal­ists, all while espous­ing a deeply racist, homo­pho­bic ide­ol­o­gy. . . .”
5.–The UJC: ” . . . . The UJC is the Boli­vian equiv­a­lent of Spain’s Falange, India’s Hin­du suprema­cist RSS, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov bat­tal­ion. Its sym­bol is a green cross that bears strong sim­i­lar­i­ties to logos of fas­cist move­ments across the West. And its mem­bers are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes. . . . Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described UJC mem­bers as ‘racist’ and ‘mil­i­tant,’ not­ing that they ‘have fre­quent­ly attacked pro-MAS/­gov­ern­ment peo­ple and instal­la­tions.’ . . .”
6.–Camacho was allied with a wealthy Croa­t­ian named Branko Marinkovic: ” . . . . Cama­cho was elect­ed as vice pres­i­dent of the UJC in 2002, when he was just 23 years old. He left the orga­ni­za­tion two years lat­er to build his family’s busi­ness empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee. It was in that orga­ni­za­tion that he was tak­en under the wing of one of the sep­a­ratist movement’s most pow­er­ful fig­ures, a Boli­vian-Croa­t­ian oli­garch named Branko Marinkovic. . . .”
7.–Marinkovic is one of the prime movers of a seces­sion­ist move­ment for the San­ta Cruz area: ” . . . . Camacho’s Croa­t­ian god­fa­ther and sep­a­ratist pow­er bro­ker Branko Marinkovic is a major landown­er who ramped up his sup­port for the right-wing oppo­si­tion after some of his land was nation­al­ized by the Evo Morales gov­ern­ment. As chair­man of the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee, he over­saw the oper­a­tions of the main engine of sep­a­ratism in Bolivia. In a 2008 let­ter to Marinkovic, the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Human Rights denounced the com­mit­tee as an ‘actor and pro­mot­er of racism and vio­lence in Bolivia.’ The human rights group added that it ‘condemn[ed] the atti­tude and seces­sion­ist, union­ist and racist dis­cours­es as well as the calls for mil­i­tary dis­obe­di­ence of which the Pro-San­ta Cruz Civic Com­mit­tee for is one of the main pro­mot­ers.’ In 2013, jour­nal­ist Matt Ken­nard report­ed that the US gov­ern­ment was work­ing close­ly with the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee to encour­age the balka­niza­tion of Bolivia and to under­mine Morales. . . .”
8.–There has been spec­u­la­tion that Marinkovich may be descend­ed from Croa­t­ian Ustachis fas­cists: ” . . . . But even some of his sym­pa­thiz­ers are skep­ti­cal. A Balkan ana­lyst from the pri­vate intel­li­gence firm Strat­for, which works close­ly with the US gov­ern­ment and is pop­u­lar­ly known as the ‘shad­ow CIA,’ pro­duced a rough back­ground pro­file on Marinkovic, spec­u­lat­ing, ‘Still don’t know his full sto­ry, but I would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude’s par­ents are 1st gen (his name is too Slav­ic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sym­pa­thiz­ers flee­ing Tito’s Com­mu­nists after WWII.’ . . . .”
9.–Marinkovich’s activism in the San­ta Cruz area is part of a fas­cist polit­i­cal land­scape in that area that dove­tails with Klaus Bar­bie (of whom we spoke in–among oth­er programs–AFA #19): ” . . . . In a 2008 pro­file on Marinkovic, “The New York Times” acknowl­edged the extrem­ist under­cur­rents of the San­ta Cruz sep­a­ratist move­ment the oli­garch presided over. It described the area as ‘a bas­tion of open­ly xeno­pho­bic groups like the Boli­vian Social­ist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspi­ra­tion from the fas­cist Falange of the for­mer Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­co.” The Boli­vian Social­ist Falange was a fas­cist group that pro­vid­ed safe haven to Nazi war crim­i­nal Klaus Bar­bie dur­ing the Cold War. A for­mer Gestapo tor­ture expert, Bar­bie was repur­posed by the CIA through its Oper­a­tion Con­dor pro­gram to help exter­mi­nate com­mu­nism across the con­ti­nent. . . .”
10.–The coup fol­lows by some years an attempt by a group of inter­na­tion­al fas­cists to mur­der Morales: ” . . . . In April 2009, a spe­cial unit of the Boli­vian secu­ri­ty ser­vices barged into a lux­u­ry hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two oth­ers remained on the loose. Four of the alleged con­spir­a­tors had Hun­gar­i­an or Croa­t­ian roots and ties to right­ist pol­i­tics in east­ern Europe, while anoth­er was a right-wing Irish­man, Michael Dwyer, who had only arrived in San­ta Cruz six months before. The ring­leader of the group was said to be a for­mer left­ist jour­nal­ist named Eduar­do Rosza-Flo­res who had turned to fas­cism and belonged to Opus Dei, the tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic cult that emerged under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Spain’s Fran­cis­co Fran­co. . . .”
11.–Eduardo Rosza-Flo­res had fought in the for­mer Yugoslavia on behalf of the neo-Ustachi regime that ulti­mate­ly came to pow­er: ” . . . . Dur­ing the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croa­t­ian First Inter­na­tion­al Pla­toon, or the PIV, in the war to sep­a­rate from Yugoslavia. A Croa­t­ian jour­nal­ist told Time that the ‘PIV was a noto­ri­ous group: 95% of them had crim­i­nal his­to­ries, many were part of Nazi and fas­cist groups, from Ger­many to Ire­land.’ By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to cru­sade on behalf of anoth­er sep­a­ratist move­ment in San­ta Cruz. . . .”
12.–Rosza-Flores had no mon­ey, yet his group of would-be fas­cist assas­sins were well fund­ed. Marinkovic appears to have been among the fund­ing sources: ” . . . . Marinkovic was sub­se­quent­ly charged with pro­vid­ing $200,000 to the plot­ters. The Boli­vian-Croa­t­ian oli­garch ini­tial­ly fled to the Unit­ed States, where he was giv­en asy­lum, then relo­cat­ed to Brazil, where he lives today. He denied any involve­ment in the plan to kill Morales. As jour­nal­ist Matt Ken­nard report­ed, there was anoth­er thread that tied the plot to the US: the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion of an NGO leader named Hugo Achá Mel­gar. . . .”
13.–Hugo Acha Mel­gar was net­worked with the Human Rights Foun­da­tion, a right-wing orga­ni­za­tion with strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence and financed in part by Peter Thiel. The Human Rights Foun­da­tion is involved in the Hong Kong tur­moil. ” . . . . Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had found­ed the Boli­vian sub­sidiary of the Human Rights Foun­da­tion (HRF), an inter­na­tion­al right-wing out­fit that is known for host­ing a “school for rev­o­lu­tion” for activists seek­ing regime change in states tar­get­ed by the US gov­ern­ment. HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of the late Venezue­lan oli­garch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen Hel­lum.  . . . . He launched the HRF with grants from right-wing bil­lion­aires like Peter Thiel, con­ser­v­a­tive foun­da­tions, and NGOs includ­ing Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. The group has since been at the fore­front of train­ing activists for insur­rec­tionary activ­i­ty from Hong Kong to the Mid­dle East to Latin Amer­i­ca. . . .”
14.–Proxy pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Car­los Mesa is heav­i­ly net­worked with the Inter-Amer­i­can Dia­logue, financed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by the AID: ” . . . . Today, Mesa serves as an in-house “expert” at the Inter-Amer­i­can Dia­logue, a neolib­er­al Wash­ing­ton-based think tank focused on Latin Amer­i­ca. One of the Dialogue’s top donors is the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) . . . .”

Cen­tral to the mul­ti-nation­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Evo Morales is his nation­al­iza­tion of some of Bolivi­a’s min­er­al resource indus­try. And cen­tral to the Boli­vian min­er­al resource inven­to­ry is lithi­um, essen­tial for the man­u­fac­ture of elec­tric car bat­ter­ies: ” . . . . The main tar­get is its mas­sive deposits of lithi­um, cru­cial for the elec­tric car. . . .”

Bolivia has been report­ed to hold up to 70 per­cent of the world’s lithi­um, and the Morales gov­ern­men­t’s piv­ot toward devel­op­ing those reserves in tan­dem with Chi­nese firms, rather than West­ern transna­tion­als, may well have been the cen­tral dynam­ic in his ouster. ” . . . . Over the course of the past few years, Bolivia has strug­gled to raise invest­ment to devel­op the lithi­um reserves in a way that brings the wealth back into the coun­try for its peo­ple. Morales’ Vice Pres­i­dent Álvaro Gar­cía Lin­era had said that lithi­um is the ‘fuel that will feed the world.’ Bolivia was unable to make deals with West­ern transna­tion­al firms; it decid­ed to part­ner with Chi­nese firms. This made the Morales gov­ern­ment vul­ner­a­ble. It had walked into the new Cold War between the West and Chi­na. The coup against Morales can­not be under­stood with­out a glance at this clash. . . .”

The com­plex­i­ties of the Salar de Uyu­ni salt flats–location of much of Bolivi­a’s lithi­um reserves–mandate the tech­no­log­i­cal involve­ment of for­eign firms. A deal reached with Ger­man ACI Sys­tems (heav­i­ly sub­si­dized by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment) was negat­ed by protests on the part of local res­i­dents in the Salar de Uyu­ni area. Chi­nese firms were poised to fill that vac­u­um, offer­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a more equi­table devel­op­ment of the min­er­al. ” . . . . Last year, Germany’s ACI Sys­tems agreed to a deal with Bolivia. After protests from res­i­dents in the Salar de Uyu­ni region, Morales can­celed that deal on Novem­ber 4, 2019. Chi­nese firms—such as TBEA Group and Chi­na Machin­ery Engineering—made a deal with YLB. It was being said that China’s Tian­qi Lithi­um Group, which oper­ates in Argenti­na, was going to make a deal with YLB. Both Chi­nese invest­ment and the Boli­vian lithi­um com­pa­ny were exper­i­ment­ing with new ways to both mine the lithi­um and to share the prof­its of the lithi­um. The idea that there might be a new social com­pact for the lithi­um was unac­cept­able to the main transna­tion­al min­ing com­pa­nies. . . .”

After the ouster of Morales, the val­ue of Tes­la’s stock increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

The ACI/Bolivia deal had heavy back­ing by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and fea­tured the planned export of lithi­um to Ger­many and else­where in Europe. ” . . . . With the joint ven­ture, Boli­vian state com­pa­ny YLB is team­ing up with Germany’s pri­vate­ly-owned ACI Sys­tems to devel­op its mas­sive Uyu­ni salt flat and build a lithi­um hydrox­ide plant as well as a fac­to­ry for elec­tric vehi­cle bat­ter­ies in Bolivia. ACI Sys­tems is also in talks to sup­ply com­pa­nies based in Ger­many and else­where in Europe with lithi­um from Bolivia. . . . Wolf­gang Schmutz, CEO of ACI Group, the par­ent com­pa­ny of ACI Sys­tems, said more than 80 per­cent of the lithi­um would be export­ed to Ger­many. . . .”

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for the dis­cus­sion to fol­low is ” . . . . Chi­na’s dom­i­nance in the glob­al lithi­um sup­ply chain and its strong ties with La Paz. . . .”

Short­ly after the ouster of Morales, Tes­la announced that Tes­la would locate a new car and elec­tric bat­tery fac­to­ry near Berlin. If the ACI lithi­um devel­op­ment project in Bolivia is resus­ci­tat­ed, the Tes­la move will give the firm access to the Boli­vian lithi­um.

Might that have been the rea­son for the rise in Tes­la’s stock? Might there have been some insid­er trad­ing?

The pro­grams con­clude with review of the rebirth of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca as a syn­the­sis with British “psy-op” devel­op­ment firm SCL. A key direc­tor of Emerdata–the new firm–is a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Black­wa­ter chief Erik Prince, the broth­er of Trump Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Bet­sy de Vos. Not­ing the firm for­mer­ly known as Black­wa­ter’s deep involve­ment in the world of covert oper­a­tions and for­mer Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca lynch­pin Steve Ban­non’s piv­otal role in the anti-Chi­na move­ment, it is not unrea­son­able to ask if Emer­da­ta may be involved in the Hong Kong tur­moil.

We also review Chi­na’s lead­er­ship in the devel­op­ment of Green tech­nolo­gies.

FTR #1054, FTR #1055 and FTR #1056 Interviews #23, #24 and #25 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

These are the twen­ty-third, twen­ty-fourth and twen­ty-fifth (and con­clud­ing pro­gram) in a long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

The first inter­view begins with a telling edi­to­r­i­al writ­ten for “The Wash­ing­ton Post” by for­mer Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 378–379.

. . . . On Decem­ber 22, 1963, Har­ry Tru­man wrote an edi­to­r­i­al that was pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post. The for­mer Pres­i­dent wrote that he had become “dis­turbed by the way the CIA had become divert­ed from its orig­i­nal assign­ment. It has become an oper­a­tional and at times a pol­i­cy-mak­ing arm of gov­ern­ment.” He wrote that he nev­er dreamed that this would hap­pen when he signed the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act. he thought it would be used for intel­li­gence analy­sis, not “peace­time cloak and dag­ger oper­a­tions.” He com­plained that the CIA had now become “so removed from its intend­ed role that it is being inter­pret­ed as a sym­bol of sin­is­ter and mys­te­ri­ous for­eign intrigue–and a sub­ject for Cold War ene­my pro­pa­gan­da.” Tru­man went as far as sug­gest­ing its oper­a­tional arm be elim­i­nat­ed. He con­clud­ed with the warn­ing that Amer­i­cans have grown up learn­ing respect for “our free insti­tu­tions and for our abil­i­ty to main­tain a free and open soci­ety. There is some­thing about the way the CIA has been func­tion­ing that is cast­ing a shad­ow over out his­toric posi­tion and I feel hat we need to cor­rect it.” . . . .

For­mer CIA Direc­tor (and then War­ren Com­mis­sion mem­ber) Allen Dulles vis­it­ed Tru­man and attempt­ed to get him to retract the state­ment. He dis­sem­bled about then CIA chief John McCone’s view of the edi­to­r­i­al.

The focal point of the first two pro­grams is the dra­mat­ic changes in U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy that occurred because of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. Analy­sis in FTR #1056 con­tin­ues the analy­sis of Kennedy’s for­eign pol­i­cy and con­cludes with riv­et­ing dis­cus­sion of the strik­ing pol­i­cy under­tak­ings of the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion in the area of civ­il rights. Jim has writ­ten a mar­velous, 4‑part analy­sis of JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy.

Dis­cus­sion of JFK’s for­eign pol­i­cy and how his mur­der changed that builds on, and sup­ple­ments analy­sis of this in FTR #1031, FTR #1032 and FTR #1033.

Lyn­don Baines John­son reversed JFK’s for­eign pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives in a num­ber of impor­tant ways.

When the Unit­ed States reneged on its com­mit­ment to pur­sue inde­pen­dence for the colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries of its Euro­pean allies at the end of the Sec­ond World War, the stage was set for those nations’ desire for free­dom to be cast as incip­i­ent Marxists/Communists. This devel­op­ment was the foun­da­tion for epic blood­shed and calami­ty.

Jim details then Con­gress­man John F. Kennedy’s 1951 fact-find­ing trip to Saigon to gain an under­stand­ing of the French war to retain their colony of Indochi­na. (Viet­nam was part of that colony.)

In speak­ing with career diplo­mat Edmund Gul­lion, Kennedy came to the real­iza­tion that not only would the French lose the war, but that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh guer­ril­las enjoyed great pop­u­lar sup­port among the Viet­namese peo­ple.

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.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 368–371.

. . . . Clear­ly now that the with­draw­al was immi­nent, Kennedy was going to try and get the rest of his admin­is­tra­tion on board to his way of think­ing. Not only did this not hap­pen once Kennedy was dead, but the first meet­ing on Viet­nam after­wards was a strong indi­ca­tion that things were now going to be cast in a sharply dif­fer­ent tone. This meet­ing took place at 3:00 p.m. on Novem­ber 24. . . . John­son’s intent was clear to McNa­ma­ra. He was break­ing with the pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy. The goal now was to win the war. LBJ then issued a strong warn­ing: He want­ed no more dis­sen­sion or divi­sion over pol­i­cy. Any per­son who did not con­form would be removed. (This would lat­er be demon­strat­ed by his ban­ning of Hubert Humphrey from Viet­nam meet­ings when Humphrey advised John­son to rethink his pol­i­cy of mil­i­tary com­mit­ment to Viet­nam.) . . . . The read­er should recall, this meet­ing took place just forty-eight hours after Kennedy was killed. . . .

. . . . There­fore, on March 2, 1964, the Joint Chiefs passed a new war pro­pos­al to the White House. This was even more ambi­tious than the Jan­u­ary ver­sion. It includ­ed bomb­ing, the min­ing of North Viet­namese har­bors, a naval block­ade, and pos­si­ble use of tac­ti­cal atom­ic weapons in case Chi­na inter­vened. John­son was now draw­ing up a full scale bat­tle plan for Viet­nam. In oth­er words, what Kennedy did not do in three years, LBJ had done in three months.

John­son said he was not ready for this pro­pos­al since he did not have con­gress yet as a part­ner and trustee. But he did order the prepa­ra­tion of NSAM 288, which was based on this pro­pos­al. It was essen­tial­ly a tar­get list of bomb­ing sites that even­tu­al­ly reached 94 pos­si­bil­i­ties. By May 25, with Richard Nixon and Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter clam­or­ing for bomb­ing of the north, LBJ had made the deci­sion that the U.S. would direct­ly attack North Viet­nam at an unspec­i­fied point in the future. But it is impor­tant to note that even before the Tonkin Gulf inci­dent, John­son had ordered the draw­ing up of a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion. This had been final­ized by William Bundy, McGe­orge Bundy’s broth­er. There­fore in June of 1964, John­son began lob­by­ing cer­tain peo­ple for its pas­sage in con­gress. . . .

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Mem­o­ran­dum 263

. . . . John­son seized upon the hazy and con­tro­ver­sial events in the Gulf of Tonkin dur­ing the first week of August to begin he air war planned in NSAM 288. Yet the Tonkin Gulf inci­dent had been pre­pared by John­son him­self. After Kennedy’s death, Pres­i­dent John­son made a few alter­ations in the draft of NSAM 273. An order which Kennedy had nev­er seen but was draft­ed by McGe­orge Bundy after a meet­ing in Hon­olu­lu, a meet­ing which took place while Kennedy was vis­it­ing Texas. . . .

. . . . On August 2, the destroy­er Mad­dox was attacked by three North Viet­namese tor­pe­do boats. Although tor­pe­does were launched, none hit. The total dam­age to the Mad­dox
was one bul­let through the hull. Both John­son and the Defense Depart­ment mis­rep­re­sent­ed this inci­dent to con­gress and the press. They said the North Viet­namese fired first, that the USA had no role in the patrol boat raids, that the ships were in inter­na­tion­al waters, and there was no hot pur­suit by the Mad­dox. These were all wrong. Yet John­son used this overblown report­ing, plus a non-exis­tent attack two nights lat­er on the destroy­er Turn­er Joy to begin to push his war res­o­lu­tion through Con­gress. He then took out the tar­get list assem­bled for NSAM 288 [from March of 1964–D.E] and ordered air strikes that very day. . . .

. . . . For on August 7, John­son sent a mes­sage to Gen­er­al Maxwell Tay­lor. He want­ed a whole gamut of pos­si­ble oper­a­tions pre­sent­ed to him for direct Amer­i­can attacks against the North. The tar­get date for the sys­tem­at­ic air war was set for Jan­u­ary 1965. This was called oper­a­tion Rolling Thun­der and it end­ed up being the largest bomb­ing cam­paign in mil­i­tary his­to­ry. The read­er should note: the Jan­u­ary tar­get date was the month John­son would be inau­gu­rat­ed after his re-elec­tion. As John New­man not­ed in his mas­ter­ful book JFK and Viet­nam, Kennedy was dis­guis­ing his with­draw­al plan around his re-elec­tion; John­son was dis­guis­ing his esca­la­tion plan around his re-elec­tion. . . .

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.

After detailed dis­cus­sion of the human and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age inflict­ed on Viet­nam and the strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed by LBJ after Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, the dis­cus­sion turns to John­son’s rever­sal of Kennedy’s pol­i­cy with regard to Laos.

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.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 54.

. . . . At his first press con­fer­ence, Kennedy said that he hoped to estab­lish Laos as a “peace­ful country–an inde­pen­dent coun­try not dom­i­nat­ed by either side.” He appoint­ed a task force to study the prob­lem, was in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with it and the Laot­ian ambas­sador, and decid­ed by Feb­ru­ary that Laos must have a coali­tion gov­ern­ment, the likes of which Eisen­how­er had reject­ed out of hand. Kennedy also had lit­tle inter­est in a mil­i­tary solu­tion. He could not under­stand send­ing Amer­i­can troops to fight for a coun­try whose peo­ple did not care to fight for them­selves. . . . He there­fore worked to get the Rus­sians to push the Pathet Lao into a cease-fire agree­ment. This includ­ed a maneu­ver on Kennedy’s part to indi­cate mil­i­tary pres­sure if the Rus­sians did not inter­vene strong­ly enough with the Pathet Lao. The maneu­ver worked, and in May of 1961, a truce was called. A few days lat­er, a con­fer­ence con­vened in Gene­va to ham­mer out con­di­tions for a neu­tral Laos. By July of 1962, a new gov­ern­ment, which includ­ed the Pathet Lao, had been ham­mered out. . . .

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.

One of the many out­growths of LBJ’s rever­sal of JFK’s South­east pol­i­cy was a wave of CIA-assist­ed hero­in addict­ing both GI’s in Viet­nam and Amer­i­can civil­ians at home.

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:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

LBJ reversed Kennedy’s pol­i­cy vis a vis Sukarno. 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.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 374–375.

. . . . Short­ly after, his aid bill land­ed on John­son’s desk. The new pres­i­dent refused to sign it. . . .

. . . . In return for not sign­ing the aid bill, in 1964, LBJ received sup­port from Both Augus­tus Long and Jock Whit­ney of Freeport Sul­phur in his race against Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter. In fact, Long estab­lished a group called the Nation­al Inde­pen­dent Com­mit­tee for John­son. This group of wealthy busi­ness­men includ­ed Robert Lehman of Lehman Broth­ers and Thomas Cabot, Michael Paine’s cousin. . . . Then, in ear­ly 1965, Augus­tus Long was reward­ed for help­ing John­son get elect­ed. LBJ app[ointed him to the For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board. This is a small group of wealthy pri­vate cit­i­zens who advis­es the pres­i­dent on intel­li­gence mat­ters. The mem­bers of this group can approve and sug­gest covert activ­i­ties abroad. This appoint­ment is notable for what was about to occur. For with Sukarno now unpro­tect­ed by Pres­i­dent Kennedy, the writ­ing was on the wall. The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency now bean to send into Indone­sia its so called “first team.” . . . .

. . . . Suhar­to now began to sell off Indone­si­a’s rich­es to the high­est bid­der. Includ­ing Freeport Sul­phur, which opened what were per­haps the largest cop­per and gold mines in the world there. . . . Freeport, along with sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies, now har­vest­ed bil­lions from the Suhar­to regime. . . .

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.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 28–29.

. . . . By 1960, a native rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader named Patrice Lumum­ba had gal­va­nized the nation­al­ist feel­ing of the coun­try. Bel­gium decid­ed to pull out. But they did so rapid­ly, know­ing that tumult would ensue and they could return to col­o­nize the coun­try again. After Lumum­ba was appoint­ed prime min­is­ter, tumult did ensue. The Bel­gians and the British backed a rival who had Lumum­ba dis­missed. They then urged the break­ing away of the Katan­ga province because of its enor­mous min­er­al wealth. Lumum­ba looked to the Unit­ed Nations for help, and also the USA. The for­mer decid­ed to help, . The Unit­ed States did not. In fact, when Lumum­ba vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton July of 1960, Eisen­how­er delib­er­ate­ly fled to Rhode Island. Rebuffed by Eisen­how­er, Lumum­ba now turned to the Rus­sians for help in expelling the Bel­gians from Katan­ga. This sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles. The pres­i­dent now autho­rized a series of assas­si­na­tion plots by the CIA to kill Lumum­ba. These plots final­ly suc­ceed­ed on Jan­u­ary 17, 1961, three days before Kennedy was inau­gu­rat­ed.

His first week in office, Kennedy request­ed a full review of the Eisenhower/Dulles pol­i­cy in Con­go. The Amer­i­can ambas­sador to that impor­tant African nation heard of this review and phoned Allen Dulles to alert him that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was about to over­turn pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy there. Kennedy did over­turn this pol­i­cy on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1961. Unlike Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles, Kennedy announced he would begin full coop­er­a­tion with Sec­re­tary Dag Ham­marskjold at the Unit­ed Nations on this thorny issue in order to bring all the armies in that war-torn nation under con­trol. He would also attempt top neu­tral­ize the coun­try so there would be no East/West Cold War com­pe­ti­tion. Third, all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers being held should be freed. Not know­ing he was dead, this part was aimed at for­mer prime min­is­ter Lumum­ba, who had been cap­tured by his ene­mies. (There is evi­dence that, know­ing Kennedy would favor Lumum­ba, Dulles had him killed before JFK was inau­gu­rat­ed.) Final­ly, Kennedy opposed the seces­sion of min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province. . . . Thus began Kennedy’s near­ly three year long strug­gle to see Con­go not fall back under the claw of Euro­pean impe­ri­al­ism. . . . ”

In the Con­go, as in Indone­sia, LBJ reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy stance, and the cor­po­rate loot­ing of the Con­go result­ed under Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pira­cy.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 372–373.

. . . . But in Octo­ber and Novem­ber [of 1963], things began to fall apart. Kennedy want­ed Colonel Michael Greene, an African expert, to train the Con­golese army in order

to sub­due a left­ist rebel­lion. But Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, with the back­ing of the Pen­ta­gon, man­aged to resist this train­ing, which the Unit­ed Nations backed. In 1964, the com­mu­nist rebel­lion picked up steam and began tak­ing whole provinces. The White House did some­thing Kennedy nev­er seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed: uni­lat­er­al action by the USA. John­son and McGe­orge Bundy had the CIA fly sor­ties with Cuban pilots to halt the com­mu­nist advance. With­out Kennedy, the UN now with­drew. Amer­i­ca now became an ally of Bel­gium and inter­vened with arms, air­planes and advis­ers. Mobu­tu now invit­ed Tshombe back into the gov­ern­ment. Tshombe, per­haps at the request of the CIA, now said that the rebel­lion was part of a Chi­nese plot to take over Con­go. Kennedy had called in Edmund Gul­lion to super­vise the attempt to make the Con­go gov­ern­ment into a mod­er­ate coali­tion, avoid­ing the extremes of left and right. But with the Tshombe/Mobutu alliance, that was now dashed. Rightwing South Africans and Rhode­sians were now allowed to join the Con­golese army in a war on the “Chi­nese-inspired left.” And with the Unit­ed Nations gone, this was all done under the aus­pices of the Unit­ed States. The right­ward tilt now con­tin­ued unabat­ed. By 1965, Mobu­tu had gained com­plete pow­er. And in 1966, he installed him­self as mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor. . . . Mobu­tu now allowed his coun­try to be opened up to loads of out­side invest­ment. The rich­es of the Con­go were mined by huge West­ern cor­po­ra­tions. Their own­ers and offi­cers grew wealthy while Mobu­tu’s sub­jects were mired in pover­ty. Mobu­tu also sti­fled polit­i­cal dis­sent. And he now became one of the rich­est men in Africa, per­haps the world. . . .

In FTR #1033, we exam­ined JFK’s attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba. That, of course, van­ished with his assas­si­na­tion and the deep­en­ing of Cold War hos­til­i­ty between the U.S. and the Island nation, with a thaw of sorts com­ing under Barack Oba­ma a few years ago.

There is no more strik­ing area in which JFK’s mur­der reversed what would have been his­toric changes in Amer­i­ca’s for­eign pol­i­cy than U.S.-Soviet rela­tions.

JFK had imple­ment­ed a ban on atmos­pher­ic test­ing of nuclear weapons, bit­ter­ly opposed by the Pen­ta­gon, In a June, 1963 speech at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, JFK called for re-eval­u­at­ing Amer­i­ca’s rela­tion­ship to the Sovi­et Union, and cit­ed the U.S.S.R’s deci­sive role in defeat­ing Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II.

JFK was also propos­ing joint space explo­ration with the Sovi­et Union, which would have appeared to be noth­ing less than trea­so­nous to the Pen­ta­gon and NASA at the time. After JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, the Kennedy fam­i­ly used a backchan­nel diplo­mat­ic con­duit to the Sovi­et lead­er­ship to com­mu­ni­cate their view that the Sovi­et Union, and its Cuban ally, had been blame­less in the assas­si­na­tion and that pow­er­ful right-wing forces in the Unit­ed States had been behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Per­haps JFK’s great­est con­tri­bu­tion was one that has received scant notice. In 1961, the Joint Chiefs were push­ing for a first strike on the Sovi­et Union–a deci­sion to ini­ti­ate nuclear war. JFK refused, walk­ing out of the dis­cus­sion with the dis­gust­ed obser­va­tion that “We call our­selves the human race.”

In FTR #‘s 876, 926 and 1051, we exam­ined the cre­ation of the meme that Oswald had been net­work­ing with the Cubans and Sovi­ets in the run-up to the assas­si­na­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, Oswald was sup­pos­ed­ly meet­ing with Valery Kostikov, a KGB offi­cial in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

This cre­at­ed the pre­text for blam­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba. There are indi­ca­tions that JFK’s assas­si­na­tion may well have been intend­ed as a pre­text for a nuclear first strike on the Sovi­et Union.

JFK and the Unspeak­able: Why He Died and Why It Mat­ters by James W. Dou­glass; Touch­stone Books [SC]; Copy­right 2008 by James W. Dou­glas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; pp. 242–243.

. . . . As JFK may have recalled from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing he walked out of in July 1961, the first Net Eval­u­a­tion Sub­com­mit­tee report had focused pre­cise­ly on “a sur­prise attack in late 1963, pre­ced­ed by a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions.” Kennedy was a keen read­er and lis­ten­er. In the sec­ond pre­emp­tive-war report, he may also have noticed the slight but sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cy between its over­all time frame, 1963–1968, and the extent of its rel­a­tive­ly reas­sur­ing con­clu­sion, which cov­ered only 1964 through 1968. . . .

. . . . In his cat-and-mouse ques­tion­ing of his mil­i­tary chiefs, Pres­i­dent Kennedy had built upon the report’s appar­ent­ly reas­sur­ing con­clu­sion in such a way as to dis­cour­age pre­emp­tive-war ambi­tions. How­ev­er, giv­en the “late 1963” focus in the first Net Report that that was the most threat­en­ing time for a pre­emp­tive strike, Kennedy had lit­tle rea­son to be reas­sured by a sec­ond report that implic­it­ly con­firmed that time as the one of max­i­mum dan­ger. The per­son­al­ly fatal fall JFK was about to enter, in late 1963, was the same time his mil­i­tary com­man­ders may have con­sid­ered their last chance to “win” (in their terms) a pre­emp­tive war against the Sovi­et Union. In terms of their sec­ond Net Report to the Pres­i­dent, which passed over the per­ilous mean­ing of late 1963, the cat-and-mouse game had been reversed. It was the gen­er­als who were the cats, and JFK the mouse in their midst.

The explic­it assump­tion of the first Net Report was “a sur­prise attack in late 1963, pre­ced­ed by a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions.” The focus of that first-strike sce­nario cor­re­spond­ed to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion sce­nario. When Pres­i­dent Kennedy was mur­dered in late 1963, the Sovi­et Union had been set up as the major scape­goat in the plot. If the tac­tic had been suc­cess­ful in scape­goat­ing the Rus­sians for the crime of the cen­tu­ry, there is lit­tle doubt that it would have result­ed in “a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions” between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union.

Those who designed the plot to kill Kennedy were famil­iar with the inner sanc­tum of our nation­al secu­ri­ty state. Their attempt to scape­goat the Sovi­ets for the Pres­i­den­t’s mur­der reflect­ed one side of the secret strug­gle between JFK and his mil­i­tary lead­ers over a pre­emp­tive strike against the Sovi­et Union. The assas­sins’ pur­pose seems to have encom­passed not only killing a Pres­i­dent deter­mined to make peace with the ene­my, but also using his mur­der as the impe­tus for a pos­si­ble nuclear first strike against that same ene­my. . . .

With the GOP and Trump admin­is­tra­tion open­ly sup­press­ing vot­ing rights of minori­ties, African-Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar, the stel­lar efforts of JFK and the Jus­tice Depart­ment in the area of civ­il rights is strik­ing. JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy was expo­nen­tial­ly greater than what had pre­ced­ed him, and much of what fol­lowed.

The con­clu­sion of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #1056 con­sists of Jim’s dis­cus­sion of his mar­velous, 4‑part analy­sis of JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy.

FTR #978 The JFK Assassination and the Vietnam War

Con­sid­er­able atten­tion has been devot­ed by the media to a TV doc­u­men­tary by Ken Burns about the Viet­nam War. What has not been cov­ered by Burns et al is the fact that JFK’s assas­si­na­tion was the deci­sive piv­ot-point of the pol­i­cy pur­sued by the U.S. in the con­flict.

Excerpt­ing The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3 (record­ed on 11/15/1983), this pro­gram notes how Kennedy’s deci­sion to begin a phased with­draw­al from Viet­nam was one of the cen­tral rea­sons for his mur­der.

The cen­tral ele­ment in the broad­cast is pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scot­t’s skill­ful dis­cus­sion (and excerpt­ing) of rel­e­vant Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­da per­tain­ing to Kennedy’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy. The pro­gram details Kennedy’s plans to phase out direct U.S. mil­i­tary par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­flict.

Pre­sid­ing over severe dis­sent from with­in his own admin­is­tra­tion, as well as from the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence estab­lish­ments, Kennedy ini­ti­at­ed this U.S. with­draw­al sev­en weeks before his death. Two days after the assas­si­na­tion, Kennedy’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy was reversed and the course of action was deter­mined for what was to fol­low. In addi­tion to can­cel­ing the troop with­draw­al and pro­vid­ing for troop increas­es, the pol­i­cy shift resumed the pro­gram of covert action against North Viet­nam that was to lead to the Gulf of Tonkin inci­dent. That alleged attack on U.S. destroy­ers (nev­er inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied and wide­ly believed to be fraud­u­lent) pre­cip­i­tat­ed U.S. mil­i­tary esca­la­tion.

The prin­ci­pal doc­u­ments in ques­tion are Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­da #‘s 111, 249, 263 and 273.

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Mem­o­ran­dum 111, dat­ed two years to the day from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, resolved a long-stand­ing debate with­in the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. That mem­o­ran­dum com­mit­ted the U.S. to “help­ing” the South Viet­namese gov­ern­ment in the war, point­ed­ly avoid­ing the lan­guage “help­ing the South Viet­namese win the war.”

Although this might appear to an untrained observ­er as a minor seman­tic dis­tinc­tion, it was well under­stood with­in the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion to define the dif­fer­ence between a lim­it­ed com­mit­ment to aid­ing the South Viet­namese and an unlim­it­ed, open-end­ed com­mit­ment to help­ing the South Viet­namese win. 

Craft­ed in June 25 of 1963, NSAM 249 sus­pend­ed covert oper­a­tions against North Viet­nam pend­ing a review of pol­i­cy.

In Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­dum 263 (10/11/1963), Kennedy sched­uled the ini­tial with­draw­al of 1,000 mil­i­tary per­son­nel by the end of 1963, as part of a phased with­draw­al of all U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel.

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­dum 273, which was for­mu­lat­ed by LBJ on the Sun­day after Kennedy’s mur­der (the day Jack Ruby killed Oswald) and released two days after that, negat­ed the pre­vi­ous three doc­u­ments. The troop with­draw­al for­mu­lat­ed in NSAM 263 was can­celled and troop increas­es were sched­uled. The U.S. was com­mit­ted to “help­ing the South Viet­namese win,” point­ed­ly using the lan­guage avoid­ed by Kennedy in NSAM 111. Fur­ther­more plans were for­mu­lat­ed for the pro­gram of covert oper­a­tions against North Viet­nam that result­ed in the Gulf of Tonkin Inci­dent and the Gulf of Tonkin Res­o­lu­tion (per­mit­ting LBJ to plunge the U.S. into the war).

Covert oper­a­tions against the North had been sus­pend­ed  and were resumed in June of 1963 against JFK’s wish­es and appar­ent­ly with­out his knowl­edge.

In the rough­ly 34 years since this pro­gram excerpt was record­ed, oth­er books have explored how JFK’s assas­si­na­tion reversed U.S. Viet­nam pol­i­cy. One of the best is James Dou­glass’s “JFK and the Unspeak­able: Why He Died and Why It Mat­ters.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-The inten­si­fi­ca­tion in late 1963 of U.S. covert para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Laos.
2.-The inten­si­fi­ca­tion in that same peri­od of U.S. covert para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Cam­bo­dia.
3.-The Pen­ta­gon Papers’ appar­ent­ly delib­er­ate fal­si­fi­ca­tion of U.S. Viet­nam pol­i­cy, main­tain­ing against the his­tor­i­cal record that there was con­ti­nu­ity of Viet­nam pol­i­cy from JFK’s admin­is­tra­tion to LBJ’s.
4.-NSAM’s instruc­tion that admin­is­tra­tion mem­bers were to refrain from crit­i­ciz­ing Amer­i­can Viet­nam pol­i­cy.

FTR #975 Operation Mind Control, Part 2: Creating the Perfect Killer, Part 2

The pro­gram begins by set­ting forth pos­si­ble mind con­trol con­nec­tions to some of the “per­sons of inter­est” in Amer­i­ca’s major assas­si­na­tions.

Focus­ing ini­tial­ly on Oswald han­dler George De Mohren­schildt, the broad­cast notes that:

1.-De Mohren­schildt had appar­ent­ly been a Nazi spy in World War II, work­ing with North Amer­i­can Abwehr chief Baron Hugo May­del dur­ing the war. De Mohren­schildt had been one of Oswald’s han­dlers.
2.-De Mohren­schildt had appar­ent­ly come to have regrets about the killing, and had been writ­ing a book about the con­spir­a­cy, accord­ing to Dutch author Olt­mans.
3.-After giv­ing voice to his regrets and reser­va­tions and appar­ent­ly nam­ing CIA and FBI per­son­nel alleged­ly involved in the con­spir­a­cy, De Mohren­schildt was interned in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal, where he appears to have been sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous forms of mind con­trol.
4.-His daugh­ter Alexan­dra opined that De Mohren­schildt shot him­self to death after receiv­ing a phone call, which she believes con­tained a hid­den cue that trig­gered his con­di­tioned sui­cide.

Next, the broad­cast high­lights some of the aspects of Sirhan Sirhan’s appar­ent pro­gram­ming at the hands of the intel­li­gence oper­a­tives who mas­ter­mind­ed the assas­si­na­tion of RFK. As dis­cussed in AFA #9, the foren­sic evi­dence dis­proves the pre­vail­ing the­o­ry of Sirhan as the killer of Robert Kennedy. In dis­cussing the appar­ent mind con­trol to which Sirhan was sub­ject­ed, we note that:

1.-There were fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent analy­ses of Sirhan from Dr. Bernard Dia­mond and Dr. Edward Simp­son.
2.-Diamond not­ed that Sirhan was a very easy sub­ject to hyp­no­tize and that he was also a “para­noid schiz­o­phrenic.”
3.-Simpson not­ed that para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics are vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to hyp­no­tize.
4.-The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that Sirhan was under mind con­trol and that the focus of that con­di­tion­ing was to pro­pel him into self-incrim­i­na­tion.
5.-Continuing explo­ration of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s mind con­trol pro­grams, the broad­cast fea­tures an inter­view with a U.S. gov­ern­ment assas­sin, termed by author Wal­ter Bowart “The Patri­ot­ic Assas­sin.”

Hav­ing been involved with the lab­o­ra­to­ry work that spawned the cre­ation of mind con­trolled assas­sins, the oper­a­tive inter­viewed by Bowart:

1.-Confirmed that the killings of the Kennedy broth­ers and Mar­tin Luther King were acts of state. He opined that the assas­sins would have received medals.
2.-Confirmed that the coun­try had expe­ri­enced a fas­cist coup, with the coun­try being run by a rel­a­tive hand­ful of inter­ests, with the mil­i­tary in charge.
3.-Asserted that many oper­a­tives in the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty worked both for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and for pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions, help­ing to steer pol­i­cy in the direc­tions pre­ferred by the cor­po­ra­tions and, ulti­mate­ly, retir­ing with both fed­er­al and cor­po­rate retire­ment ben­e­fits.
4.-Confirmed the oper­a­tional use of mind con­trol in covert oper­a­tions, as well as aspects of larg­er mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.
5.-Maintained that assas­sins did not need to be sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol to direct them to per­form their mis­sions, but that mind con­trol was nec­es­sary to keep them from remem­ber­ing what they had done.
6.-Asserted that, because crit­i­cal func­tions in the high-tech, nuclear state were per­formed by enlist­ed per­son­nel, mind con­trol was nec­es­sary to keep them from remem­ber­ing what they had done. The Patri­ot­ic Assas­sin assert­ed that com­mis­sioned offi­cers were depen­dent on the ben­e­fits atten­dant on that lev­el of ser­vice after retire­ment and main­tained that this was suf­fi­cient moti­va­tion to main­tain silence.
7.-Commented that the oft-repeat­ed claim by intel­li­gence agen­cies that mind con­trol “research” had been dis­con­tin­ued was a veil for the fact that it was ful­ly oper­a­tional.
8.-Foreshadowed a large­ly-over­looked and pos­si­bly abortive assas­si­na­tion attempt on Jim­my Carter in 1979. Carter had stat­ed that he thought the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King had been the result of con­spir­a­cies. Short­ly after­ward, two men were arrest­ed in Los Ange­les, after cross­ing into the coun­try from Mex­i­co to mur­der Carter. The names of the con­spir­a­tors were “Ray Lee Har­vey” and “Oswal­do Ortiz”–reminiscent of the names of James Earl Ray and Lee Har­vey Oswald, the pat­sies for the mur­ders of JFK and Mar­tin Luther King.

Strategy of Tension in France? “Third Position” Manifestations? Macron Institutes Broad Crackdown

In FTR #957, we not­ed that “Gold­en Boy” Emmanuel Macron was Ger­many’s choice to lead France. Wide­ly hailed as a her­ald of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic enlight­en­ment, Macron has assumed Napoleon­ic-like pow­er, imple­ment­ing poli­cies that are deeply inim­i­cal to French democ­ra­cy. Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al recent­ly con­demned the government’s abuse of anti-ter­ror­ist emer­gency pow­ers that restrict free­dom of move­ment and rights to peace­ful assem­bly. “Under the cov­er of the state of emer­gency, rights to protest have been stripped away with hun­dreds of activists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, and labor rights cam­paign­ers unjus­ti­fi­ably banned from par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests,” said Mar­co Per­oli­ni, Amnesty International’s researcher on France. In the name of pre­vent­ing “threats to pub­lic order,” the gov­ern­ment over a peri­od of 18 months issued 155 decrees ban­ning protests, and 574 mea­sures pro­hibit­ing spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als from tak­ing part in protests against pro­posed labor law changes. The lat­ter sta­tis­tic is par­tic­u­lar­ly notable because Macron plans to issue sweep­ing decrees to lim­it the pow­er of unions over work­ing con­di­tions and com­pa­ny fir­ing poli­cies. Such pro­pos­als have trig­gered mass demon­stra­tions and vio­lent clash­es with police, in recent months. Macron has been using anti-ter­ror mea­sures tak­en in response to France’s bloody ter­ror attacks of the last cou­ple of years. It turns out that some of the weapon­ry used by the ter­ror­ists was pro­vid­ed by Claude Her­mant (above, right), an appar­ent agent for the French secu­ri­ty forces and a for­mer body­guard for the fas­cist Nation­al Front, whose defeat at the hands of Macron was bruit­ed about as a “tri­umph” for enlight­en­ment, democ­ra­cy, etc. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #960 Update on the High Profile Hacks

As indi­cat­ed by the title, this broad­cast updates the high-pro­file hacks, at the epi­cen­ter of “Rus­sia Gate,” the bru­tal polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy that is at the core of Amer­i­can New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da and that may well lead to World War III.

(Oth­er pro­grams deal­ing with this sub­ject include: FTR #‘s 917, 923, 924, 940, 943, 958, 959.)

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do. In a world where the ver­i­fi­ably false and phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble “con­trolled demolition”/Truther non­sense has gained trac­tion, cyber false flag ops are all the more threat­en­ing and sin­is­ter.

Now, we learn 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 Russ­ian.

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion.

We then high­light the recent con­clu­sions of the French cyber­in­tel­li­gence chief (Guil­laume Poupard) and his warn­ings about the incred­i­ble dan­gers of cyber-misattribution–the ease with which any ran­dom hack­er could car­ry­ing out a spear-phish­ing attack, and his baf­fle­ment at the NSA’s recent Russ­ian attri­bu­tion to the spear-phish­ing French elec­tion hacks.

Char­ac­ter­is­tic of the disin­gen­u­ous, pro­pa­gan­dis­tic spin of Amer­i­can news media on Putin/Russia/the high pro­file hacks is a New York Times arti­cle that accus­es Putin of lay­ing down a pro­pa­gan­da veil to cov­er for alleged Russ­ian hack­ing, omit­ting his remarks that–correctly–note that con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy eas­i­ly per­mits the mis­at­tri­bu­tion of cyber espionage/hacking.

We then review the grotesque­ly dark com­ic nature of the Macron hacks (sup­pos­ed­ly done by “Russ­ian intel­li­gence”.)

Those “Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hack­ers” real­ly need an OPSEC refresh­er course. The hacked doc­u­ments in the “Macron hack” not only con­tained Cyril­lic text in the meta­da­ta, but also con­tained the name of the last per­son to mod­i­fy the doc­u­ments. That name, “Rosh­ka Georgiy Petro­vichan”, is an employ­ee at Evri­ka, a large IT com­pa­ny that does work for the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the FSB (Russ­ian intel­li­gence.)

Also found in the meta­da­ta is the email of the per­son who uploaded the files to “archive.org”, and that email address, frankmacher1@gmx.de, is reg­is­tered with a Ger­man free web­mail provider used pre­vi­ous­ly in 2016 phish­ing attacks against the CDU in Ger­many that have been attrib­uted to APT28. It would appear that the “Russ­ian hack­ers” not only left clues sug­gest­ing it was Russ­ian hack­ers behind the hack, but they decid­ed name names this time–their own names.

In relat­ed news, a group of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty researchers study­ing the Macron hack has con­clud­ed that the mod­i­fied doc­u­ments were doc­tored by some­one asso­ci­at­ed with The Dai­ly Stormer neo-Nazi web­site and Andrew “the weev” Auern­heimer.

Aueren­heimer was a guest at Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras’s par­ty cel­e­brat­ing their receipt of the Polk award.

“ ‘We strong­ly believe that the fake off­shore doc­u­ments were cre­at­ed by some­one with con­trol of the Dai­ly Stormer serv­er,” said Tord Lund­ström, a com­put­er foren­sics inves­ti­ga­tor at Virtualroad.org.’ . . .”

The pub­lic face, site pub­lish­er of The Dai­ly Stormer is Andrew Anglin. But look who the site is reg­is­tered to: Andrew Auern­heimer (the site archi­tect) who appar­ent­ly resided in Ukraine as of the start of this year.

The analy­sis from the web-secu­ri­ty firm Virtualroad.org. indi­cates that some­one asso­ci­at­ed with the Dai­ly Stormer mod­i­fied those faked documents–very pos­si­bly a high­ly skilled neo-Nazi hack­er like “the weev”.

Based on analy­sis of how the doc­u­ment dump unfold­ed, it’s look­ing like the inex­plic­a­bly self-incrim­i­nat­ing “Russ­ian hack­ers” may have been a bunch of Amer­i­can neo-Nazis. Imag­ine that.

In FTR #917, we under­scored the gen­e­sis of the Seth Rich mur­der con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry with Wik­iLeaks and Julian Assange, who was in touch with Roger Stone dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign. (Stone func­tioned as the unof­fi­cial dirty tricks spe­cial­ist for the Trump cam­paign, a role he has played–with relish–since Water­gate.

The far-right Seth Rich mur­der con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry acquired new grav­i­tas, thanks in part to Kim Schmitz, aka “Kim Dot­com.” We exam­ined Schmitz at length in FTR #812. A syn­op­tic overview of the polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al ori­en­ta­tion of Kim Dot­com is excerpt­ed from that broad­cast’s descrip­tion: “A col­league of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den], Julian Assange and Glenn Green­wald, Kim Schmitz, aka “Kim Dot­com”] espous­es the same libertarian/free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy under­ly­ing the “cor­po­ratism” of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni. With an exten­sive crim­i­nal record in Ger­many and else­where, “Der Dot­com­man­dant” has elud­ed seri­ous pun­ish­ment for his offens­es, includ­ing exe­cut­ing the largest insid­er trad­ing scheme in Ger­man his­to­ry.

Embraced by the file-shar­ing com­mu­ni­ty and ele­ments of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, Dot­com actu­al­ly allied him­self with John Banks and his far-right ACT Par­ty in New Zealand. His embrace of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor came lat­er and is viewed as hav­ing dam­aged left-lean­ing par­ties at the polls. Dot­com is enam­ored of Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia and owns a rare, author-auto­graphed copy of ‘Mein Kampf.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: dis­sem­i­na­tion of the Seth Rich dis­in­for­ma­tion by Fox News and Rush Lim­baugh, gen­er­at­ed by Wik­iLeaks, Roger Stone and Kim Dot­com; Kim Dot­com’s tweet­ing of an admit­ted­ly pho­ny doc­u­ment about the Seth Rich BS; Dot­com’s refusal to retract his tweet of the pho­ny doc­u­ment; review of the Shad­ow Bro­kers non-hack of the NSA; review of the Shad­ow Bro­kers use of white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da; review of the role of Crowd­strike’s Dim­itri Alper­ovitch in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the “Rus­sia did it” pro­pa­gan­da; review of the role of Ukrain­ian fas­cist Alexan­dra Chalu­pa in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the “Rus­sia did it” pro­pa­gan­da.

FTR #916 Update on Fascism in Ukraine

Con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of the re-emer­gence of fas­cism in Ukraine, this pro­gram high­lights the Orwellian aspects of gov­er­nance in Ukraine and the cov­er­age of events there by the world’s media.

Ukraine recent­ly held a nation-wide minute of silence for Symon Petliu­ra (as with oth­er Ukrain­ian names, the spelling of his name is sub­ject to vary­ing translit­er­a­tion.) In the imme­di­ate post-World War I peri­od, Petli­u­ra’s armies butchered some 50,000 Jews. Also stun­ning, though pre­dictable under the cir­cum­stances, is the Poroshenko gov­ern­men­t’s renam­ing of streets for Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors Stephan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. This has received scant, and alto­geth­er slant­ed cov­er­age in the West, with Ban­der­a’s well-doc­u­ment­ed alliance with Hitler being nuanced as “Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da.” It is now ille­gal in Ukraine to crit­i­cize Ban­dera, Shukhevych, the OUN/B or its mil­i­tary arm the UPA as hav­ing col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis.

The insti­tu­tion­al­ized mask­ing of the true nature of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues apace, with U.N. observers barred from inves­ti­gat­ing tor­ture by gov­ern­ment forces in the civ­il war that sim­mers in the East, the brand­ing of reporters cov­er­ing the war as “ter­ror­ists” and the pub­li­ca­tion of their address­es by a pro-gov­ern­ment web­site, and the pub­li­ca­tion by “The New York Times” of an appar­ent­ly fraud­u­lent claim of Russ­ian mask­ing of the pres­ence of Buk mis­siles in East­ern Ukraine.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the cov­er-up of the fas­cist nature of Ukraine is a piece from “The Huff­in­g­ton Post” that dis­miss­es the ver­i­fi­able Nazi nature of the Azov bat­tal­ion as–once again–Kremlin pro­pa­gan­da. The source for the dis­in­for­ma­tion about Azov is Roman Zvarych, the for­mer per­son­al sec­re­tary to Jaroslav Stet­sko, the head of Ukraine’s World War II col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the Dutch intel­li­gence ser­vice’s dis­clo­sure that only the Ukrain­ian army had mis­siles capa­ble of down­ing Malaysian Air­lines Flight MH-17; the use of the “pun­ish­er bat­tal­ions” (such as Azov) by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to cir­cum­vent Min­sk II; the taint­ing of evi­dence in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the down­ing of MH-17 by the cor­rupt nature of the SBU (Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence); the traf­fick­ing in stolen art by Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko, the for­mer head of the SBU.

FTR #877 Update on the Ukrainian Crisis

Before we turn to con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of “The Earth Island Boo­gie” in suc­ceed­ing pro­grams, we set the stage by updat­ing events in Ukraine. To the sur­prise of no one, the OUN/B heirs in pow­er in Ukraine have not indict­ed any­one in the burn­ing alive of 42 pro-Russ­ian demon­stra­tors in Odessa in May of 2014. The Ukrain­ian “counter-ter­ror­ist” forces are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the OUN/B heirs in gov­ern­ment and the per­pe­tra­tors of the act. Fail­ure of gov­er­nance is tak­ing its toll on the Ukrain­ian pop­u­lace, expressed by sup­port for OUN/B‑style fas­cists such as Svo­bo­da in West­ern Ukraine, sup­port for the polit­i­cal forces grouped around the cor­rupt for­mer pres­i­dent Vic­tor Yanukovych in the east­ern and south­ern parts of the coun­try and the elec­tion to the Odessa city coun­cil of a politi­cian who assumed the name of a Star Wars vil­lain. In response to grow­ing crit­i­cism of the Ukrain­ian sit­u­a­tion, the EU is imple­ment­ing an infor­ma­tion war­fare pro­gram direct­ed not only at EU mem­bers in East­ern Europe but in Rus­sia as well. A pri­ma­ry the­o­ret­i­cal influ­ence on the infor­ma­tion war­fare the EU is con­duct­ing appears to be for­mer Wehrma­cht gen­er­al Wolf Ste­fan Trau­gott Graf von Baud­issin, who served on Rom­mel’s staff dur­ing World War II. Pro­gram High­lights Include: the effect of anti-Russ­ian sen­ti­ment expressed by the Maid­an coup­sters on the pop­u­la­tion of the East­ern part of the coun­try; the effect of the war waged by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment on pub­lic sen­ti­ment in the east; the over­whelm­ing prob­a­bil­i­ty that hard intel­li­gence on the shoot­down of Malaysian Air­lines Flight 17 does not sup­port the “Putin/Separatists did it” line; dis­cus­sion of the long-stand­ing sen­ti­ment on the part of Crimeans for re-uni­fi­ca­tion with Rus­sia; von Baud­iss­in’s role in the re-insti­tu­tion of Nazi forces in the post­war Ger­man mil­i­tary.

FTR #869 The Assassination of Olof Palme, Part 2

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion and analy­sis from FTR #868, this pro­gram under­scores the pos­si­ble role of Swedish and Scan­di­na­vian fas­cists over­lap­ping both WACL and Sapo, the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice. Involved with escape net­works forged to aid the inter­na­tion­al flight from jus­tice of fas­cists and Nazis, the prin­ci­pals in these net­works exhib­it­ed behav­ior around the time of the Palme killing that is sug­ges­tive. Worth not­ing in this regard is the late Stieg Larsson’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Palme killing, which point­ed in the direc­tion of some of the same fig­ures exam­ined in the Kruger essay. The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the Bofors muni­tions firm and its cor­po­rate links to Third Reich indus­try and the post­war Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, with which it may well be affil­i­at­ed.