Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
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FTR#1288 Interview #25 with Jim DiEugenio About JFK Revisited

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FTR#‘s 1283 & 1284 Interviews #20 and #21 with Jim DiEugenio about JFK Revisited

This broad­cast con­tin­ues our vis­its with Jim DiEugenio–author of Des­tiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary.

We high­light: Jef­fer­son Morley’s obser­va­tion that recent release of doc­u­ments by Biden is inadequate—many doc­u­ments remain clas­si­fied, includ­ing many impor­tant ones; The dis­cus­sion of Admi­ral Burkley’s aide James Young and his aides Mills and Martinell’s retrieval of mate­r­i­al from the lim­ou­sine; Ruby’s numer­ous Mob con­nec­tions, and RFK’s role going after Mafia; The deep pol­i­tics of Mob involve­ment in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, as well as the killing of RFK; The Alliance for Progress: What JFK intend­ed with the pol­i­cy and LBJ’s steer­ing of the pro­gram in a dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site direc­tion; analy­sis of JFK’s attempts at estab­lish­ing a more bal­anced pol­i­cy toward the Israeli/Palestinian con­flict. Top­ics cov­ered include; JFK’s diplo­mat­ic over­ture to Nass­er, to which the Egypt­ian pres­i­dent was recep­tive; Kennedy’s dis­cus­sions with Israel seek­ing to gain assur­ance that the Dimona nuclear reac­tor was for peace­ful pur­pos­es only.


Latest on Patreon Site: The 9/11 “Truthers,” Covid, China’s Economy

On Mr. Emory’s Patre­on site, the most recent one hour talks include: Debunk­ing of the “con­trolled demo­li­tion” dis­in­for­ma­tion with regard to the 9/11 attacks; the O.J. Simp­son case and the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King, as well as Covid-19 and the Chi­nese econ­o­my post “Zero Covid.” Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


FTR#‘s 1281 and 1282: Interviews #18 and #19 with Jim DiEugenio and David Talbot

Con­tin­u­ing our series of inter­views about JFK Revis­it­ed, we vis­it with both Jim DiEu­ge­nio and David Tal­bot, the author of Broth­ers and The Dev­il’s Chess­board. (We have high­light­ed infor­ma­tion from the lat­ter in FTR#‘s 894, 1162.)

Note that David Tal­bot is a major con­trib­u­tor to the com­men­tary in JFK Revis­it­ed.

The broad­cast high­lights the many top­ics of dis­cus­sion that David Tal­bot con­tributes dur­ing the pro­gram. We also high­light David’s prob­lems get­ting The Dev­il’s Chess­board reviewed.

Of note, as well, is David’s dis­cus­sion of a doc­u­ment that he and Lisa Pease dis­cov­ered: On the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, Allen Dulles had decamped to Camp Peary aka “The Farm”–a major CIA train­ing facil­i­ty. The doc­u­ment lat­er dis­ap­peared.


FTR#‘s 1279 and 1280: Interviews #16 and #17 with Jim DiEugenio and John Newman

Our ongo­ing series of inter­views with Jim DiEugenio–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for the doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed and to write and edit the book derived from the film—presents an extreme­ly enrich­ing guest, John New­man.

Dis­cus­sion con­cludes with what Sen­a­tor Richard Schweik­er not­ed: that there were “the fin­ger­prints of Intel­li­gence all around Oswald.” An impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion brack­et­ing this dis­cus­sion con­cerns the CIA’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence search/obsession for a KGB mole with­in the Agency. John has writ­ten, and is writ­ing, about that sub­ject. Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the USSR over­lapped that dynam­ic.

Author of among oth­er titles JFK and Viet­nam and Oswald and the CIA, John was deeply involved with Stone’s 1991 opus JFK.

The inter­views begin with review of top­ics pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed in this FTR series, includ­ing: Pres­i­dent Eisenhower’s order to kill Patrice Lumum­ba of the Con­go, reach­ing a crescen­do with Ike’s out­burst at a nation­al secu­ri­ty meet­ing demand­ing aloud Lumumba’s ter­mi­na­tion; Pres­i­dents Trump’s and Biden’s balk­ing at the man­dat­ed release of doc­u­ments pur­suant to the ARRB’s man­date; dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion North­woods, Lyman Lemnitzer’s and Maxwell Taylor’s planned series of provo­ca­tions designed to pro­voke a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

Next, we review JFK’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy (this, too, has been cov­ered in past talks, how­ev­er we present added depth draw­ing on John’s exper­tise and pub­lished book JFK and Viet­nam.)

We then high­light Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay’s atti­tude toward and behav­ior with regard to JFK.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is John New­man’s dis­clo­sure that no record­ings of the meet­ings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sur­vived intact!


FTR#‘s 1275 & 1276 Interviews #14 and #15 with Jim DiEugenio and Paul Bleau about “JFK Revisited”

This broad­cast con­tin­ues our vis­its with Jim DiEugenio–author of Des­tiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary.

In these broad­casts, we are addi­tion­al­ly priv­i­leged by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Paul Bleau, a vet­er­an JFK assas­si­na­tion researcher who is promi­nent­ly fea­tured in JFK Revis­it­ed.

The recent inquiries into the 1/6/2021 insur­rec­tion have yield­ed some jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age (Wash­ing­ton Post) of Secret Ser­vice destruc­tion of records of 1963 threats to JFK from “white suprema­cist” groups. We begin by pre­sent­ing Paul’s analy­sis of the Chica­go plot against JFK’s life; with appar­ent shoot­ers posi­tioned in a high-rise build­ing to elim­i­nate JFK as he trav­eled in a motor­cade.

Next, Paul ana­lyzes the plot against JFK’s life in Tam­pa.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of the pre­vi­ous plots against JFK in 1963, we turn to Oswald’s pres­ence in New Orleans and the cast of char­ac­ters revolv­ing around Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency.”

In a pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we not­ed that the term “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rist” was great­ly ele­vat­ed in its use and intel­lec­tu­al pro­file by stress­ing the util­i­ty of the moniker in dis­cred­it­ing War­ren Com­mis­sion crit­ics.

Instead of “con­spir­a­cy,” the term “net­work­ing” is both accu­rate and res­onates pos­i­tive­ly with the rela­tion­ships that char­ac­ter­ize the JFK assas­si­na­tion land­scape.

Among Paul Bleau’s numer­ous arti­cles avail­able on kennedysandking.com is one about Oswald’s escorts. We delve into some aspects of the net­work­ing involv­ing Oswald and the Camp Street milieu in New Orleans.


FTR#‘s 1266 and 1267 Interviews #5 and #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

These pro­grams con­tin­ue our series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about the Oliv­er Stone doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed, for which Jim wrote the screen­play.

Yet anoth­er area in which JFK’s pol­i­cy out­look ran afoul of the pre­vail­ing wis­dom of the Cold War was with regard to the Con­go. A Bel­gian colony which was the vic­tim of geno­ci­dal poli­cies of King Leopold (esti­mates of the dead run as high as 8 mil­lion), the dia­mond and min­er­al-rich Con­go gained a frag­ile inde­pen­dence.

In Africa, as well, Kennedy under­stood the strug­gle of emerg­ing nations seek­ing free­dom from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion as falling out­side of and tran­scend­ing stereo­typed Cold War dynam­ics.

In the Con­go, the bru­tal­ly admin­is­tered Bel­gian rule had spawned a vig­or­ous inde­pen­dence move­ment crys­tal­lized around the charis­mat­ic Patrice Lumum­ba. Under­stand­ing of, and sym­pa­thet­ic to Lumum­ba and the ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal forces embod­ied in him, Kennedy opposed the reac­tionary sta­tus quo favored by both Euro­pean allies like the Unit­ed King­dom and Bel­gium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the Unit­ed States.

In 1961, there was anoth­er assas­si­na­tion that over­lapped events lead­ing up to JFK’s killing. U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dag Ham­marskjold was on the same page as JFK with regard to Con­golese inde­pen­dence from Bel­gium, nega­tion of the Bel­gian-spon­sored attempt at get­ting min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province to secede and was of the same mind as JFK with regard to assur­ing Patrice Lumum­ba’s sur­vival. 

Ham­marskjold’s 1961 death in a plane crash was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being:

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 105.

. . . . The pho­tos of Ham­marskjold show his body as the only one not burned or charred. And he had a play­ing card, report­ed­ly the ace of spades, stuffed into his shirt col­lar above the know in the tie. Now, due to Susan Williams’ book and new evi­dence offered by Desmond Tutu and the Union of South Africa’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, there are con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment that indi­cate Allen Dulles was involved in the sab­o­tage of the plane. The project was called Oper­a­tion Celeste and was to be car­ried out through a secret white suprema­cist group called SAMIR.

Kennedy’s old men­tor Edmund Gul­lion advised JFK that Ham­marskjold’s death was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being.

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 402–403.

. . . . Sus­pi­cions were every­where that there had been foul play. The first per­son on the scene was the US air attache. And there were bul­lets that he said were in the vic­tims includ­ing Ham­marskjold. And a close friend of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, Edmund Gul­lion, sent a cable home say­ing: Con­trary to the offi­cial expla­na­tion for this trag­ic inci­dent, this was an assas­si­na­tion . . . .

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

LBJ also reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy toward Indone­sia.

In 1955, Sukarno host­ed a con­fer­ence of non-aligned nations that for­mal­ized and con­cretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nation­al­ism of some Dutch indus­tri­al prop­er­ties, led the U.S. to try and over­throw Sukharno, which was attempt­ed in 1958.

Kennedy under­stood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indone­sia in 1964 to forge a more con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship with Sukharno. Obvi­ous­ly, his mur­der in 1963 pre­clud­ed the trip.

In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aid­ed coup in which as many as a mil­lion peo­ple were killed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in con­nec­tion with Indone­sia, is the dis­po­si­tion of Freeport Sul­phur, a com­pa­ny that had enlist­ed the ser­vices of both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie in an effort to cir­cum­vent lim­i­ta­tions on its oper­a­tions imposed by Cas­tro’s Cuba.

It should be not­ed that Freeport had set its cor­po­rate sights on a very lucra­tive pair of moun­tains in Indone­sia, both of which had enor­mous deposits of min­er­als, iron, cop­per, sil­ver and gold in par­tic­u­lar.

Cuba was an area of major con­flict between JFK and the Pow­ers That Be.

When JFK gave a green light to the attempt­ed over­throw of Cas­tro via the Bay of Pigs inva­sion, he had under­stood that the plan itself was des­tined to work.

In fact, Allen Dulles knew the plan as for­mu­lat­ed would fail, and expect­ed Kennedy to autho­rize the mil­i­tary to step in and neu­tral­ize Cas­tro.

Real­iz­ing that he had been lied to, JFK dis­missed Allen Dulles, Richard Bis­sell and Gen­er­al C.P. Cabell.

He also spoke of shat­ter­ing the CIA into a thou­sand pieces. It is grim­ly, mor­bid­ly iron­ic that it was Kennedy’s head that was shat­tered, and that he was “decap­i­tat­ed.”

Dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, JFK rebuffed the pres­sure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, there­by avoid­ing the con­fronta­tion with Sovi­et tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons that had been pro­vid­ed to Cas­tro, unbe­knownst to the U.S.

Opt­ing for a block­ade, Kennedy also estab­lished a quid-pro-quo with Niki­ta Khrushchev, agree­ing to remove U.S. nuclear mis­siles from Turkey.

This was fol­lowed by a num­ber of back-door diplo­mat­ic attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba.

At the moment that Cas­tro heard JFK had been killed, he was meet­ing with French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel, who had func­tioned as one of those back-door diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to Cas­tro.

After dis­cus­sion of the “dual front” 531 Lafayette Place/544 Camp Street in New Orleans run by “pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor” Guy Ban­is­ter, we review the alleged “left­ist” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s involve­ment with that orga­ni­za­tion and his appar­ent­ly con­trived alter­ca­tion with Car­los Bringuier, the anti-Cas­tro Cuban and mem­ber of the DRE, part of the CIA-spon­sored fronts oper­at­ing against Cas­tro.

As we have seen in past pro­grams, George Joan­nides direct­ed the DRE for CIA dur­ing Bringuier’s tenure with the orga­ni­za­tion. Researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley filed a FOIA suit against CIA to pre­cip­i­tate more dis­clo­sure about Joan­nides, who had been the Agen­cy’s liai­son with the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Appel­late Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh cast a decid­ing vote negat­ing Mor­ley’s appeal.

Dis­cus­sion con­cludes with analy­sis of how two visu­al events keyed major events in the inves­ti­ga­tion of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion: a 1975 TV pro­gram, on which Ger­al­do Rivera–featuring come­di­an Dick Gre­go­ry and Robert Groden–aired the Zaprud­er film. The uproar fol­low­ing that led to the for­ma­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tion.

The “crawl” at the end of Oliv­er Stone’s JFK, inform­ing the audi­ence that the HSCA had  clas­si­fied key doc­u­ments until 2029, gen­er­at­ing fur­ther out­rage and lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of the Assas­si­na­tion Records Review Board.


FTR#‘s 1262 and 1263 Interviews #1 and #2 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the gen­e­sis of JFK Revis­it­ed, we high­light a 2013 con­fer­ence in Pitts­burgh, PA, at which Jim DiEu­ge­nio deliv­ered a pow­er point pre­sen­ta­tion about Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s for­eign pol­i­cy pro­gram and the deci­sions that result­ed from that.

Because the address drew a stand­ing ova­tion from the audi­ence, one of the atten­dees brought the mate­r­i­al in the pre­sen­ta­tion to the atten­tion of Oliv­er Stone, which, in turn, led to the launch­ing of this doc­u­men­tary project.

Cit­ing the rou­tine rhetor­i­cal dis­missal of the real­i­ties of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as a coup d’etat, jour­nal­ists and politi­cians rou­tine­ly employ the rhetor­i­cal device “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry.” Mean­ing, in effect, a “deranged, lone nut,” the term has its applied ori­gins in an inter­nal CIA dis­cus­sion about how to coun­ter­act War­ren Com­mis­sion crit­ics!

We dis­cuss the MSM’s con­fla­tion of the Q‑Anon types with researchers such as Mr. DiEu­ge­nio and Mr. Emory.

Imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the release of the doc­u­men­tary (along with the DVD’s of the mate­r­i­al and the book JFK Revis­it­ed), author Tim Wein­er penned a piece for Rolling Stone mag­a­zine in which he rep­re­sent­ed the argu­ments pre­sent­ed in the film (and in the accom­pa­ny­ing book, by exten­sion) as stem­ming from Sovi­et dis­in­for­ma­tion.

We note that this type of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is in line with the wide­ly dis­trib­uted pro­pa­gan­da asser­tion scape­goat­ing Rus­sia and Vladimir Putin for this country’s prob­lems and those of the world in gen­er­al.

Suf­fice it to say that none of the mate­r­i­al in the doc­u­men­tary is Soviet/Russian.

By way of demon­strat­ing the non­sen­si­cal nature of the con­tention that “Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da” under­lies the argu­ments pre­sent­ed by Stone/DiEugenio, we review a key ele­ment from Jim’s mag­num opus Des­tiny Betrayed.

When Richard Helms, head of the CIA at that time, con­vened a group to dis­cuss Jim Garrison’s pros­e­cu­tion of Clay Shaw, Ray Roc­ca, the top aide to Agency Counter-intel­li­gence chief James Angle­ton, opined that Gar­ri­son would obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw. Roc­ca was the acknowl­edged expert at CIA on Garrison/JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Not even Tim Wein­er could dis­miss the CIA’s num­ber two coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial as “a Sovi­et agent/propagandist.”

Attempts at por­tray­ing the JFK assas­si­na­tion as a Sovi­et con­spir­a­cy con­tin­ue to this day with for­mer CIA chief James Woolsey hav­ing authored the recent­ly-released Oper­a­tion Drag­on, which uses the alle­ga­tions of a for­mer Roman­ian intel­li­gence agent to pin respon­si­bil­i­ty for the assas­si­na­tion on the U.S.S.R.

Attempts to attribute the JFK assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­et Union and/or Fidel Castro’s Cuba are not new.

The war in Ukraine is a direct echo of an aspect of attempt­ing to “paint Oswald Red.”

The Nazis and fas­cists in con­trol of the reins of nation­al secu­ri­ty pow­er in Ukraine are direct­ly descend­ed from the OUN/B of Stephan Ban­dera, whose forces col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich dur­ing World War II.

This polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal dynam­ic is set forth in a num­ber of pro­grams, includ­ing FTR#876.

After Oswald’s return to the U.S., he was met by Spas T. Raikin, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Amer­i­can Friends of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. This despite the fact that Oswald had pro­posed giv­ing mil­i­tary secrets to the Sovi­et Union.

After the death of Ban­dera, the OUN/B was head­ed by Yaroslav Stet­zko, the head of the WWII Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment, which imple­ment­ed Hitler’s eth­nic cleans­ing pro­grams. The OUN/B dom­i­nat­ed the ABN, which was orig­i­nal­ly named the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943.

Echoes of the Ban­dera orga­ni­za­tion and the ABN are present in the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na, as well.

LBJ suc­cess­ful­ly used the fears of a Third World War that might stem from the per­cep­tion that the USSR and/or Cuba was behind the assas­si­na­tion in order to per­suade Earl War­ren, among oth­ers, that they should serve on the com­mis­sion. We dis­cussed “the paint­ing of Oswald Red” in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR#‘s 925, 926.

For much of this year, the nation’s atten­tion has been focused on the Jan­u­ary 6 Hear­ings. Note­wor­thy is the fact that the nation’s law­ful gov­ern­ment was over­thrown on 11/22/1963.

When Biden intones that “our democ­ra­cy is under fire,” he is “a day late and a dol­lar short.”

“Our democ­ra­cy” was, lit­er­al­ly, under fire on that Fri­day in Dal­las, and democ­ra­cy has been a mere façade in the time since.

Mem­bers of Con­gress have sound­ed grave warn­ings about the Secret Ser­vice and appar­ent­ly “lost” com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­cern­ing the assaults of 1/06/2021.

As these talks progress, we will high­light the Secret Ser­vice and their per­for­mance vis a vis the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. Con­gress, too, is “a day late and a dol­lar short.”

As will be detailed lat­er in this series, both Pres­i­dents Trump and Biden delayed release of the ARRB records at the des­ig­nat­ed junc­tures.

Anoth­er inter­est­ing “Team Trump” link to the assas­si­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tion con­cerns Jef­fer­son Mor­ley’s FOIA suit to learn more about George Joan­nides, who man­aged the Car­los Bringuier-linked DRE for the CIA. 

Mor­ley’s appeal was turned down by an appeals court, with Brett Kavanaugh cast­ing the decid­ing vot­er, just before decamp­ing for his hear­ings on his qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the Supreme Court.

One of JFK’s stances that put him great­ly at odds con­cern­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy was his view toward, and actions in con­junc­tion with, the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

In that regard, we note: Kennedy’s autho­riza­tion of the atmos­pher­ic test ban treaty, the first sub­stan­tive arms lim­i­ta­tion agree­ment with the for­mer Sovi­et Union—bitterly opposed by key mem­bers of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment; JFK’s refusal to invade Cuba dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, which, com­bined with his refusal to uti­lize the mil­i­tary to assist the Bay of Pigs inva­sion, cement­ed the view among key nation­al secu­ri­ty play­ers that he was a traitor/Communist; Kennedy’s June 1963 speech at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, in which he rec­og­nized the USSR’s enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion toward the defeat of Nazi Ger­many and called for a new rela­tion­ship with the USSR; JFK’s pro­pos­al that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. under­take joint space explo­ration.

Bridg­ing dis­cus­sion that will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­grams, we note a key quote from the book and doc­u­men­tary by Lisa Pease, not­ing that JFK stood apart from the Eisenhower/Dulles view that non-align­ment among the for­mer colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that achieved inde­pen­dence was the equiv­a­lent of pro-Com­mu­nist ori­en­ta­tion.

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 352.

. . . . Lisa Pease: His [JFK’s] approach was a rad­i­cal break from his pre­de­ces­sor. In an oral his­to­ry inter­view that Sukarno gave after John Kennedy’s death, he said words to the effect that what made Kennedy spe­cial is that he believed non-align­ment was not amoral as it had been under John Fos­ter Dulles. I thought that was an inter­est­ing way of putting it. . . .


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.