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The tag 'Guy Banister' is associated with 18 posts.

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.


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 #1069 Socialists for Trump and Hitler, (The “Assistance”), Part 9: Walkin’ the Snake in India

In the con­clu­sion to FTR #1068, we rumi­nat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a post-World War II “Boseian” or “Boseist” under­ground in India. We also spec­u­lat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario, in which revi­sion­ist his­tor­i­cal claims about Sub­has Chan­dra Bose being the real lib­er­a­tor of India–not Mahat­ma Gand­hi, would be a point of entry for the re-brand­ing of fas­cism as “anti-impe­ri­al­ist” or “anti-colo­nial­ist.” (An arti­cle in the peri­od­i­cal of the Lib­er­ty Lob­by’s Holo­caust revi­sion­ist Insti­tute of His­tor­i­cal Review makes that claim.)

In Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the Nazi SS go under­ground, buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, after a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents involv­ing WMD’s dev­as­tate the U.S., mar­tial law is declared and the SS descen­dants take over. The Third Reich and the Axis go down in his­to­ry as the “good guys.”

In this pro­gram, we high­light the ongo­ing, oper­a­tional lega­cy of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, its links to con­tem­po­rary India and Ger­many, its pres­ence in the Ger­man com­mer­cial land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, and the net­work­ing between this Boseian under­ground and Japan­ese ele­ments.

Key aspects of this milieu include:

1.–Narendra Mod­i’s net­work­ing with Surya Kumar Bose, Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s grand­nephew, promis­ing to declas­si­fy files on Bose.
2.–Surya Bose’s pres­i­den­cy of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion. ” . . . . Surya, who has a soft­ware con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in Ham­burg and is pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion . . . .”
3.–The gen­e­sis of the Indo-Ger­man asso­ci­a­tion in Ger­many dur­ing World War II: ” . . . . ‘The DIG was set up on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1942, by Sub­hash Chan­dra Bose at Hotel Atlanta in Ham­burg.’ . . . . Bose recounts, adding that the DIG today is the largest bilat­er­al organ­i­sa­tion in Ger­many, with 27 branch­es. As a con­sul­tant he often guides Ger­mans keen on work­ing in the boom­ing Indi­an IT sec­tor. He is also a founder-mem­ber of the Ger­man-Indi­an Round Table, an infor­mal gath­er­ing that seeks to fur­ther mutu­al busi­ness inter­ests. . . .”
4.–Surya Kuma Bose’s net­work­ing with Alexan­der Werth, the Ger­man trans­la­tor for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s Ger­man forces, which were fold­ed into the Waf­fen SS at the end of World War II. ” . . . . Back in the day, Netaji’s stay in Ger­many had proved instru­men­tal in shap­ing his strug­gle. Decades lat­er, that lega­cy would play a piv­otal role in shap­ing his grandnephew’s career. Bose came to Ger­many on the advice of Alexan­der Werth, Netaji’s Ger­man inter­preter in the Indi­an Legion. . . .”
5.–The col­lab­o­ra­tion of Surya Kumar Bose, Alexan­der Werth and World War II asso­ciates of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in both Ger­many and Japan in the com­pi­la­tion of a biog­ra­phy that fun­da­men­tal­ly revis­es the his­to­ry of “the Neta­ji.” ” . . . . Its six parts deal with his expe­ri­ences in India, Ger­many and Japan and have been co-authored by peo­ple who either worked with, or were close asso­ciates of, his dur­ing his stay in their respec­tive coun­tries. The aim of the biog­ra­phy is to place Sub­has Chan­dra Bose in a cor­rect his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive with regard to his much pub­li­cized rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­i­ties, and to pro­vide an under­stand­ing of an extreme­ly com­plex man, much maligned by Britain and great­ly mis­un­der­stood by her allies. . . .”
6.–The Nehru gov­ern­men­t’s sur­veil­lance of Aniya Nath Bose–very close to Sub­has Chan­dra Bose–while Aniya was in Japan, an epi­cen­ter of the Sub­has Chan­dra’s World War II oper­a­tions. ” . . . . Doc­u­ments accessed by author Anuj Dhar for his book ‘India’s Biggest Cov­er-up’ show that Nehru, in a let­ter dat­ed Novem­ber 26, 1957 to the then for­eign sec­re­tary Subi­mal Dutt sought to know what Bose’s nephew Amiya Nath Bose was doing in Tokyo. . . . Amiya Bose, son of Subhas’s broth­er Sarat Chan­dra Bose, was known to be close to Neta­ji. . . .”
7.–An arti­cle in the Holo­caust revi­sion­ist peri­od­i­cal of the Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal review that attrib­ut­es the lib­er­a­tion of India to–you guessed it–Subhas Chan­dra Bose, not Gand­hi: ” . . . . When the new ver­sion of the his­to­ry of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry India, and espe­cial­ly the episode of the coun­try’s unique strug­gle for inde­pen­dence comes to be writ­ten, it will no doubt sin­gle out but one per­son who made the most sig­nif­i­cant and out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion among all his com­pa­tri­ots toward the eman­ci­pa­tion of his moth­er­land from the shack­les of an alien bondage. Dur­ing World War II this man strode across two con­ti­nents like a colos­sus, and the foot­steps of his army of lib­er­a­tion rever­ber­at­ed through the forests and plains of Europe and the jun­gles and moun­tains of Asia. His armed assaults shook the very foun­da­tions of the British Empire. His name was Sub­has Chan­dra Bose. . . .”

As dis­cussed in the first eight pro­grams of this series, Saikat Chakrabar­ti is the pow­er behind throne, so to speak, for AOC. Both of the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees he found­ed are fun­da­men­tal to the polit­i­cal ascent of AOC. Those PAC’s–Justice Democ­rats and Brand New Congress–contributed $900,000.00 on AOC’s behalf to a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm also head­ed by Chakrabar­ti. Chakrabar­ti is AOC’s chief of staff and was her cam­paign man­ag­er. Saikat Chakrabar­ti idol­izes Sub­has Chan­dra Bose!

Fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the crit­i­cism Mr. Emory has expressed of the Bernie Sanders and AOC phe­nom­e­na is the strate­gic use of anti-Com­mu­nism by the Under­ground Reich and relat­ed ele­ments.

In the ear­ly 1960’s, there was a plot afoot on the part of Nazi ele­ments to use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca. Might some of the ele­ments we have seen in this series have coa­lesced in such a con­text? One can­not use anti-Com­mu­nism to enslave Amer­i­ca with­out Com­mu­nists. Is this why we see far-right and explic­it­ly fas­cist ele­ments grouped around Bernie Sanders and AOC?

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 86–87.

. . . . Gar­ri­son did not pro­vide an expla­na­tion for all of the [David Fer­rie] note’s sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, he did know the mean­ing of “fly­ing Barag­o­na in the Beech.” “Beech” refers to the mod­el of Fer­rie’s air­plane, a Beechcraft. Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . .

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.” The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

The true char­ac­ter of Saikat Chakrabar­ti’s appar­ent idol Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics is to be found in his 1935 net­work­ing with Mus­soli­ni: “. . . . Neta­ji Bose, by his own admis­sion in his book, ‘Indi­an Strug­gle’ (pub­lished in 1935 in Lon­don), believed India need­ed a polit­i­cal sys­tem that was a mix of fas­cism and com­mu­nism — some­thing that he called samyavad. Neta­ji made a spe­cial trip to Rome in 1935 to present a copy of his book to Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, whom he great­ly admired and whose ideals he would fol­low for the rest of his life. . . .”

Sub­has Chan­dra Bose’s pol­i­tics were the antithe­sis of what we would expect from the AOC camp: “. . . . In a speech the same year in Sin­ga­pore, Bose spoke about India need­ing a ruth­less dic­ta­tor for 20 years after lib­er­a­tion. Then Sin­ga­pore dai­ly, Sun­day Express (now defunct), print­ed his speech where he said, ‘So long as there is a third par­ty, ie the British, these dis­sen­sions will not end. These will go on grow­ing. They will dis­ap­pear only when an iron dic­ta­tor rules over India for 20 years. For a few years at least, after the end of British rule in India, there must be a dictatorship…No oth­er con­sti­tu­tion can flour­ish in this coun­try and it is so to India’s good that she shall be ruled by a dic­ta­tor, to begin with . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church as an exten­sion of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties, with which Sub­has Chan­dra Bose net­worked; dis­cus­sion of the con­trast between Gand­hi’s asceti­cism and Bose’s per­son­al extrav­a­gance and self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion; sum­ma­ry review of the fas­cist antecedents of the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, the RSS and the BJP.


FTR #1053 Interview #22 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions Assis­tant Coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer: “. . . . ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .”

This is the twen­ty-sec­ond in a planned 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.

This pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 333–334.

. . . . The only time he ever had his cre­den­tials ques­tioned was dur­ing the six months he agreed to swerve as coun­sel to the HSCA. And that is sim­ply because he was going to super­vise a real inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK case. Yet, the same thing hap­pened to him as hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. In fact, like Gar­ri­son, Sprague was also even accused of being in bed with the Mafia. When the first press attacks began. HSCA staffer Chris Shar­rett remem­bers think­ing, ‘It’s Gar­ri­son all over again.’ Or, as Joe Rauh, who knew Sprague from Philadel­phia and had a front row seat to the con­tro­ver­sy in Wash­ing­ton said, ‘You know, I nev­er thought the Kennedy case was a con­spir­a­cy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.’ With Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion, the House Select Com­mit­tee sur­vived. The inter­im Chief Coun­sel was Tanen­baum with Al Lewis, a friend and col­league of Sprague’s as his deputy. . . .

In the inter­im, between Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion and the ascen­sion of G. Robert Blakey to the Chief Coun­sel posi­tion, George DeMohren­schildt died of a shot­gun wound to the head.

DeMohren­schildt: was part of the fam­i­ly that man­aged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); was a sus­pect­ed Nazi spy in World War II; was an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; was a long­time CIA asset; was a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

DeMohren­schildt imple­ment­ed the Oswalds’ intro­duc­tion to the White Russ­ian milieu in Dal­las. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pose is the fact that he made con­tact with the cou­ple at the sug­ges­tion of J. Wal­ton Moore, who was the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cer in the Dal­las area!

The White Rus­sians appeared to be work­ing to sep­a­rate Mari­na and Lee, and were involved in han­dling Mari­na after the assas­si­na­tion.

A long-stand­ing CIA asset, DeMohren­schildt had worked with the agency on numer­ous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and else­where. Sus­pect­ed of hav­ing spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Sta­tion (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohren­schildt was the cousin of Baron Kon­tan­tin May­dell, who over­saw Abwehr oper­a­tions in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.)

As dis­cussed in FTR #712, we high­light­ed DeMohren­schildt’s links to for­mer CIA direc­tor George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named. In that same pro­gram, we cov­ered Bush’s involve­ment  in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. LIke DeMohren­schildt and many of the White Rus­sians who asso­ci­at­ed with the Oswalds in the Dal­las area, Bush had roots in the petro­le­um indus­try.

Note­wor­thy in the con­text of Oswald’s pres­ence in Dal­las, is that this alleged trai­tor was employed by Jag­gars, Chiles and Sto­vall, a firm that did clas­si­fied work for the mil­i­tary, includ­ing projects asso­ci­at­ed with the U‑2 spy plane! That the “trai­tor” Oswald, who offered to dis­close clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the U‑2 and U.S. avi­a­tion oper­a­tions to the Sovi­ets could be employed by such a firm is unthink­able, IF we are to take the offi­cial ver­sion of Oswald at face val­ue.

Ulti­mate­ly, DeMohren­schildt hand­ed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quak­er lib­er­als” Michael and Ruth Paine.

DeMohren­schildt’s death was ruled a sui­cide, but the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his demise are note­wor­thy.

At the time he died, DeMohren­schildt was net­work­ing with a Dutch jour­nal­ist named Willem Olt­mans, who began spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion after DeMohren­schildt’s demise. DeMohren­schildt was also net­work­ing with jour­nal­ist Edward Epstein, who pressed the “Sovi­ets did it” meme for a time and whose behav­ior vis a vis DeMohren­schildt is ques­tion­able.

Pri­or to his death, DeMohren­schildt was under­go­ing psy­chi­atric treat­ment, appar­ent­ly includ­ing elec­tro-shock ther­a­py, from a Dal­las physi­cian named Men­doza. DeMohren­schildt’s wid­ow thinks the treat­ments may have had some­thing to do with her hus­band’s death.

The phys­i­cal evi­dence in con­nec­tion with DeMohren­schildt’s death sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 337.

. . . . Even though a coro­ner’s inquest ruled his death as self-inflict­ed, there are some seri­ous ques­tions about DeMohren­schildt’s demise. First, accord­ing to the crime scene report and the autop­sy, there was not any exit wound to the rear of the skull. Yet DeMohren­schildt alleged­ly placed a shot­gun in his mouth and pulled the trig­ger. It’s true that shot­gun shells dis­perse more quick­ly than jack­et­ed bul­lets. But his shot was almost with­in con­tact dis­tance. Nei­ther the maid nor the cook heard the shot­gun blast, even though both women were right below the room that DeMohren­schildt was in at the time. The police also had prob­lems explain­ing the blood spat­ter on the wall. When a blood spurt hits a flat sur­face, it cre­ates a dif­fer­ent pat­tern than if it hits a sur­face that is per­pen­dic­u­lar to it. In look­ing at pho­tographs of the spat­ter pat­tern, it appears that the bath­room door was closed at the time the shoot­ing took place, because the blood pat­tern looked con­tin­u­ous. But the police said this was not the case. The bath­room door was open at the time. The tes­ti­fy­ing offi­cer demeaned the jurors for ask­ing this ques­tion and then jumped to a new top­ic. But it would appear that some­one altered the crime scene after­wards. The final odd­i­ty about the scene is the posi­tion of the weapon after death. It fell trig­ger side up, par­al­lel to the chair DeMohren­schildt was in, with the bar­rel rest­ing at his feet and the butt of the rifle away from him and to his left. The police had a prob­lem with this issue and so did the inquest jurors. As author Jer­ry Rose has not­ed, this strange posi­tion­ing of the rifle sug­gests it was “placed” by some­one.

Ms. Tilton was not at home at the time of DeMohren­schildt’s death. But she had left strict instruc­tions for the maid to record her favorite TV pro­grams. The home had an alarm sys­tem which caused a qui­et bell to ring, any­time an out­side door or win­dow was opened. Dur­ing the hear­ing, the tape of the pro­gram was played. When it was the alarm bell went off and then the gun blast was heard. . . .

Sub­se­quent­ly, writer Jer­ry Poli­coff felt that Olt­mans was threat­en­ing him and that the Dutch jour­nal­ist was a male­fac­tor.

An ini­tial can­di­date to replace Richard Sprague was for­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg, who had been JFK’s Sec­re­tary of Labor.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 339.

. . . . For­mer Jus­tice of the Supreme Court Arthur Gold­berg was one can­di­date who turned down the job. Al Lewis had talked Gold­berg into fill­ing the posi­tion. But Gold­berg had one reser­va­tion. He want­ed to know if the CIA would coop­er­ate with him. Lewis sug­gest­ed call­ing up Stans­field Turn­er, Pres­i­dent Carter’s CIA Direc­tor. So Lewis called him and told him Gold­berg want­ed to talk with him. He put Gold­berg on the line and the can­di­date asked Turn­er if he could guar­an­tee the Agency would coop­er­ate if he became Chief Coun­sel. A long silence ensued. It got so long and so qui­et that Gold­berg turned to Lewis and said, ‘I’m not sure if he’s there any­more.’ Lewis sug­gest­ed that he say some­thing. So Gold­berg asked if he was still on the line and Turn­er said he was.  Gold­berg asked him for an answer to his ques­tion. Turn­er said, ‘I though my silence was my answer.’ . . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the HSCA set­tled on G. Robert Blakey as Chief Coun­sel and Richard (Dick) Billings as a key aide. Both had been involved with tar­ring Jim Gar­ri­son with the Mafia brush in a 1967 Life Mag­a­zine series.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 276.

. . . . But [David] Chandler’s most seri­ous blast against Gar­ri­son and his inquiry was a two-part arti­cle writ­ten for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 8 issues of the mag­a­zine. The pieces mas­quer­ad­ed as an expose of Mafia influ­ence in large cities in Amer­i­ca at the time. But the real tar­get of the piece was not the mob, but Gar­ri­son. The idea was to depict him as a cor­rupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of neb­u­lous ties to the Mafia and Car­los Mar­cel­lo. There were four prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the pieces: Chan­dler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actu­al billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very like­ly that the Bureau was the Bureau was the orig­i­nat­ing force behind the mag­a­zine run­ning the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chan­dler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Ker­ry Thorn­ley, which was the basis of the com­plete­ly pho­ny con­cept that Gar­ri­son was some­how in bed with the Mafia and his func­tion was to steer atten­tion from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

Blakey:

1.–Effectively eclipsed the New Orleans leads devel­oped by Jim Gar­ri­son.
2.–Bought into the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.
3.–Eclipsed evi­dence about “Oswald’s” sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry.

Most impor­tant­ly, Blakey gave the intel­li­gence ser­vices the right to veto what infor­ma­tion would go into the com­mit­tee’s report.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 350.

” . . . . When Robert Blakey took charge of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions, he agreed to do some­thing that Richard Sprague would not. In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. Then, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick Billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. This is the rea­son that the HSCA report on Mex­i­co City–assembled by two law stu­dents of Blakey’s from Cornell–was not part of the pub­lished vol­umes in 1979. For when it came time to vet the report for release, Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hard­way met with the CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Agency made so many objec­tions, it took four hours to get through the first two para­graphs. The report is over 300 pages long. It was there­fore clas­si­fied until the ARRB was cre­at­ed. And then it had to go through sev­er­al reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, ‘Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA’ has not been released. This long clas­si­fied report con­firms that, as Gar­ri­son wrote in 1968, the Com­mis­sion ver­sion of what hap­pened in Mex­i­co City was delib­er­ate­ly cov­ered in mist. . . .

Near the end of his inves­ti­ga­tion, Blakey was on the receiv­ing end of some ques­tion­able behav­ior from CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 340.

. . . . Toward the end, when CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut was caught mis­han­dling Kennedy’s autop­sy pho­tos while they were secured in a safe, the Agency offered Blakey four ways to do an inquiry of what had hap­pened. The main object being to see if Blahut was part of  a larg­er oper­a­tion to under­mine the HSCA. One option was to do the inquiry through the D.C. police, anoth­er was through the FBI, and the third was an inter­nal HSCA inquiry. The last was to have the CIA do it. Even though the Agency offi­cers at this meet­ing strong­ly encour­aged Blakey not to choose them to do the inves­ti­ga­tion, he still did. The report­ing offi­cer, Hav­i­land Smith, made the only con­clu­sion he could from this meet­ing He wrote that his inter­pre­ta­tion of what Blakey want­ed was the Agency ‘to go ahead with the inves­ti­ga­tion of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.’ Which, of course, they did despite the fact that Blahut flunked three poly­graph tests. When the author talked to HSCA staffer Eddie Lopez about this mat­ter, I told him that in read­ing these mem­o­ran­da, I was struck by  how friend­ly Blakey was with these CIA offi­cers. That is, what a  seem­ing­ly easy rap­port he had with them. I said, ‘You know, Eddie he talks to them . . . “Lopez inter­rupt­ed me in mid-sen­tence and com­plet­ed the thought for me: ‘He talks to them like he’s one of them.’ . . . .”

We note that, dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion, George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA. George Joan­nides, who man­aged the DRE for CIA, was the Agen­cy’s main liai­son to the HSCA.


FTR #1052 Interview #21 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions Assis­tant Coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer: “. . . . ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .”

This is the twen­ty-first in a planned 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.

This pro­gram under­takes exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

The HSCA coa­lesced after a show­ing of the Zaprud­er film on tele­vi­sion cued a dra­mat­ic increase in peo­ple who were inter­est­ed in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Down­ing of Vir­ginia was instru­men­tal in real­iz­ing the project.

Ulti­mate­ly, respect­ed Penn­syl­va­nia pros­e­cu­tor Richard Sprague became the com­mit­tee’s Chief Coun­sel, recruit­ing skilled aides like the late Gae­ton Fonzi and Robert Tanen­baum. Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­a­tor Richard Schweik­er, Sprague, Tanen­baum, Fonzi et al quick­ly con­clud­ed that the War­ren Com­mis­sion was cov­er­ing up the assas­si­na­tion and high­light­ed the ridicu­lous nature of CE399–the so-called “Mag­ic Bul­let,” which is the evi­den­tiary core of the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s the­sis.

Ini­tial­ly, the HSCA began doing some seri­ous work, inves­ti­gat­ing and ana­lyz­ing the New Orleans con­nec­tions that Gar­ri­son inves­ti­gat­ed. In addi­tion to the Shaw, Ban­is­ter, Fer­rie Oswald rela­tion­ships, the role of David Phillips, aka “Mau­rice Bish­op,” became a sub­stan­tive focal point of their work.

Gae­ton Fonz­i’s work for the com­mit­tee focused on:

1.–CIA offi­cer Bernar­do DeTor­res’ pro­fes­sion­al career, includ­ing his work with Mitchell Wer­bell.
2.–David Phillips/“Maurice Bish­op.”
3.–The Rose Cheramie fore­shad­ow­ing of the assas­si­na­tion.
4.–Sergio Arcacha Smith’s numer­ous links to the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing his pos­si­ble work run­ning guns with Jack Ruby and CIA con­tract agent Tomas Eli Davis.
5.–Freeport Sul­phur, its net­work­ing with both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie and its own­er­ship by the East­ern Elite.
6.–The role of Jock Whit­ney in Freeport Sul­phur.
The pub­lish­er of The New York Her­ald Tri­bune, Whit­ney worked late into the evening of 11/22/1963, appar­ent­ly on an edi­to­r­i­al that fea­tured the book The Assas­sins, which claimed that Amer­i­ca’s assas­si­na­tions were the work of “crazed indi­vid­u­als.” The book was lat­er dis­trib­uted to mem­bers of the War­ren Com­mis­sion by none oth­er than Allen Dulles.

The pro­gram goes into the dis­cov­ery made by researcher John Hunt of the han­dling of the Mag­ic Bul­let, CE399.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 345.

. . . . And the proof is that both the War­ren Com­mis­sion and the HSCA  signed onto the ludi­crous Sin­gle Bul­let The­o­ry. A the­o­ry that has been ren­dered even more ris­i­ble today than it was in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. For researcher John Hunt has proven with declas­si­fied doc­u­ments that the so-called Mag­ic Bul­let was at the FBI lab in Wash­ing­ton at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the twen­ty-sec­ond. But how could this be if that bul­let was not turned over by the Secret Ser­vice to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd until 8:50 p.m.? In oth­er words, lab tech­ni­cian Robert Fra­zier had booked CE399 into his reords one hour and twen­ty min­utes before it was giv­en to him by agent Todd. But fur­ther, Tod­d’s ini­tials were said by the FBI to be on this bul­let he dropped off with Fra­zier that night. Hunt saw the blow up pho­tos of the entire cir­cum­fer­ence of CE 399 at the Nation­al Archives. The FBI lied on this key issue. For Tod­d’s ini­tials are not on the bul­let.

All one needs to know about the effi­ca­cy of the HSCA is that it nev­er took the time to do what John Hunt did. . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .