FTR #1085 Interview with Tom O’Neill about “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties”

Tom O’Neill has writ­ten a book doc­u­ment­ing the involve­ment of ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty with the oper­a­tions and milieu of the Man­son Fam­i­ly.

Those intel­li­gence con­nec­tions appear to have led to fun­da­men­tal dis­tor­tions in the behav­ior of the courts, law enforce­ment and cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem with regard to the oper­a­tions of the Man­son Fam­i­ly.

FTR #1057 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

1.–The State Depart­men­t’s “Min­istry of Truth” is going to be head­ed by a Fox News and CIA vet­er­an, Lea Gabrielle. Designed to neu­tral­ize what the Pow­ers That Be deem to be for­eign pro­pa­gan­da, the bland­ly-named Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter has been exem­pli­fied by its attempts to por­tray as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion” the ver­i­fi­ably Nazi char­ac­ter and polit­i­cal her­itage of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions wield­ing the police, edu­ca­tion­al and nation­al secu­ri­ty reins in Ukraine. ” . . . . Gabrielle, who begins her job on Feb. 11, was described to reporters by deputy spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no on Thurs­day as ‘a for­mer CIA-trained human intel­li­gence oper­a­tions offi­cer, defense for­eign liai­son offi­cer, Unit­ed States Navy pro­gram direc­tor, Navy F/A‑18C fight­er pilot, and nation­al tele­vi­sion news cor­re­spon­dent and anchor at two dif­fer­ent net­works. . . .”
2.–Fox News reject­ed a nation­al buy for an ad that was to run dur­ing Sean Hannity’s show. The ad pro­motes the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary A Night at the Gar­den, about a 1939 Nazi ral­ly in New York City. The ad includes the warn­ing “It Can Hap­pen Here” about the poten­tial dan­gers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s brand of pop­ulism. Han­ni­ty might be the most ‘Alt-Right’ of all the Fox News per­son­al­i­ties (although he has com­pe­ti­tion). The ad nev­er got to run, and was pre­clud­ed by break­ing news cov­er­age of Trump’s ral­ly in Texas–where Trump so riled up the audi­ence against ‘the media’ that a BBC cam­era­man was vio­lent­ly attacked by some­one wear­ing a MAGA hat.
3.–The El Paso Trump ral­ly man­i­fest­ed a con­tem­po­rary iter­a­tion of “A Night at the Gar­den”. ” . . . . Trump’s ral­ly in El Paso was in sup­port of his bor­der wall. In his State of the Union address last week he claimed, false­ly, that bor­der fenc­ing that was built south of the city in 2010 trans­formed El Paso from a dan­ger­ous place into a safe one. Its Repub­li­can may­or lashed out at the pres­i­dent last week for his false­hood. El Paso’s declin­ing crime rate start­ed well before the bor­der fenc­ing was built. But Trump repeat­ed the lie Mon­day night. And for his audi­ence, the lie was now the truth. ‘Once they built that wall, it was amaz­ing how sta­tis­ti­cal­ly the vio­lence start­ed going down,’ 39-year-old El Paso res­i­dent Michael Blan­co, who owns an account­ing busi­ness, told Huff­Post out­side the col­i­se­um. ‘I’m a com­plete wit­ness of it. Seen it grow­ing up.’ Hen­ri Rafael, a 58-year-old El Pasoan wear­ing a black Trump 2020 hat, said that even though the may­or cor­rect­ed Trump, ‘I know for a fact that the crime was high back in the ’70s and ’80s, and when they built those walls, [crime] has dropped.’ In fact, vio­lent crime increased in El Paso in the two years after the wall was built, accord­ing to a study from the El Paso Times. Trump peri­od­i­cal­ly paused his speech Mon­day for chants of ‘Build the wall!’ and ‘USA!’ When he talked of the ‘fake news’ media, the crowd jeered. At one point, a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired Trump sup­port­er attacked a BBC jour­nal­ist . . . .”
4.–Next, we have an update on Data Pro­pria, the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off­shoot cre­at­ed by Brad Parscale’s com­pa­ny Cloud Com­merce. The GOP hired the ser­vices of Data Pro­pria for the 2018 mid-terms. Data Pro­pria employs four ex-Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca employ­ees, includ­ing Cam­bridge Analytica’s chief data sci­en­tist. Cam­bridge Analytica’s for­mer head of prod­uct, Matt Oczkows­ki, leads Data Propia. Oczkows­ki led the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca team that worked for Trump’s 2016 cam­paign, and was report­ed­ly over­heard brag­ging to a prospec­tive client about how he’s already work­ing on Trump’s 2020 cam­paign (which he sub­se­quent­ly denied). Brad Parscale ran the Trump 2016 campaign’s exten­sive dig­i­tal oper­a­tions that includ­ed exten­sive micro-tar­get­ing of indi­vid­u­als out­side of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca efforts.
5.–Matt Oczkows­ki is now the run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal in addi­tion to Data Pro­pria. Parscale Dig­i­tal is the rebrand­ed ver­sion of Parscale’s old mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Parscale sold his shares in Parscale Dig­i­tal in August 2017, at the same time he pur­chased $9 mil­lion in stock for Cloud Com­merce and took a seat on its board. August of 2017 is also the same month Parscale Dig­i­tal was sold to Cloud Com­merce. Thus, Parscale is a co-own­er of Cloud Com­merce which the own­er of Parscale Dig­i­tal. Now Matt Oczkows­ki, the for­mer head of prod­uct for Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, is run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal.
6.–After a mem­ber of an “antifa” group was stabbed at a white suprema­cist ral­ly, the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed the pro­test­ers, rather than the KKK. ” . . . . Fed­er­al author­i­ties ran a sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion on By Any Means Nec­es­sary (Bamn), spy­ing on the left­ist group’s move­ments in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s mem­bers was stabbed at the white suprema­cist ral­ly, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal: * The FBI inves­ti­gat­ed Bamn for poten­tial ‘con­spir­a­cy’ against the ‘rights’ of the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ and white suprema­cists. * The FBI con­sid­ered the KKK as vic­tims and the left­ist pro­test­ers as poten­tial ter­ror threats, and down­played the threats of the Klan, writ­ing: ‘The KKK con­sist­ed of mem­bers that some per­ceived to be sup­port­ive of a white suprema­cist agen­da.’ * The FBI’s mon­i­tor­ing includ­ed in-per­son sur­veil­lance, and the agency cit­ed Bamn’s advo­ca­cy against ‘rape and sex­u­al assault’ and ‘police bru­tal­i­ty’ as evi­dence in the ter­ror­ism inquiry. The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy non-prof­it Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple through a records request, pre­sent­ed an ‘aston­ish­ing’ descrip­tion of the KKK, said Mike Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the doc­u­ments for the Guardian. . . . ”
7.–The FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into the motive behind Stephen Paddock’s mas­sacre in Las Vegas has omit­ted Pad­dock­’s links with the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen move­ment, which we high­light­ed in FTR #1011. ” . . . . The high-stakes gam­bler respon­si­ble for the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry sought noto­ri­ety in the attack but left his spe­cif­ic motive a mys­tery, the FBI said Tues­day as it con­clud­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2017 mas­sacre that killed 58 coun­try music fans. . . .”
8.–This soci­ety has been sow­ing the Nazi and fas­cist winds for a long time. Fail­ing to come to terms with the Nazi and fas­cist sym­pa­thies of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists who financed Hitler, the incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi SS into the CIA via the Gehlen org, and the incor­po­ra­tion of East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean SS-allied fas­cists into the GOP has borne its inevitable fruit. Now it will be reap­ing the Nazi whirl­wind. An extreme­ly pop­u­lar chil­dren’s lip-synch­ing app called Tik­Tok has incor­po­rat­ed mur­der­ous­ly racist invec­tive against peo­ple of col­or and Jews, in addi­tion to shar­ing overt­ly Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.
9.–Even as offi­cial­dom and the media down­play or out­right dis­miss the Junior Prom pho­to from Bara­boo High School, we should expect things to become dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse. Time grows short. Tik Tok! ” . . . . Police announced on Mon­day they were inves­ti­gat­ing after a pho­to emerged on social media show­ing dozens of pupils — most­ly 16 and 17 — from Bara­boo High School appar­ent­ly per­form­ing the ‘Sieg Heil’ greet­ing dur­ing their junior prom. One for­mer stu­dent at the school in Bara­boo, a town of around 12,000 peo­ple, said she knew some of the boys in the pho­to and that their behav­iour was ‘def­i­nite­ly not sur­pris­ing’. ‘Some of the boys in this pho­to are noto­ri­ous at our school for this kind of behav­iour,’ said the 19-year-old, who grad­u­at­ed ear­li­er this year and wished to remain anony­mous. . . .”
10.–Announced Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kamala Har­ris opposed the 2012 parole bid of demon­stra­bly inno­cent Sirhan Sirhan, the pat­sy for the RFK assas­si­na­tion.
11.–With the New Cold War gath­er­ing momen­tum and Trump’s with­draw­al from the treaty on inter­me­di­ate range nuclear mis­siles point­ing the world toward war, it is worth reflect­ing on the his­to­ry and deep pol­i­tics that brought this about. Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty has writ­ten about events in August of 1944 that are indica­tive of the coa­les­cence of the “Chris­t­ian West” con­cept that we dis­cussed in AFA #37 and fur­ther devel­oped in FTR #1009. Note that this was well before the offi­cial incor­po­ra­tion of the Gehlen “Org” into CIA. We note that it was in August of 1944 that the famous “Red House” meet­ing at which the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work real­ized under the aus­pices of Aktion Adler­flug was launched. ” . . . . On August 23, 1944, the Roma­ni­ans accept­ed Sovi­et sur­ren­der terms and in Bucharest the OSS round­ed up Nazi intel­li­gence experts and their volu­mi­nous East­ern Euro­pean intel­li­gence files and con­cealed them among a train­load of Amer­i­can POW’s who were being quick­ly evac­u­at­ed from the Balka­ns via Turkey. Once in “neu­tral” Turkey, the train con­tin­ued to a planned des­ti­na­tion at a site on the Syr­i­an bor­der, where it was stopped to per­mit the trans­fer of Nazis and POW’s to a fleet of U.S. [Army] Air Force planes for a flight to Cairo. I was the chief pilot of that flight of some thir­ty air­craft . . . . It was this covert fac­tion with­in the OSS, coor­di­nat­ed with a sim­i­lar British intel­li­gence fac­tion, and its poli­cies that encour­aged cho­sen Nazis to con­ceive of the divi­sive ‘Iron Cur­tain’ con­cept to dri­ve a wedge in the alliance with the Sovi­et Union as ear­ly as 1944–to save their own necks, to sal­vage cer­tain pow­er cen­ters and their wealth, and to stir up resent­ment against the Rus­sians, even at the time of their great­est mil­i­tary tri­umph. . . . .”

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 #1047 Interview #16 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the six­teenth of 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.

The pro­gram opens with con­tin­u­a­tion of dis­cus­sion of an unfor­tu­nate piece from The Huff­in­g­ton Post about Clay Shaw. In addi­tion to par­rot­ing canards about Gar­rison’s case being base­less, Clay Shaw being a “Wilsonian/FDR lib­er­al” and Gar­rison’s nonex­is­tent stance that the JFK assas­si­na­tion was a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing” by Clay Shaw & com­pa­ny, the HP piece men­tioned an appear­ance by Jim Gar­ri­son on John­ny Car­son­’s “Tonight Show.”

The actu­al sto­ry of Gar­rison’s appear­ance on Car­son is impor­tant and inter­est­ing. When the bril­liant come­di­an Mort Sahl was on Car­son­’s show, the sub­ject of the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion came up. Sahl asked the audi­ence if they would like to have Gar­ri­son come on the show, and they respond­ed with over­whelm­ing enthu­si­asm.

Even­tu­al­ly, Gar­ri­son did appear on the show and Car­son engaged in an open­ly con­fronta­tion­al dis­cus­sion. Car­son was so out­raged that he told Mort Sahl that he would nev­er appear on the pro­gram again. Mort did not appear on the “Tonight” show until Jay Leno suc­ceed­ed Car­son as the host.

In this regard, it is worth not­ing that NBC–the net­work that aired Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s hit piece on Garrison–has pro­found con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, as dis­cussed in FTR #1045.

Jim also relates that, when in Los Ange­les, Robert Kennedy was query­ing Chi­na Lee–Mort’s wife at the time–about what Gar­ri­son was doing in New Orleans. As we have seen in past programs–including FTR #‘s 809, 892, 1005–Robert Kennedy was wait­ing until he got elect­ed Pres­i­dent before open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into his broth­er’s mur­der. Of course, he, too was killed before he could become Pres­i­dent.

The pro­gram then turns to James Kirk­wood, anoth­er of the des­ig­nat­ed media hatch­et men who pil­lo­ried Gar­ri­son. Net­worked with James Phe­lan, he helped mint the canard that Gar­ri­son pros­e­cut­ed Shaw in the con­text of what the DA sup­pos­ed­ly saw as a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this non­sense has endured, as a Huff­in­g­ton Post arti­cle makes clear.

Anoth­er of the media hit men who defamed Gar­ri­son was David Chan­dler:

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

. . . . But 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. . . .

The sub­ject then turns to Clay Shaw’s defense team. It should nev­er be for­got­ten that Shaw’s attor­neys net­worked with: the infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, the CIA and the media hatch­et men who helped destroy Gar­rison’s pub­lic image.

We return briefly to Guy John­son, ini­tial­ly a mem­ber of Shaw’s defense team. In this con­text, it is worth remem­ber­ing what Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Tom­my Baum­ler said:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 274.

. . . . In the spring of 1968, Harold Weis­berg inter­viewed Tom­my Baum­ler. Baum­ler had for­mer­ly worked for Guy Ban­is­ter as part of his corps of stu­dent infil­tra­tors in the New Orleans area. Because of that expe­ri­ence, Baum­ler knew a lot about Banister’s oper­a­tion. For instance, that Banister’s files were cod­ed, and that Ban­is­ter had black­mail mate­r­i­al on the sub­jects he kept files on. He also knew the intel­li­gence net­work in New Orleans was con­struct­ed through Ban­is­ter, Clay Shaw, and Guy John­son; how close Shaw and Ban­is­ter were; and that “Oswald worked for Ban­is­ter.” In Weisberg’s inter­view with Tom­my, he would occa­sion­al­ly ask to go off the record by telling him to turn the tape recorder off. Clear­ly, there were things going on in New Orleans that Baum­ler con­sid­ered too hot to be attrib­uted to him.

At this time, April of 1968, Weis­berg con­sid­ered Baum­ler to be an “unabashed fas­cist.” He explained this fur­ther by say­ing that Baum­ler was ‘aware of the mean­ing of his beliefs and con­sid­ers what he describes as his beliefs as prop­er.” He then explained to Weis­berg the fol­low­ing, “that what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.” He fur­ther said that this would also hap­pen to any­one else charged by Gar­ri­son. . . .

In addi­tion to John­son, Irv Dymond, anoth­er Shaw attor­ney, net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, Wal­ter Sheri­dan and the spook infil­tra­tors into Gar­rion’s office. In FTR #1045, we not­ed that Fred Lee­mans claimed he was coerced, in part, direct­ly by Irv Dymond in Dymond’s law office. Dymond worked direct­ly with Hunter Leake of the CIA’s New Orleans office.

Shaw attor­neys Edward and William Weg­mann also net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, employ­ing Wack­en­hut, for­mer­ly South­ern Research, an intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed pri­vate secu­ri­ty out­fit to mon­i­tor Gar­rison’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Anoth­er Shaw attorney–Sal Panzeca–received a list of Gar­ri­son wit­ness­es from Gar­ri­son office infil­tra­tor Tom Bethell.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 290.

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key inves­ti­ga­tors and researchers . . . . Since Gar­ri­son had des­ig­nat­ed him as his chief archivist, he had access to and con­trol of both Gar­rison’s files and his most recent wit­ness list. . . . Secret­ly, he met with Sal Panze­ca, one of Shaw’s attor­neys, and gave him a wit­ness list he had pre­pared, with sum­maries of each wit­ness’s expect­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with the obstruc­tive efforts of then Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark.

Clark tried to dis­miss Clay Shaw’s involve­ment inthe assas­si­na­tion by claim­ing that the FBI had cleared him back in 1963.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 261.

. . . . One point man for the John­son Admin­is­tra­tion in dam­ag­ing Gar­rison’s case was Ram­sey Clark. In March of 1867, right after his con­fir­ma­tion as Attor­ney Gen­er­al by the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Clark made an extra­or­di­nary inter­ven­tion into the case: he told a group of reporters Gar­rison’s case was base­less. The FBI, he said, had already inves­ti­gat­ed Shaw in 1963 and found no con­nec­tion between him and the events in Dal­las. . . .

Clark also assist­ed with the quash­ing of sub­poe­nas that Gar­ri­son served.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 272–273.

. . . . At around this time, Gar­ri­son issued sub­poe­nas for both Richard Helms and any pho­tographs of Oswald in Mex­i­co City that the CIA held. . . . [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton then wrote a let­ter to New Orleans judge Bernard Bagert who had signed the sub­poe­na. He denied there were pho­tos of Oswald in Mex­i­co City. This reply was run by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark and White House advis­er Har­ry MacPher­son. . . .

Final­ly, Clark denied Gar­ri­son prop­er access to autop­sy pho­tos and infor­ma­tion about the assas­si­na­tion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 287.

. . . . After the Attor­ney Gen­er­al had bun­gled his first attempt to dis­cred­it Gar­rison’s case, he secret­ly tried anoth­er method. Gar­ri­son had been try­ing to secure the orig­i­nal JFK autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays to exhib­it at the tri­al. They would form an impor­tant part of his case, since, to prove a con­spir­a­cy, he had to present evi­dence against the War­ren Report, which main­tained there was no con­spir­a­cy and that Oswald had act­ed alone. In 1968, Clark con­vened a pan­el of experts–which did not include any of the doc­tors who had per­formed the orig­i­nal examinations–to review the autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays. In ear­ly 1969, just a few days before he left office and on the eve of the tri­al, Clark announced that this pan­el had endorsed the find­ings of the War­ren Report. The pan­el released its find­ings, but none of the orig­i­nal evi­dence on which it was based. This was clear­ly meant to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion before Shaw’s tri­al began. . . .

FTR #1034 Interview #4 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The fourth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues with dis­cus­sion of the cast of char­ac­ters that fig­ure in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and their rela­tion­ship to anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1033, the pro­gram high­lights activ­i­ties of Bay of Pigs and Water­gate par­tic­i­pant E. Howard Hunt. One of the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cers in the abortive Bay of Pigs, Hunt loathed Kennedy, helped ghost-write the Charles Mur­phy apolo­gia for Allen Dulles & Com­pa­ny in For­tune mag­a­zine (see FTR #1032), and may have been involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

E. Howard Hunt was also present in Dal­las, Texas on 11/22/1963, as revealed in a memo craft­ed by James Angle­ton.

A sub­ject that will be dis­cussed at greater length in future con­ver­sa­tions with Jim is the man­i­fes­ta­tions of Ker­ry Thorn­ley:

1.–One of the Marine Corps bud­dies of Oswald the Marx­ist Marine.
2.–Reinforced the Oswald the Com­mie meme.
3.–Was involved with Oswald’s alleged pro-Cas­tro leaflet­ing orig­i­nat­ing from Guy Ban­is­ter’s office.
4.–Was appar­ent­ly involved with most of Oswald’s asso­ciates in the New Orleans area.
5.–Wrote two con­tra­dic­to­ry books about Oswald decades apart.
6.–Supplementing dis­cus­sion of Gor­don Nov­el from FTR #1033, the pro­gram fore­shad­ows future dis­cus­sion of infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. An elec­tron­ics expert involved with CIA and the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, Nov­el was involved with infil­trat­ing Gar­rison’s office and sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion to Gar­rison’s ene­mies.

Also car­ry­ing over from FTR #1033, the pro­gram high­lights Guy Ban­is­ter’s so-called “detec­tive agency,” from which Oswald oper­at­ed his one-man New Orleans chap­ter of the Fair Play For Cuba Com­mit­tee. Sam Newman–the own­er of the New­man build­ing which housed that oper­a­tion, was eva­sive about Oswald oper­at­ing from an office there. New­man’s state­ments in that regard are con­tra­dic­to­ry. Oswald’s pres­ence there has been sub­stan­tive­ly con­firmed.

Of sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Corliss Lam­ont of the pro-Cas­tro FPCC authored a pam­phlet for the orga­ni­za­tion in 1961, while Oswald was in the Sovi­et Union. It was the 1961 edi­tion of the pam­phlet that Oswald was hand­ing out when he had his alter­ca­tion with Car­los Bringuier. This sug­gests that Oswald got his edi­tion of the pam­phlet from the CIA. (Recall that David Phillips and James McCord head­ed the CIA’s anti-FPCC effort.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of JFK’s strip­ping of Charles Mur­phy of his Air Force Reserve com­mis­sion and Mur­phy’s state­ment that he did­n’t mind because his real alle­giance was to Dulles.
2.–Discussion of Guy Ban­is­ter’s detec­tive agency as a far right/fascist intel­li­gence ser­vice, infil­trat­ing lib­er­al and left­ist polit­i­cal milieux.
3.–Richard Nixon’s pres­ence in Dal­las on 11/22/1963 and the pro­found con­nec­tions between Water­gate and the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

FTR #1033 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The third of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues with dis­cus­sion of Cuba and JFK’s pol­i­cy with regard to Cas­tro.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

After review­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1032, the pro­gram high­lights the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thir­teen Days” exem­pli­fies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and what Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er called “The Mil­i­tary-Indus­tri­al Com­plex,” earn­ing the hatred of key play­ers on the U.S. polit­i­cal stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Sovi­ets had placed offen­sive inter­me­di­ate range bal­lis­tic mis­siles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the mis­siles and a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was exco­ri­at­ed for tak­ing a more thought­ful tack.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 63.

. . . . On Octo­ber 9, Kennedy had a meet­ing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawk­ish Air Force Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the block­ade option. . . . “If we don’t do any­thing in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was nev­er one to mince words, then went even fur­ther. To  show his utter  dis­dain for the block­ade con­cept, the World War II vet­er­an actu­al­ly brought up some­thing rather bizarre. He said, “The block­ade and polit­i­cal action, I see lead­ing into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appease­ment at Munich.” LeMay was now com­par­ing Kennedy’s pref­er­ence for the block­ade with Neville Cham­ber­lain’s giv­ing away the Sude­ten­land to the Nazis, which encour­aged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not express­ing them­selves in such extreme fig­ures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .  

Think­ing that the Sovi­et buildup may have been a gam­bit to oblige the U.S. to for­go sup­port for West Berlin in exchange for with­draw­al of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought oth­er alter­na­tives. (Younger lis­ten­ers should bear in mind that West Berlin was the West­ern-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself locat­ed deep in East Ger­many.)

Ulti­mate­ly, Kennedy and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev drew down hos­til­i­ties, after Kennedy insti­tut­ed a naval block­ade of Sovi­et mar­itime ship­ments of mil­i­tary materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the alto­geth­er for­mi­da­ble order of bat­tle in Cuba, indi­cat­ing the strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that, had the more aggres­sive U.S. con­tin­gency plans been imple­ment­ed, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our  civ­i­liza­tion.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No bat­tle plan sur­vives con­tact with the ene­my.” Some­thing would not have gone accord­ing to plan in the pro­posed mil­i­tary adven­tures against the Sovi­et pres­ence in Cuba. When that hap­pened, there would have been World War III.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 66.

. . . . The deploy­ment includ­ed 40 land based bal­lis­tic launch­ers, includ­ing 60 mis­siles in five mis­sile reg­i­ments. The medi­um range mis­siles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addi­tion, there were to be 140 air-defense mis­sile launch­ers to pro­tect the sites. Accom­pa­ny­ing then would be a Russ­ian army of 45,000 men with four motor­ized rifle reg­i­ments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fight­ers, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Final­ly, there was to be a sub­ma­rine mis­sile base with an ini­tial deploy­ment of eleven sub­marines, sev­en of them capa­ble of launch­ing one mega­ton nuclear war­heads. In addi­tion, there were low-yield tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an inva­sion. . . . 

Fol­low­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, Kennedy sought to woo Cas­tro away from the Sovi­et Union with a diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplo­mat William Atwood, French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Lisa Howard as inter­me­di­aries, JFK was seek­ing to nor­mal­ize U.S./Cuban rela­tions.

The CIA and its anti-Cas­tro Cuban con­tin­gent learned of the nego­ti­a­tions, and under­took a num­ber of covert oper­a­tions, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the nego­ti­a­tions.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

The roles of many of the “Drama­tis Per­son­ae” who fig­ure in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion in anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue, includ­ing:

1.–David Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary train­er at camps used to train anti-Cas­tro guer­ril­las and as a pilot on var­i­ous “ops” against Cas­tro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work orga­niz­ing CIA anti-Cas­tro Cuban activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency,” which served as a front for para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Cas­tro’s Cuba and also as a cov­er for Lee Har­vey Oswald’s role as a faux Cas­tro sup­port­er and Fair Play For Cuba mem­ber.
4.–Bernardo de Tor­res’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bay of Pigs and sub­se­quent anti-Cas­tro activ­i­ties, as well as his work with silenced weapons devel­op­er Mitchell Wer­Bell and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Fer­rie, among oth­ers, and his bru­tal mur­der.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key offi­cial of the CIA front orga­ni­za­tion CRC and his links to many oth­er fig­ures in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
7.–CIA offi­cer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Cas­tro, as well as against the U.S. Cas­tro sup­port group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 con­ver­sa­tion with his estranged broth­er short­ly before his death, Phillips admit­ted hav­ing been in Dal­las when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Water­gate bur­glar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most mil­i­tant of the anti-Cas­tro exile groups and his mys­te­ri­ous con­trol offi­cer “Mau­rice Bish­op,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Water­gate Bur­glar E. Howard Hunt’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Allen Dulles and Charles Mur­phy on the anti-Kennedy For­tune Mag­a­zine arti­cle, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion.

FTR #1032 Interview #2 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sec­ond of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s pre­co­cious polit­i­cal vision. Pos­sessed of a deep under­stand­ing of how the strug­gle for, and desire for, nation­al inde­pen­dence by colo­nial pos­ses­sions of Amer­i­ca’s World War II allies under­cut the cast­ing of these nations’ affairs in a stark “East vs. West” Cold War con­text, Kennedy put his polit­i­cal vision into play in many instances. It was his attempts at real­iz­ing his polit­i­cal vision through con­crete pol­i­cy that pre­cip­i­tat­ed his mur­der.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

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.

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of Kennedy’s stance on Alge­ria. A French colony in North Africa, Alger­ian inde­pen­dence forces waged a fierce guer­ril­la war in an attempt at becom­ing free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the West­ern con­sen­sus on Alge­ria, which sought to retain that prop­er­ty as a French pos­ses­sion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 25–26.

. . . . On July 2, 1957, Sen­a­tor Kennedy rose to speak in the Sen­ate cham­ber and deliv­ered what the New York Times was to call the next day, “the most com­pre­hen­sive and out­spo­ken arraign­ment of West­ern pol­i­cy toward Alge­ria yet pre­sent­ed by an Amer­i­can in pub­lic office.” As his­to­ri­an Alan Nevins lat­er wrote, “No speech on for­eign affairs by Mr. Kennedy attract­ed more atten­tion at home and abroad.” It was the mature fruition of all the ideas that Kennedy had been col­lect­ing and refin­ing since his 1951 trip into the nooks and cor­ners of Saigon, It was pas­sion­ate yet sophis­ti­cat­ed, hard-hit­ting but con­trolled, ide­al­is­tic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also prag­mat­ic. Kennedy assailed the admin­is­tra­tion, espe­cial­ly John Fos­ter Dulles and Nixon, for not urg­ing France into nego­ti­a­tions, and there­fore not being its true friend. He began the speech by say­ing that the most pow­er­ful force inter­na­tion­al affairs at the time was not the H‑bomb, but the desire for inde­pen­dence from impe­ri­al­ism. He then said it was a test of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy to meet the chal­lenge of impe­ri­al­ism. If not, Amer­i­ca would lose the trust of mil­lions in Asia and Africa. . . . He lat­er added that, “The time has come for the Unit­ed States to face the harsh real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion and to ful­fill its respon­si­bil­i­ties as leader of the free world . . . in shap­ing a course toward polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence for Alge­ria.” He con­clud­ed by say­ing that Amer­i­ca could not win in the Third World by sim­ply dol­ing out for­eign aid dol­lars, or sell­ing free enter­prise, or describ­ing the evils of com­mu­nism, or lim­it­ing its approach to mil­i­tary pacts. . . .”

The French peo­ple were divid­ed over the Alger­ian strug­gle, and those divi­sions led to the fall of the Fourth Repub­lic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle grant­ed Alge­ria its inde­pen­dence and then faced down the lethal oppo­si­tion of the OAS, a group of mil­i­tary offi­cers ground­ed in the fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist pol­i­tics of Vichy France. De Gaulle sur­vived sev­er­al assas­si­na­tion attempts against him and there are a num­ber of evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.

Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Ban­is­ter’s investigators–boasted of hav­ing trans­ferred a large sum of mon­ey from the CIA to the OAS offi­cers plot­ting against De Gaulle. In addi­tion, Rene Souetre–a French OAS-linked assas­sin was in the Dal­las Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.

After dis­cus­sion of Alge­ria, the pro­gram begins analy­sis of Cuba, a major focal point of Jim’s book and one of the deci­sive fac­tors in pre­cip­i­tat­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and one of the prin­ci­pal inves­tiga­tive ele­ments in Jim Gar­rison’s pros­e­cu­tion of the mur­der.

A for­mer Span­ish colony, Cuba was drawn into the Amer­i­can sphere of influ­ence after the Span­ish-Amer­i­can war. Cuba bore the yoke of a suc­ces­sion of dic­ta­tors in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ulti­mate­ly giv­ing way to the dic­ta­to­r­i­al reigns of Ful­gen­cio Batista. As Batista cement­ed his domin­ion over the island nation, he insti­tu­tion­al­ized the sup­pres­sion of pro-labor and pro-democ­ra­cy forces, as well as cre­at­ing the BRAC, an explic­it­ly anti-com­mu­nist secret police–a Cuban gestapo if you will.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is Batis­ta’s role as a cor­po­rate satrap for U.S. com­mer­cial inter­ests. Cuba’s agri­cul­tur­al wealth, cof­fee, tobac­co and sug­ar in par­tic­u­lar, as well as the coun­try’s min­er­al resources were dom­i­nat­ed by Amer­i­can cor­po­rate inter­ests, who enjoyed what was, in essence, a cor­po­rate state under Batista. For all intents and pur­pos­es, Cuba was free of any sub­stan­tive imped­i­ments to U.S. invest­ment. In turn, Bat­tista prof­it­ed enor­mous­ly from his role as point man for U.S. cor­po­rate devel­op­ment of Cuba.

In addi­tion, Amer­i­can orga­nized crime inter­ests were deeply involved in Cuba, deriv­ing great wealth from dom­i­na­tion of the coun­try’s gam­bling, hotel and pros­ti­tu­tion indus­tries. Ulti­mate­ly, both cor­po­rate inter­ests, man­i­fest­ing through the CIA and the Mafia would join forces in an effort to oust Fidel Cas­tro.

Inter­est­ing­ly, as Batis­ta’s dic­ta­tor­ship was top­pling amidst grow­ing crit­i­cism from U.S. politi­cians and the forces sup­port­ive of Fidel Cas­tro’s guer­ril­las, CIA offi­cer and even­tu­al Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt was among those who attempt­ed to ease him from pow­er.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 11.

. . . . In the face of this obsti­na­cy, the CIA began to devise des­per­ate tac­tics to save off a Cas­tro vic­to­ry. One alter­na­tive was to arrange a meet­ing between wealthy U.S. indus­tri­al­ist William Paw­ley and Batista. The goal, with Howard Hunt as the medi­a­tor, was to release from jail a for­mer Batista oppo­nent, Gen­er­al Ramon Bar­quin, in hopes that he could dis­place Batista and pro­vide a viable pop­u­lar alter­na­tive to Cas­tro. Nei­ther of these tac­tics came off as planned. After Ambas­sador Smith informed him that the U.S. could no longer sup­port his gov­ern­ment, Batista decid­ed to leave the coun­try on New Year’s Eve, 1958. No one knows how much mon­ey Batista embez­zled and took with him. But esti­mates range well into the nine fig­ures. On Jan­u­ary 8, 1959, Cas­tro and Che Gue­vara rolled their army into a jubi­lant Havana. . . .

Cas­tro reversed the cor­po­ratist dynam­ic that had obtained under Batista, with the nation­al­iza­tion of key indus­tries (includ­ing Amer­i­can-owned cor­po­rate inter­ests). Cas­tro and Che Gue­vara also liq­ui­dat­ed BARC, exe­cut­ing key oper­a­tives, includ­ing some who had been trained in the Unit­ed States.

This pre­cip­i­tat­ed the CIA’s well known attempts to remove him from pow­er, the best known episode of which is the Bay of Pigs inva­sion.

Begun under the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion and with then Vice-Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon in charge of the devel­op­ment of the oper­a­tion, the evolv­ing plans for the inva­sion were nev­er to Kennedy’s lik­ing. JFK’s atti­tude toward the plans was described as the atti­tude a par­ent might have to an adopt­ed orphan.

The inva­sion plan went through a num­ber of iter­a­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing in a blue­print that called for some 1,400 Cuban exile invaders to “go gueril­la” by mak­ing their way to the hills where, sup­pos­ed­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the Cuban pop­u­lace would rise up to join them against Cas­tro.

There were many fun­da­men­tal and, ulti­mate­ly, fatal, flaws in the oper­a­tional plan, includ­ing:

1.–The inva­sion force would have had to cross 70 miles of swamp to make it to the moun­tains from which they were sup­posed to mount their vic­to­ri­ous resis­tance.
2.–The bulk of the Cuban pop­u­lace was sup­port­ive of Cas­tro and would not have joined an attempt to oust him.
3.–The one Anti-Cas­tro Cuban polit­i­cal ele­ment that had sup­port among por­tions of the Cuban pop­u­la­tion were the back­ers of Manolo Ray. Favored by JFK, Ray was viewed with dis­dain by Allen Dulles and the Bay of Pigs plan­ners, who mar­gin­al­ized Ray and may well have been prepar­ing to assas­si­nate his fol­low­ers in Cuba had the inva­sion plan been suc­cess­ful.
4.–There was no way that the inva­sion force, as con­sti­tut­ed, could have pos­si­bly defeat­ed the Cas­tro mil­i­tary and mili­tia, who out­num­bered the invaders by rough­ly 100 to 1.
5.–Any pos­si­ble suc­cess for the inva­sion would have depend­ed on autho­riza­tion of the use of Amer­i­can air pow­er by Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Such autho­riza­tion was not forth­com­ing and the blame for the oper­a­tion’s fail­ure was laid at Kennedy’s doorstep.

Bit­ter­ness over the fail­ure of the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the ani­mos­i­ty toward Kennedy on the part of CIA, their anti-Cas­tro Cuban pro­teges and the Amer­i­can right. This ani­mos­i­ty ulti­mate­ly con­tributed to the momen­tum to kill Kennedy.

An ana­lyt­i­cal report on the inva­sion by Gen­er­al Maxwell Tay­lor high­light­ed the fun­da­men­tal flaws in the inva­sion plan.

Fol­low­ing the Bay of Pigs dis­as­ter, JFK pub­licly took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the oper­a­tion’s fail­ure, while pri­vate­ly tak­ing steps to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter the covert oper­a­tion oper­a­tional tem­plate for the future.

This alter­ation crys­tal­lized in the form of three Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­da, NSAM’s 55, 56, and 57:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 52–53.

. . . . NSAM 55 was direct­ly deliv­ered to Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Lyman Lem­nitzer. JFK was angry that the Pen­ta­gon had not deliv­ered a tren­chant cri­tique of the Dulles-Bis­sell inva­sion plan. So from here on in he want­ed their input into mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions of the Cold War. As both John New­man and Fletch­er Prouty have not­ed, this was a real can­non shot across the bow of the CIA. Allen Dulles had insti­tut­ed these types of para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions pre­vi­ous­ly, and the CIA had run them almost exclu­sive­ly. As New­man describes it, NSAM 55 was “The open­ing shot in Kennedy’s cam­paign to cur­tail the CIA’s con­trol over covert para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.” The oth­er two nation­al secu­ri­ty mem­o­ran­da flowed form the first one. NSAM 56 was an order to make an inven­to­ry of para­mil­i­tary assets and equip­ment the Pen­ta­gon had on hand and then to mea­sure that against the pro­ject­ed require­ments across the world and make up any deficit. NSAM 57 stat­ed that all para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions were to be pre­sent­ed to the Strate­gic Resources Group. that group would then assign a per­son and depart­ment to run it. The CIA was only to be involved in para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions “whol­ly covert or dis­avow­able,” and then only with­in the Agen­cy’s “nor­mal capa­bil­i­ties.” . . . . The con­se­quence of these pres­i­den­tial direc­tives was the first sig­nif­i­cant chink in the CIA’s covert armor since its cre­ation. . . .

In stark con­trast to the Tay­lor report is a For­tune mag­a­zine arti­cle writ­ten by Charles Mur­phy, act­ing in tan­dem with Allen Dulles and future Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt. This piece laid the blame for the Bay of Pigs fail­ure on JFK, feed­ing the vir­u­lent hatred of Kennedy in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er and the pub­lic at large.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 54–55.

. . . . Hunt went so far as to admit that he and Dulles reviewed the proofs of the above men­tioned For­tune arti­cle by Charles Mur­phy on the Bay of Pigs before it was pub­lished. And fur­ther, that Hunt actu­al­ly worked on the arti­cle for two days and fur­nished Mur­phy with clas­si­fied back­ground infor­ma­tion for the piece. And what an arti­cle it was.

The Murphy/Hunt/Dulles piece begins by stat­ing that Kennedy has been an inef­fec­tive pres­i­dent so far. The rea­son being because, unlike Eisen­how­er, he did not know how to manip­u­late the levers of pow­er. Although the arti­cle is sup­posed to be about the Bay of Pigs, Mur­phy and his (secret) co-authors spend the first few pages dis­cussing Laos. . . . The arti­cle now goes on to strike at two tar­gets. First, quite nat­u­ral­ly, it states that Kennedy reneged on the D‑Day air strikes. . . .

. . . . The sec­ond tar­get of the piece is the lib­er­al coterie around Kennedy–Richard Good­win, William Ful­bright, Adlai Steven­son, and Arthur Schlesinger. In oth­er words, the bunch that made Hunt swal­low Manolo Ray. In fact, what the trio does here is insin­u­ate that the orig­i­nal Dulles-Bis­sell plan was tac­ti­cal­ly sound and approved by the Pen­ta­gon. . . . . And at the very end, when they quote Kennedy say­ing that there were sober­ing lessons to be learned from the episode, they clear­ly insin­u­ate that the pres­i­dent should not have let his “polit­i­cal advis­ers” influ­ence oper­a­tional deci­sions. Since Dulles lat­er con­fessed that he nev­er thought theop0eration could suc­ceed on its own, but he thought Kennedy would save it when he saw it fail­ing, this appears to be noth­ing but pure decep­tion on his part, deliv­ered his instru­ments Mur­phy and Hunt. . . .

After the Bay of Pigs, JFK fired Allen Dulles (who lat­er served on the War­ren Com­mis­sion), Richard Bis­sell and Charles Cabell, whose broth­er Earl Cabell was the may­or of Dal­las when Kennedy was killed and, as Jim reveals, a CIA asset.

FTR #1031 Interview #1 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The first of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s pre­co­cious polit­i­cal vision. Pos­sessed of a deep under­stand­ing of how the strug­gle for, and desire for, nation­al inde­pen­dence by colo­nial pos­ses­sions of Amer­i­ca’s World War II allies under­cut the cast­ing of these nations’ affairs in a stark “East vs. West” Cold War con­text, Kennedy put his polit­i­cal vision into play in many instances. It was his attempts at real­iz­ing his polit­i­cal vision through con­crete pol­i­cy that pre­cip­i­tat­ed his mur­der.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

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. (We have cov­ered this in numer­ous pro­grams over the decades, including–most recently–FTR #978.)

In future dis­cus­sion, we will ana­lyze at greater length and in greater detail how Lyn­don Baines John­son reversed JFK’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy and autho­rized the endur­ing car­nage that was to fol­low.

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.

The CIA was already back­ing the Hmong tribes­men and financ­ing their guer­ril­la war­fare by assist­ing in the mar­ket­ing of their pri­ma­ry rev­enue-earn­ing crop–opium. (We dis­cussed this at con­sid­er­able length in AFA #24, among oth­er pro­grams.)

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. . . . ”

A for­mer Dutch colony, Indone­sia was anoth­er emerg­ing nation at the epi­cen­ter of the tug of war between East and West. Sukarno sought to remain a neu­tral, or non-aligned coun­try, along with oth­er lead­ers of what we call the Third World, such as Indi­a’s Nehru. Not seek­ing to align with the Sovi­et Union nor the West, Sukarno remained on good terms with the PKI, the large Indone­sian com­mu­nist par­ty.

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 1964 pre­clud­ed the trip.

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

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. . . . ”

Final­ly, the pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of Kennedy’s stance on Alge­ria. A French colony in North Africa, Alger­ian inde­pen­dence forces waged a fierce guer­ril­la war in an attempt at becom­ing free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the West­ern con­sen­sus on Alge­ria, which sought to retain that prop­er­ty as a French pos­ses­sion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 25–26.

“. . . . On July 2, 1957, Sen­a­tor Kennedy rose to speak in the Sen­ate cham­ber and deliv­ered what the New York Times was to call the next day, “the most com­pre­hen­sive and out­spo­ken arraign­ment of West­ern pol­i­cy toward Alge­ria yet pre­sent­ed by an Amer­i­can in pub­lic office.” As his­to­ri­an Alan Nevins lat­er wrote, ‘No speech on for­eign affairs by Mr. Kennedy attract­ed more atten­tion at home and abroad.’ It was the mature fruition of all the ideas that Kennedy had been col­lect­ing and refin­ing since his  1951 trip into  the  nooks  and cor­ners of Saigon,  It was pas­sion­ate yet sophis­ti­cat­ed, hard-hit­ting but con­trolled, ide­al­is­tic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also prag­mat­ic. Kennedy assailed the admin­is­tra­tion, espe­cial­ly John Fos­ter Dulles and Nixon, for not urg­ing France into nego­ti­a­tions, and there­fore not being its true friend. He began the speech by say­ing  that the most pow­er­ful  force inter­na­tion­al  affairs at the time  was not the H‑bomb, but the  desire  for  inde­pen­dence from impe­ri­al­ism. He then  said it was a test of  Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy to meet the chal­lenge of impe­ri­al­ism. If not, Amer­i­ca would lose the trust of mil­lions in Asia and Africa. . . . He lat­er added that, ‘The time has come for the Unit­ed States to face the harsh real­i­ties of the  sit­u­a­tion  and to ful­fill its respon­si­bil­i­ties as leader of the free world . . . in shap­ing a course toward polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence for Alge­ria.’ He con­clud­ed by say­ing that Amer­i­ca could not win in the Third World by sim­ply dol­ing  out for­eign aid  dol­lars, or sell­ing free enter­prise, or describ­ing the evils of  com­mu­nism, or lim­it­ing its  approach  to mil­i­tary pacts. . . .” 

The French peo­ple were divid­ed over the Alger­ian strug­gle, and those divi­sions led to the fall of the Fourth Repub­lic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle grant­ed Alge­ria its inde­pen­dence and then faced down the lethal oppo­si­tion of the OAS, a group of mil­i­tary offi­cers ground­ed in the fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist pol­i­tics of Vichy France. De Gaulle sur­vived sev­er­al assas­si­na­tion attempts against him and there are a num­ber of evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.

Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Ban­is­ter’s investigators–boasted of hav­ing trans­ferred a large sum of mon­ey from the CIA to the OAS offi­cers plot­ting against De Gaulle. In addi­tion, Rene Souetre–a French OAS-linked assas­sin was in the Dal­las Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.

FTR #1029 “The Will to Create Man Anew”: Eugenics, Past, Present and Future

Adolf Hitler: “Nation­al Social­ism . . . . is more even than a reli­gion: it is the will to cre­ate man anew.”

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have touched on eugen­ics and some of the out­comes of eugen­ics phi­los­o­phy, includ­ing the growth of the Nazi exter­mi­na­tion pro­grams from the Knauer case. Some of these pro­grams are: FTR #‘s 32, 117, 124, 140, 141, 534, 664, and 908. A look at future pos­si­bil­i­ties of eugenics–something that we dis­cuss in this program–are high­light­ed in FTR #909 and AFA #39.

Impor­tant book on the sub­ject include The War Against the Weak, by Edwin Black and The Nazi Con­nec­tion by Stephan Kuhl. In FTR #1013, we recapped Peter Lev­en­da’s pre­scient analy­sis of the over­lap between eugen­ics and fas­cist iter­a­tions of anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment. In this broad­cast, eugen­ics, anti-immi­gra­tion sen­ti­ment, genet­ic engi­neer­ing and the “immor­tal­i­ty-striv­ing” Tran­shu­man­ist move­ment are high­light­ed, not­ing the pro­gres­sion from the fas­cism of the 1930’s to immi­nent steps that would aug­ment the ascen­sion of a tru­ly “super­hu­man” elite, to the ulti­mate­ly lethal detri­ment of the rest of soci­ety.

We begin with prog­nos­ti­ca­tions about the future.

Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hawk­ing has pre­dict­ed that gene-edit­ing tech­niques will lead to the cre­ation of super­hu­mans, who will super­sede those who do not ben­e­fit from such tech­nolo­gies. ” . . . . The sci­en­tist pre­sent­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty that genet­ic engi­neer­ing could cre­ate a new species of super­hu­man that could destroy the rest of human­i­ty. . . . In ‘Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions,’ Hawking’s final thoughts on the uni­verse, the physi­cist sug­gest­ed wealthy peo­ple would soon be able to choose to edit genet­ic make­up to cre­ate super­hu­mans with enhanced mem­o­ry, dis­ease resis­tance, intel­li­gence and longevi­ty. . . . ‘Once such super­hu­mans appear, there will be sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal prob­lems with unim­proved humans, who won’t be able to com­pete,’ he wrote. ‘Pre­sum­ably, they will die out, or become unim­por­tant. Instead, there will be a race of self-design­ing beings who are improv­ing at an ever-increas­ing rate.’ . . .”

The obser­va­tions of Pro­fes­sor Hawk­ing con­cern­ing the role of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in the ascen­sion of super­hu­mans is the Sil­i­con Val­ley-based Tran­shu­man­ist move­ment. ” . . . . Thiel and oth­er eccen­tric, wealthy tech-celebri­ties, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zucker­berg, have tak­en the next step to coun­ter­act that inequal­i­ty – by embark­ing on a quest to live for­ev­er. . . .Thiel and many like him have been invest­ing in research on life exten­sion, part of tran­shu­man­ism. Draw­ing on fields as diverse as neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing and phi­los­o­phy, tran­shu­man­ists believe that the lim­i­ta­tions of the human body and mor­tal­i­ty can be tran­scend­ed by machines and tech­nol­o­gy. The ulti­mate aim is immor­tal­i­ty. Some believe this is achiev­able by 2045. . . .”

Michael Anissimov–a pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at the Thiel-fund­ed Machine Intel­li­gence Research Institute–published a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo. In a 2013 inter­view. ” . . . . Thiel him­self is a Don­ald Trump sup­port­er. A one-time asso­ciate Michael Anis­si­mov, pre­vi­ous media offi­cer at Machine Intel­li­gence Research Insti­tute, a Thiel-fund­ed AI think tank, has pub­lished a white nation­al­ist man­i­festo. In a 2013 inter­view, Anis­si­mov said that there were already sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in intel­li­gence between the races, and that a tran­shu­man­ist soci­ety would inevitably lead to ‘peo­ple lord­ing it over oth­ers in a way that has nev­er been seen before in his­to­ry’. It doesn’t take much to guess who would be doing the ‘lord­ing’. . . .”

The iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple doing the “lord­ing” may be gleaned from the fol­low­ing: ” . . . . Zoltan Ist­van, the tran­shu­man­ist can­di­date for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia, told Tech Insid­er that ‘a lot of the most impor­tant work in longevi­ty is com­ing from a hand­ful of the billionaires…around six or sev­en of them’. . . .”

Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni defined fas­cism as “cor­po­ratism,” and labeled his sys­tem “The Cor­po­rate State.” In that con­text, it is instruc­tive to weigh tran­shu­man­ism: ” . . . . You basi­cal­ly can’t sep­a­rate tran­shu­man­ism from cap­i­tal­ism. An idea that’s so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pur­sued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a muta­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, not a cure for it.’ . . . . If those who form soci­ety in the age of tran­shu­man­ism are men like Musk and Thiel, it’s prob­a­ble that this soci­ety will have few social safe­ty nets. There will be an uneven rate of tech­no­log­i­cal progress glob­al­ly; even a post-human soci­ety can repli­cate the unequal glob­al wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion which we see today. In some cities and coun­tries, inhab­i­tants may live for­ev­er, while in oth­ers the res­i­dents die of mal­nu­tri­tion. If peo­ple don’t die off, the envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences – from wide­spread nat­ur­al resource dev­as­ta­tion to unsus­tain­able ener­gy demands – would be wide­spread. . . . ”

These are auguries of a future-to-come. A look at the present sug­gests that these prog­nos­ti­ca­tions are not unre­al­is­tic.

Nazis/white suprema­cists are already dis­tort­ing genet­ic research to suit their own ends. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, aca­d­e­mics in the field have not been enthu­si­as­tic about engag­ing them. In the past, genet­ic research has been sup­port­ive of eugen­ics phi­los­o­phy.

” . . . . Nowhere on the agen­da of the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Human Genet­ics, being held in San Diego this week, is a top­ic plagu­ing many of its mem­bers: the recur­ring appro­pri­a­tion of the field’s research in the name of white suprema­cy. ‘Stick­ing your neck out on polit­i­cal issues is dif­fi­cult,’ said Jen­nifer Wag­n­er, a bioethi­cist and pres­i­dent of the group’s social issues com­mit­tee, who had sought to con­vene a pan­el on the racist mis­use of genet­ics and found lit­tle trac­tion. But the specter of the field’s igno­min­ious past, which includes sup­port for the Amer­i­can eugen­ics move­ment, looms large for many geneti­cists in light of today’s white iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. They also wor­ry about how new tools that are allow­ing them to home in on the genet­ic basis of hot-but­ton traits like intel­li­gence will be mis­con­strued to fit racist ide­olo­gies. . . .”

A 14-word post­ing on the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty web­site has raised eye­brows. We believe it is an exam­ple of dog-whistling by fascist/Nazi ele­ments inside of the DHS. The “Four­teen Words” were mint­ed by Order mem­ber and Alan Berg mur­der get­away dri­ver David Lane. “88” is a well-known clan­des­tine Nazi salute. In the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, using the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” was banned. To cir­cum­vent that, Nazis said “88,” because H is the eighth let­ter in the alpha­bet.

The num­bers 14 and 88 are often com­bined by Nazis.

The title of the DHS post­ing is: “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again.” The 14 words of David Lane are: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”
A 14-word post­ing on the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty web­site has raised eye­brows. We believe it is an exam­ple of dog-whistling by fascist/Nazi ele­ments inside of the DHS. The “Four­teen Words” were mint­ed by Order mem­ber and Alan Berg mur­der get­away dri­ver David Lane. “88” is a well-known clan­des­tine Nazi salute. In the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, using the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” was banned. To cir­cum­vent that, Nazis said “88,” because H is the eighth let­ter in the alpha­bet.

The num­bers 14 and 88 are often com­bined by Nazis.

The title of the DHS post­ing is: “We Must Secure The Bor­der And Build The Wall To Make Amer­i­ca Safe Again.” The 14 words of David Lane are: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

It comes as no sur­prise that Ian M. Smith–a for­mer DHS Trump appointee–had doc­u­ment­ed links with white suprema­cists.

Ian Smith was not alone. John Feere and Julie Kirchener–both hard line anti-immi­gra­tion activists–have been hired by Team Trump. ” . . . . Jon Feere, a for­mer legal pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, or CIS, has been hired as an advis­er to Thomas D. Homan, the act­ing direc­tor of Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­ri­ty spokesman David Lapan. At Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion, Julie Kirch­n­er, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform, or FAIR, has been hired as an advis­er to Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Kevin McAleenan, said Lapan. The hir­ing of Feere and Kirch­n­er at the fed­er­al agen­cies has alarmed immi­grants’ rights activists. CIS and FAIR are think tanks based in Wash­ing­ton that advo­cate restrict­ing legal and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. The two orga­ni­za­tions were found­ed by John Tan­ton, a retired Michi­gan oph­thal­mol­o­gist who has open­ly embraced eugen­ics, the sci­ence of improv­ing the genet­ic qual­i­ty of the human pop­u­la­tion by encour­ag­ing selec­tive breed­ing and at times, advo­cat­ing for the ster­il­iza­tion of genet­i­cal­ly unde­sir­able groups. . . .”

The Fed­er­a­tion for Immi­gra­tion Reform has been part­ly fund­ed by the Pio­neer Fund, one of many orga­ni­za­tions that oper­at­ed in favor of the eugen­ics pol­i­cy of Nazi Ger­many. “. . . . Between 1985 and 1994, FAIR received around $1.2 mil­lion in grants from the Pio­neer Fund. The Pio­neer Fund is a eugeni­cist orga­ni­za­tion that was start­ed in 1937 by men close to the Nazi regime who want­ed to pur­sue “race bet­ter­ment” by pro­mot­ing the genet­ic lines of Amer­i­can whites. Now led by race sci­en­tist J. Philippe Rush­ton, the fund con­tin­ues to back stud­ies intend­ed to reveal the infe­ri­or­i­ty of minori­ties to whites. . . .”

FTR #1028 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing pre­vi­ous paths of inquiry, as well as intro­duc­ing new ones, the pro­gram begins with a bit of both–discussion of the mur­der of Sau­di jour­nal­ist and pos­si­ble Sau­di and U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Jamal Khashog­gi. A devel­op­ment which res­onates strong­ly with pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring”), the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics of Ibn Khal­dun and the Broth­er­hood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute (which fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the post‑9/11 Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Qae­da and ter­ror­ist financ­ing), Khashog­gi’s death has occa­sioned howls of out­rage, much beat­ing of breasts and tear­ing of hair in nor­mal­ly Sau­di-friend­ly con­fines both inside, and out­side of the U.S.

Khashog­gi’s many con­nec­tions and per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships are impor­tant and piv­otal in a num­ber of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-stand­ing advo­ca­cy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note the main­stream medi­a’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “demo­c­ra­t­ic.” In FTR #‘s 787, 1025 and 1026, we not­ed how fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic the Broth­er­hood is: ” . . . . In his penul­ti­mate col­umn, Mr. Khashog­gi said democ­ra­cy in the Mid­dle East couldn’t hap­pen with­out the inclu­sion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ‘The erad­i­ca­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is noth­ing less than an abo­li­tion of democ­ra­cy and a guar­an­tee that Arabs will con­tin­ue liv­ing under author­i­tar­i­an and cor­rupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashog­gi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no polit­i­cal reform and democ­ra­cy in any Arab coun­try with­out accept­ing that polit­i­cal­Is­lam is a part of it.’. . . .”  
2.–Allegedly actu­al mem­ber­ship in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: ” . . . .  Sev­er­al of his friends say that ear­ly on Mr. Khashog­gi also joined the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. . . .”
3.–A work­ing pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Khaled Saf­fu­ri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute. This insti­tu­tion was, in effect, an Amer­i­can nexus for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, as well as being a cen­tral ele­ment in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. We cov­ered Oper­a­tion Green Quest at length in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashog­gi, a pro­lif­ic writer and com­men­ta­tor, was work­ing qui­et­ly with intel­lec­tu­als, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democ­ra­cy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashog­gi had incor­po­rat­ed his democ­ra­cy advo­ca­cy group, DAWN, in Jan­u­ary in Delaware, said Khaled Saf­fu­ri, anoth­er friend. The group was still in the plan­ning stages, and Khashog­gi was work­ing on it qui­et­ly, like­ly con­cerned it could cause trou­ble for asso­ciates, includ­ing activists in the Gulf, Saf­fu­ri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdo­gan, who might be described as a fas­cist wish­bone, with one foot in the Islam­ic fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the oth­er in the sec­u­lar Pan-Turk­ist fas­cism of the Nation­al Action Par­ty and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashog­gi was close to the gov­ern­ment of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whose ties with Sau­di Ara­bia had become increas­ing­ly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplo­mat­ic spat with Sau­di Ara­bia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also dif­fers with Sau­di Ara­bia over its view of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Mr. Khashog­gi knew Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan per­son­al­ly and was a friend to some of his clos­est advis­ers, say peo­ple who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, the head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, who, as dis­cussed in numer­ous shows, includ­ing FTR #‘s 347 and 358, basi­cal­ly ran Osama bin Laden. Khashog­gi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the sec­ond largest stock­hold­er in News­corp (behind the Mur­dochs) and some­one “20th hijack­er” Zacarias Mous­saoui named as one of the promi­nent Saud­is who financed al-Qae­da. Imme­di­ate­ly after being named by Mous­saoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donat­ing all of his bil­lions to char­i­ty. ” . . . . Through it all, he main­tained close ties to some of Sau­di Arabia’s most pow­er­ful princes. In the ear­ly 2000s, he served as an advis­er to Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, a for­mer head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, dur­ing the prince’s time as ambas­sador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the bil­lion­aire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and sup­port for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, who mor­phed into al-Qae­da. ” . . . . He trav­eled to Afghanistan as a jour­nal­ist, where he became the first Arab jour­nal­ist to inter­view Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and aca­d­e­m­ic who knew Mr. Khashog­gi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Sau­di weapons deal­er Adnan Khashog­gi, who was piv­otal­ly involved with the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, the sup­port effort for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, Al-Qae­da and the so-called “Truther” move­ment. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashog­gi, a famous arms deal­er. . . .”
8.– His rela­tion­ship with Sau­di intel­li­gence chief Prince Tur­ki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war cov­er­ing bin Laden and the Muja­hadeen and his work for the CIA-con­nect­ed Wash­ing­ton Post sug­gest the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the late Jamal Khashog­gi was a spook-jour­nal­ist, work­ing for both the Saud­is and ele­ments of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we not­ed the issu­ing of school text­books glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism while Naren­dra Modi head­ed the Indi­an state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among oth­er pro­grams, we not­ed John Cony­ers’ active oppo­si­tion to the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo move­ment, which dis­plays symp­to­matic fea­tures of an “op.” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the appar­ent role of Far right blog­ger Mike “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid” Cer­novich. An inter­est­ing per­son to sig­nal the destruc­tion of one of the few active­ly anti-fas­cist law­mak­ers by on osten­si­bly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal move­ment.

It is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that Cony­ers also co-spon­sored a House Res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Mod­i’s sup­port for Nazi racism and ide­ol­o­gy.

” . . . . The spon­sor, Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) said the State Depart­ment ‘has dis­cussed the role of Modi and his gov­ern­ment in pro­mot­ing atti­tudes of racial suprema­cy, racial hatred, and the lega­cy of Nazism through his government’s sup­port of school text­books in which Nazism is glo­ri­fied.’ The res­o­lu­tion said Modi revised school text­books, which men­tioned the ‘charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty of Hitler the Supre­mo’ and failed to acknowl­edge the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. . . .”

Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Pierre Omid­yar active­ly assist­ed the rise of both the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine and Mod­i’s BJP/RSS fas­cists in India, as dis­cussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion of eugen­ics, white suprema­cy and anti-immi­gra­tion fer­vor, This will be exam­ined at greater length in our next pro­gram.
Key points of analy­sis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS post­ing and the 14 words slo­gan mint­ed by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The res­ig­na­tion of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white suprema­cists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Fed­er­a­tion of Immi­gra­tion Reform.
4.–A pos­si­ble mind con­trol link to the mur­der of Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the pol­ka dot dress.”