Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Richard Case Nagell' is associated with 4 posts.

FTR#1268 Interview #7 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

In this broad­cast, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion with the hero­ic Jim DiEu­ge­nio, select­ed by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed. Jim also wrote the book con­tain­ing tran­scripts of both the two-hour and four-hour ver­sions of the doc­u­men­tary and sup­ple­men­tal inter­views.

The pro­gram begins with review of the man­ner in which our soci­ety is dri­ven by visu­al events: the “crawl” at the end of the movie “JFK” led to the for­ma­tion of the ARRB, in a man­ner anal­o­gous to how the air­ing of the Zaprud­er film on Ger­al­do River­a’s Good Night Amer­i­ca led to the for­ma­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Next, we note that the ARRB staffers were peo­ple who did not believe that JFK’s assas­si­na­tion was a con­spir­a­cy, nor did they think that there was a cov­er-up.

Notable in the ARRB’s pro­ceed­ings is the fact that nei­ther CIA oper­a­tions records nor Con­gres­sion­al records are acces­si­ble via FOIA requests.

Notable in the ARRB’s pro­ceed­ings is the fact that nei­ther CIA oper­a­tions records nor Con­gres­sion­al records are acces­si­ble via FOIA requests.

In this regard, the ARRB was empow­ered in an impor­tant and unprece­dent­ed way.

Meet­ing resis­tance from then President–and for­mer CIA chief–George H.W. Bush, the ARRB was not staffed until Clin­ton became Pres­i­dent.

Judge Tun­heim (of the ARRB) not­ed that var­i­ous Fed­er­al Agen­cies felt that they could just wait out the ARRB until its man­dat­ed time had expired.

The board received exten­sions of its man­dat­ed time, although it still was not able to get all the doc­u­ments released.

The exten­sions stretched out ARRB’s tenure to four years.

A telling inci­dent occurred when Judge Tun­heim and the ARRB was pars­ing a CIA doc­u­ment they want­ed released. The Agency offi­cer present stat­ed that there was a rea­son that the doc­u­ment could not be released, but he just “could­n’t think of it.”

The CIA’s coun­sel, who was present, indi­cat­ed that the ARRB could pro­ceed as planned.

Of note is the fact that Judge Tun­heim dis­closed that George Joan­nides, who over saw Car­los Bringuier’s DRE for the CIA, had served as the Agen­cy’s liai­son to the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions and that the ARRB, as well as the HSCA, was mis­led in this regard.

As not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley’s Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit direct­ed at oblig­ing CIA to dis­close more infor­ma­tion about Joan­nides was turned down by an appeals court, with Brett Kavanaugh cast­ing a deci­sive vote, just before his nom­i­na­tion to the Supreme Court.

The CIA did release records about Lee Har­vey Oswald, which had been in the province of the late James Jesus Angle­ton.

In our long series of inter­views with Mr. DiEu­ge­nio about Des­tiny Betrayed, we not­ed that Har­ry Con­nick, who suc­ceed­ed Jim Gar­ri­son as New Orleans DA, had ordered some of Gar­rison’s files to be burned.

Many were, how­ev­er one of Con­nick­’s assis­tants did not burn those records and kept the doc­u­ments. Even­tu­al­ly, the ARRB got those doc­u­ments.

Con­nick was not pleased.

Review­ing some of our syn­op­tic dis­cus­sion about Con­nick, from the writ­ten descrip­tion for FTR#1050:

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis about Con­nick:

1.–He was seem­ing­ly omnipresent in Clay Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al, oper­at­ing to obstruct Gar­ri­son and aid Clay Shaw and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, for which he  worked.
2.–Station WDSU–very close to Clay Shaw and the vehi­cle for both the Wal­ter Sheri­dan dis­in­for­ma­tion hit piece on Jim Gar­ri­son and the Ed Butler/Carlos Bringuier inter­view of the “Com­mu­nist” Oswald–was active on behalf of Con­nick.
3.–The Gur­vich broth­ers, who infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team (with William appear­ing as a wit­ness in the hear­ing on Shaw’s per­jury tri­al), were active on behalf of Har­ry Con­nick.
4.–Clay Shaw him­self, as well as DRE oper­a­tive Car­los Bringuier con­tributed to Con­nick­’s elec­tion cam­paign.
5.–In his sec­ond cam­paign to replace Gar­ri­son, Con­nick was suc­cess­ful.
6.–After becom­ing New Orleans DA, he burned many of Gar­rison’s files.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


FTR #54 Interview with Dick Russell

In 1992, author Dick Rus­sell pub­lished “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” a com­pre­hen­sive and insight­ful book on the JFK assas­si­na­tion.


FTR #47 Update on the JFK Assassination

Lis­ten now: Side 1 | Side 2 | Side 3 | Side 4 The assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy is a main focal point of Mr. Emory’s research. This series updates a num­ber of aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion into that crime. In addi­tion to dis­cussing a for­mer CIA oper­a­tive’s alle­ga­tions that ele­ments of the Agency were […]