We have discussed the dubious connections of the late Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, the “Peace Candidate” who upended the 1968 Presidential race. We note his remarkable, revealing 1980 endorsement of “Peace Candidate” Ronald Reagan: ” . . . . Mr. McCarthy said he had come to the conclusion that Mr. Reagan’s positions on nuclear disarmament and taxes were better than President Carter’s . . . .” Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The Patreon site continues to develop and take form: The first Zoom Q & A Session is scheduled for 6/5 in the late afternoon/early evening. In addition, the latest talks develop both recent political events and historical trends. Topics of discussion include: the mass shootings in Uvalde Texas and Buffalo, NY; Donald Trump’s successful use of political mythology to develop his campaign and Presidency; the unsavory political connections of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the late Senator Eugene McCarthy’s so-called “Peace Candidacy” in 1968; Mr. Emory’s own experience coming of age during the Vietnam War. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top military medical officer discussing an order to castrate Russian males is an eye-opener. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
On Sunday, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Monday, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memorial Day Weekend by featuring Dave Emory’s research on the fundamental interrelationship of fascism, money, war and murder. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In the latest Patreon talk, Mr. Emory delves into manifestations of political lying, with the assassination of President Kennedy as foundation/centerpiece of discussion. The role of the Ukrainian fascist OUN/B and overlapping Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations in the JFK assassination comprise the bulk of the presentation. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The ravages of the Agent Orange defoliant used in Southeast Asia are well known. What has not received as much publicity is the documented fact that the poison was developed by Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman, one of the Third Reich alumni brought to the U.S. under Project [or “Operation”] Paperclip. “. . . . Under the umbrella of the CIA’s Security Research Services, [CIA organization] Morwede was among the front organizations protecting Nazi chemists transported to the US, including Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman, a major beneficiary of the largesse of the Paperclip pipeline. In the late ‘50s, Hoffmann’s work for the CIA and Fort Detrick included development of lethal chemical agents to be used as weapons in Vietnam, proof that the dishonorable was just over the horizon when John Kennedy took office. One of these weapons, the horrific and now-infamous Agent Orange, was authorized for use in Vietnam in November 1961 . . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
In these programs, we continue our discussion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
Writing in his novel Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller wrote: ” . . . . America is the very incarnation of Doom. And she will lead the rest of the world into the Bottomless Pit. . . .” (The quote was included in his Forgive My Grief books by pioneering JFK assassination researcher Penn Jones.
Epitomizing Miller’s observation is what Mr. Emory terms the resonant synthesis of video games and military training and training technology:
“. . . . Certainly, the day is not far off when most potential U.S. troops will have grown up playing commercial video games that were created by the military as training simulators; will be recruited, at least in part, through video games; will be tested, post-enlistment, on advanced video game systems; will be trained using simulators, which will later be turned into video games, or on reconfigured versions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehicles using devices resembling commercial video game controllers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gaming head back to their quarters to kick back and play the latest PlayStation or Xbox games created with or sponsored by their own, or another, branch of the armed forces.
More and more toys are now poised to become clandestine combat teaching tools, and more and more simulators are destined to be tomorrow’s toys. And what of America’s children and young adults in all this? How will they be affected by the dazzling set of military training devices now landing in their living rooms and on their PCs, produced by video game giants under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon? After all, what these games offer is less a matter of simple military indoctrination and more like a near immersion in a virtual world of war, where armed conflict is not the last, but the first—and indeed the only—resort. . . .”
A concrete example of that “resonant synthesis” is the battle of 73 Easting:
“. . . . Just days into the ground combat portion of the Gulf War, the Battle of 73 Easting pitted American armored vehicles against a much larger Iraqi tank force. The U.S. troops, who had trained using the SIMNET system, routed the Iraqis. Within days, the military began turning the actual battle into a digital simulation for use with SIMNET. Intensive debriefing sessions with 150 veterans of the battle were undertaken. Then DARPA personnel went out onto the battlefield with the veterans, surveying tank tracks and burned-out Iraqi vehicles, as the veterans walked them through each individual segment of the clash. Additionally, radio communications, satellite photos, and ‘black boxes’ from U.S. tanks were used to gather even more details. Nine months after the actual combat took place, a digital recreation of the Battle of 73 Easting was premiered for high-ranking military personnel. Here was the culmination of Thorpe’s efforts to create a networked system that would allow troops to train for future wars using the new technology combined with accurate historical data. . . .”
Placing Henry Miller’s quote into an ironically-relevant context, a popular video game “Doom” quickly was adapted to Martine Corps training purposes:
“. . . . In late 1993, with the green glow of Gulf War victory already fading, id Software introduced the video game Doom. Gamers soon began modifying shareware copies of this ultraviolent, ultrapopular first person shooter, prompting id to release editing software the next year. The ability to customize Doom caught the attention of members of the Marine Corps Modeling and Simulation Management Office who had been tasked by the corps’ Commandant Charles Krulak with utilizing “‘computer (PC)-based war games”‘to help the marines ‘develop decision making skills, particularly when live training time and opportunities are limited.’
“Acting on Krulak’s directive, the marines’ modeling crew nixed Doom’s fantasy weapons and labyrinthine locale and, in three months’ time, developed Marine Doom, a game that included only actual Marine Corps weaponry and realistic environments. Krulak liked what he saw and, in 1997, approved the game. . . .”
Next, Turse discusses Pentagon plans to operate in urban slums in the Third World. Mr. Emory notes that many combat veterans of this country’s long counter-insurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are joining the increasingly militarized police forces in this country.
Pentagon strategy as discussed here by Turse may, eventually be realized, to an extent, in the U.S., particularly in the event of an economic collapse.
More about Pentagon plans for urban warfare in slums, ostensibly in the developing world:
” . . . . As both the high-tech programs and the proliferating training facilities suggest, the foreign slum city is slated to become the bloody battlespace of the future. . . . For example, the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps launched a program seeking to develop algorithms to predict the criminality of a given building or neighborhood. The project titled Finding Repetitive Crime Supporting Structures, defines cities as nothing more than a collection of ‘urban clutter [that] affords considerable concealment for the actors that we must capture.’ The ‘hostile behavior bad actors,’ as the program terms them, are defined not just as ‘terrorists,’ today’s favorite catch-all bogeymen, but as a panoply of nightmare archetypes: ‘insurgents, serial killers, drug dealers, etc.’. . .”
Program Highlights Include: Discussion of Colonel Dave Grossman’s book On Killing against the background of the resonant synthesis of video games and military training; analysis of the use of gaming apps by Nazi elements to celebrate school shootings and encourage them; discussion of school shooter Nikolas Cruz of Parkland high and his Nazi, white supremacist and Trumpian influence; discussion of alt-right use of websites catering to people suffering from depression for recruiting purposes.
In these programs, we continue our discussion of Nick Turse’s 2008 tome The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
In this program, we examine how the military exerts dominant influence over our entertainment activities and how that, in turn, both affects and bolsters the Pentagon.
We begin by “going to the movies.”
The synthesis of Hollywood and “The Complex” is summarized by Nick Turse in the passage below. It should be noted that the melding of Hollywood and the military is a foundation of the derivative synthesis of the military and the video-gaming industry–the focus of the bulk of these programs.
“. . . . As David Robb, the author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, observed: ‘Hollywood and the Pentagon have a collaboration that works well for both sides. Hollywood producers get what they want—access to billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware and equipment—tanks, jet fighters, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers—and the military gets what it wants—films that portray the military in a positive light; films that help the services in their recruiting efforts.’. . .”
Indeed, the very genesis of video games in derivative of the defense industry: ” . . . . In 1951, Ralph Baer, an engineer working for defense contractor Loral Electronics (today part of Lockheed Martin) on ‘computer components for Navy RADAR systems,’ dreamed up the idea of home video games, which he termed ‘interactive TV-based entertainment.’. . . .”
The Hollywood/Pentagon/gaming industry synthesis is epitomized by the Institute of Creative Technologies:
” . . . . The answer lies in Marina Del Rey, California, at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a center within the University of Southern California (USC) system. There, in 1999, the military’s growing obsession with video games moved to a new level when Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera signed a five-year, $45-million contract with USC to create ICT, says the center’s Web site, ‘to build a partnership among the entertainment industry, army and academia with the goal of creating synthetic experiences so compelling that participants react as if they are real.’. . .”
The video game/Pentagon relationship has evolved into a fusion of the two: “. . . . The rest followed, leading to the current continuous military gaming/simulation loop where commercial video games are adopted as military training aids and military simulators are reengineered into civilian gaming money makers in all sorts of strange and confusing ways. . . .”
Author Turse looked ahead (in 2008) and foresaw a future that, to a disturbing extent, has become reality: ” . . . . Certainly, the day is not far off when most potential U.S. troops will have grown up playing commercial video games that were created by the military as training simulators; will be recruited, at least in part, through video games; will be tested, post-enlistment, on advanced video game systems; will be trained using simulators, which will later be turned into video games, or on reconfigured versions of the very same games used to recruit them or that they played kids; will be taught to pilot vehicles using devices resembling commercial video game controllers; and then, after a long day of real-life war-gaming head back to their quarters to kick back and play the latest PlayStation or Xbox games created with or sponsored by their own, or another, branch of the armed forces. . . .”
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
Next, we visit one of the stops on Hornbeck’s straight railway line:
A consummately important study of Vietnam War crimes was authored by Nick Turse. A review by the U.S. Naval Institute can be taken as an advisory in this regard.
Mr. Turse performs the remarkable feat of unsparingly searing presentation of the war crimes that were standard operating procedure for much of the American (and allied) forces in Vietnam by tracing the foundation of those crimes from the technocratic approach to military strategy pursued by the Pentagon and Robert McNamara, through the re-socialization and re-programming of young, often teen-aged, recruits to turn them into reflexive killers, chronicling the massive firepower available to U.S. forces, and documenting the recalcitrant attitude of the officer corps and General Staff, who were unwilling to countenance the professional and ideological damage that would result from presentation and adjudication of the truth.
In addition, Mr. Turse–while avoiding self-righteous posturing–highlights the doctrinaire racism of many U.S. combatants, who committed war crimes behind the “MGR”–the “Mere Gook Rule.”
“ ‘An important addition to Vietnam war studies . . . . Turse’s study is not anti-veteran, anti-military, or anti-American. It does not allege that the majority of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam committed crimes. . . .” Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute).
Nick Turse traces the strategic use of overwhelming firepower and de facto countenancing of civilian casualties owes much to the tactical approach of Japanese forces during World War II in China: “ . . . . These efforts were commonly known as ‘pacification,’ but their true aim was to depopulate the contested countryside. ‘The people are like water and the army is like fish.’ Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution, had famously written. American planners grasped his dictum, and also studied the ‘kill-all, burn-all, loot-all’ scorched earth campaigns that the Japanese army launched in rural China during the 1930s and early 1940s for lessons on how to drain the ‘sea.’ Not surprisingly the idea of forcing peasants out of their villages was embraced by civilian pacification officials and military officers alike. . . .”
The accounts of many G.I.’s about war crimes appear to be largely representative of the conduct of U.S. forces: “ . . . . While we have only fragmentary evidence about the full extent of civilian suffering in South Vietnam, enough similar accounts exist so that roughly the same story could have been told in a chapter about Binh Dinh Province in the mid-1960’s, or Quang Tri Province in the early 1970s, among others. The incidents in this chapter were unbearably commonplace throughout the conflict and are unusual only in that they were reported in some form or recounted by witnesses instead of vanishing entirely from the historical record.”
Turse notes that racism–embodied in the “MGR” (Mere Gook Rule)—contributed fundamentally to the slaughter perpetrated by the U.S. in Vietnam. “ . . . . In 1971, Major Gordon Livingston, a West Point graduate who served as regimental surgeon with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, testified before members of Congress about the ease with which Americans killed Vietnamese. ‘Above 90 percent of the Americans with whom I had contact in Vietnam,’ said Dr. Livingston, treated the Vietnamese as subhuman snd with ‘nearly universal contempt.’ . . . .”
Turse’s very important and profoundly disturbing book encapsulates the American policy in Vietnam. Speaking of the Phoenix assassination program: “ . . . . Phoenix was a program run amok, but it was also the logical result of a military campaign driven by the body count and run under the precept of the mere-gook rule. For the Vietnamese the American war was an endless gauntlet of potential calamities . . . . the range of disasters was nearly endless.
While no exact figures are available, there can be little question that such events occurred in shocking numbers. They were the very essence of the war: crimes that went on all the time, all over South Vietnam, for years and years. When you consider this along with the tallies of dead, wounded, and displaced, the scale of the suffering becomes almost unimaginable—almost as unimaginable as the fact that somehow, in the United States all that suffering was more or less ignored as it happened and then written out of history even more thoroughly in the decades since. . . .”
Stanley Hornbeck referred to U.S. Far Eastern policy as a railroad track, proceeding on a straight line. Sterling Seagrave noted that ” . . . . It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
The reference to the Yalu River is in consideration of a key incident in the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur was warned by military intelligence professionals not to approach the Yalu River during his advance through North Korea, lest the Chinese enter the conflict.
MacArthur ignored the warning of the military intelligence professionals with the ultimate result that they forecast: Chinese forces entered the conflict and routed the forces under MacArthur’s command.
During the precipitous retreat of the American and U.N. forces, it appears that the U.S. used biological warfare against the Chinese and North Korea.
In numerous programs and lectures, we have discussed the important, devastatingly successively mind control programs engaged in by the military and CIA. Those programs were developed in reaction to downed American airmen who–after captivity–gave testimony that they had been involved in biological warfare attacks against China and North Korea during the war.
A superb book about Unit 731–the Japanese biological warfare unit during World War II–had a chapter in the British edition that was omitted in the American edition. (Sadly, the books are out of print, although both the British and American editions are available through used-book services. Mr. Emory heartily encourages listeners to obtain the book. Even the American edition–missing this key chapter–is worthwhile. Hopefully, a publisher will obtain the rights to the book and re-issue it. If so, we will enthusiastically promote the work.)
The chapter in the UK edition chronicles the investigation into the allegations of American BW use during the Korean War, including circumstantial evidence that Unit 731 veterans and methodology may well have been used in the alleged campaign. That chapter is altogether objective, avoiding ideological bias toward either side in the conflict.
Because of that, we found the omission of this chapter from the U.S. edition to be significant. As the brilliant Peter Dale Scott noted: “The cover-up obviates the conspiracy.” It is a matter of public record that Unit 731’s files were incorporated into the U.S. biological warfare program, and veterans of the Unit bequeathed their expertise to the Americans in exchange from immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
It is a matter of public record that Unit 731’s files were incorporated into the U.S. biological warfare program, and veterans of the Unit bequeathed their expertise to the Americans in exchange from immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
FTR#1172 presents the scientific credentials of the International Scientific Commission investigating the allegations of biological warfare, which are impressive and their conclusions are credible.
The introduction of FTR#1173 consists of reading and analysis of Tom O’Neill’s presentation of the career of one of the CIA’s most important MK-Ultra mind control operatives, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War–1954.
Note that Jimmie Shaver was serving in the Air Force. Personnel from that branch were involved in the allegations of BW waged by the U.S. Those allegations were the rationale for the U.S. mind control programs, developed to combat Chinese “brainwashing” which was alleged to have precipitated the basis for the testimony by USAF.
Louis Jolyon West was Jack Ruby’s psychiatrist, and presented the untenable hypothesis that Ruby killed Oswald because he had a brief psychomotor epileptic event in the basement of the Dallas jail. In fact, the evidence suggests strongly that West had helped to erase Ruby’s memory of having killed Oswald.
West’s work with Ruby helped to keep the train of U.S. Far Eastern policy running on track.
The broadcast sets forth the murder of Chere Jo Horton, a three-year-old girl whose mutilation, rape and murder were pinned on 29-year-old Jimmie Shaver.
An obvious victim of mind control, apparently implemented in considerable measure by Louis Jolyon West, Shaver was programmed to take responsibility for the killing, despite enormous contradictions in the evidence.
O’Neill’s discussion of West, Shaver, the mind control programs and the Manson Family “op” is part of what appears to be a domestic Phoenix Program, designed to win “hearts and minds” in the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
Key Points of Discussion and analysis include:
1.–Shaver’s unusual behavior and demeanor at the initial scene of the crime: ” . . . . He was shirtless, covered in blood and scratches. Making no attempt to escape, he let the search party walk him to the edge of the highway. Bystanders described him as ‘dazed’ and ‘trance-like’ . . . .”
2.–Shaver’s apparent lack of awareness of the immediate circumstances of the crime: ” ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. He didn’t seem drunk, but he couldn’t say where he was, how he’d gotten there, or whose blood was all over him. Meanwhile, the search party found Horton’s body in the gravel pit. Her neck was broken, her legs had been torn open, and she’s been raped. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Around four that morning, an Air Force marshal questioned Shaver and two doctors examined him, agreeing he wasn’t drunk. One later testified that he ‘was not normal . . . . he was very composed outside, which I did not expect him to be under these circumstances.’ . . .”
4.–Shaver didn’t recognize his own wife when she came to visit him. ” . . . . When his wife came to visit, he didn’t recognize her. . . .”
5.–Initially, he believed someone else committed the crime. ” . . . . He gave his first statement at 10:30 a.m., adamant that another man was responsible: he could summon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tattoos. . . .”
6.–Eventually, he signed a statement taking responsibility: ” . . . . After the Air Force marshal returned to the jailhouse, however, Shaver signed a second statement taking full responsibility. Though he still didn’t remember anything, he reasoned that he must have done it. . . .”
7.–Enter Jolly West: ” . . . . Two months later, in September, Shaver’s memories still hadn’t returned. The base hospital commander told Jolly West to perform an evaluation: was he legally sane at the time of the murder? Shaver spent the next two weeks under West’s supervision . . . While Shaver was under–with West injecting more truth serum to ‘deepen the trance’–Shaver recalled the events of that night. He confessed to killing Horton. . . .”
8.–West was a defense witness who, instead, appears to have aided the prosecution: ” . . . . At the trial, West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum confession was more valid than any other. And West was testifying for the defense . . . .”
9.–Shaver’s behavior at the trial is further suggestive of mind control: ” . . . . One newspaper account said he ‘sat through the strenuous sessions like a man in a trance,’ saying nothing, never rising to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smoker. ‘Some believe it’s an act,’ the paper said, ‘others believe his demeanor is real. . . .”
10.–Shaver’s medical records at Lackland Air Force base had vanished. ” . . . . But, curiously, all the records for patients in 1954 had been maintained, with one exception: the file for last names beginning with ‘Sa’ through ‘St’ had vanished. . . .”
11.–West posed leading questions to Shaver, who denied having ever taken the victim’s clothes off. ” . . . . West had used leading questions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. ‘Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jimmy,’ he said. And trying to prove that Shaver had repressed memories: ‘Jimmy, do you remember when something like this happened before?’ Or: ‘After you took her clothes off, what did you do?’ ‘I never did take her clothes off,’ Shaver said. . . .”
12.–The interview was divided into thirds, the middle third of which was not recorded! ” . . . . The interview [with Shaver] was divided into thirds. The middle third, for some reason, wasn’t recorded. When the record picked up, the manuscript said, ‘Shaver is crying. He has been confronted with all the facts repeatedly.’ . . .”
Next, we review Luce’s beatification of Chiang Kai-shek in Life magazine, portraying the Generalissimo as a Christian martyr: “ . . . . Chiang Kai-shek has heretofore shown himself a man of remarkable courage and resolution. . . . He is a converted Methodist who has now for solace the examples of tribulation in the Christian bible. . . .”
Adding further depth to the Luce/Time Inc. meme of Chiang Kai-shek as an iconic Christian is his “brothel-hopping” behavior with his fellow Christian convert, Tu Yueh-sheng.
“ . . . . At the opposite end of the Shanghai social scale, Big-eared Tu enjoyed visiting the famous Blue Villa and cruising the other Green Gang brothels in the Blue Chamber District with a young, ill-tempered bravo by the name of Chiang Kai-shek. . . .”
he prostitutes in the brothels were subjects of the brutal practice of footbinding;
“ . . . . Since this netherworld consumed so much of Chiang’s and Tu’s attention, it requires a closer look. The Chinese brothels, almost without exception, were staffed by girls with bound feet—the ideal being less than three inches long. These were objects of extraordinary sexual excitement, and enjoyed a central role in any noisy evening. . . .”
More about the practice of footbinding, long-since forbidden in China.
“ . . . . Footbinding usually began at age four. A ten-foot long two-inch bandage was wrapped around the toes to force them in against the sole. Each day the bandage was tightened until the foot was folded under with only the big toe sticking out, a shape called the ‘Golden Lotus’ because it resembled a lotus pod with the petals removed. Flesh rotted and fell off, sometimes a toe or two, and the foot oozed pus, until the process of deformation was complete after two years, at which point the feet were practically dead. . . .”
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
In numerous programs over the decades, we have documented the fact that President Kennedy’s assassination was a decisive event in the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
As laid out in NSAM #263 (crafted in October of 1963), JFK had decided to pull all U.S. forces out of Vietnam by Christmas of 1965. Two days after his assassination, the Sunday on which Ruby slew Oswald, Kennedy’s withdrawal program was canceled and the escalation policy that became manifest was put into effect, codified in NSAM 273.
This is discussed, in–among other programs–FTR#978, as well as numerous programs in our landmark series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio.
The Zapruder Film, which disproves the Oswald cover story, was purchased by Time Inc. and handled by Life Magazine, placing this crucial bit of evidence in the domain of Henry Luce, a primary promoter of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang, aka Mae-ling Soong.
Thus, America’s eyes and ears on Chiang Kai-shek were the same as America’s eyes and ears on the assassination of JFK, which threatened to change the direction on which the railway line described by Stanley Hornbeck was headed.
The Assassination Records Review Board accessed the perspective of a CIA photographic expert, who opined that the Zapruder Film had been tampered with.
He viewed the film and saw what he believed was JFK reacting to between six and eight different shots, from at least three directions.
Life’s publisher was C.D. Jackson, a longtime intelligence and psychological warfare asset. He largely oversaw the Luce publishing outlet’s handling of the film.
During the course of the Cold War, Henry Luce had become “ . . . . a key CIA media asset.”
C.D. Jackson “ . . . . who had been in charge of Life since 1960 . . . . was no ordinary publisher. . . . Jackson had been a specialist in psychological warfare for the government . . . and was an expert in Cold War propaganda . . . .”
The magazine deliberately structured its publishing of still frames from the film to mislead a naive observer about the information contained in the film.
Life also published a cover photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald that had obviously been doctored, with the shadows in the photograph going in different directions!
Numerous eyewitnesses to the killing gave testimony to the effect that, at one point, the motorcade actually came to a complete halt, giving the snipers a stationary target at which to fire.
Among those who testified to that effect were Dearie Cabell, the wife of Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas. Cabell’s brother, General C.P. Cabell, had been a Deputy Director of the CIA, and was fired by JFK for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs invasion.
(Another of those fired was Allen Dulles, who served on the Warren Commission.)
President Biden continued the suspicious handling of JFK evidence by further delaying release of information about the murder.
The notion that the documents could compromise military, intelligence community or law enforcement methodology at this stage of the investigation strains credibility.
The JFK assassination–the key event to keeping American Far Eastern Policy traveling the straight railroad line described by Stanley Hornbeck–was also a central event in the career of Mort Sahl, the brilliant stand-up comedian and one of the inspirations for Mr. Emory’s life’s work.
“. . . . Mr. Sahl worked on radio and on local television in Los Angeles, but he didn’t help his cause with what some felt was on obsession with the Kennedy assassination. His performances began to include reading scornfully from the Warren Commission report [published by The New York Times—D.E.]. And he worked as an unpaid investigator for Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, who claimed to have uncovered secret evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, and who accused a New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, of conspiring to murder the president. No convincing evidence secret or otherwise, was produced at Mr. Shaw’s trial, and the jury acquitted him in less than an hour.
‘I spent years talking with people, Garrison notably, about the Kennedy assassination,’ Mr. Sahl wrote in ‘Heartland,’ a score-settling, dyspeptic memoir published in 1976, ‘and I was said to have hurt my career by being in bad company. . . . I don’t think that Jack Kennedy is bad company. I don’t think that Garrison is bad company. I learned something, though. The people that I went to Hollywood parties with are not my comrades The men I was in the trenches with in New Orleans are my comrades.’ He concluded, ‘I think Jack Kennedy cries from the grave for justice.’ . . . .”
A consummately important study of Vietnam War crimes was authored by Nick Turse. A review by the U.S. Naval Institute can be taken as an advisory in this regard.
Mr. Turse performs the remarkable feat of unsparingly searing presentation of the war crimes that were standard operating procedure for much of the American (and allied) forces in Vietnam by tracing the foundation of those crimes from the technocratic approach to military strategy pursued by the Pentagon and Robert McNamara, through the re-socialization and re-programming of young, often teen-aged, recruits to turn them into reflexive killers, chronicling the massive firepower available to U.S. forces, and documenting the recalcitrant attitude of the officer corps and General Staff, who were unwilling to countenance the professional and ideological damage that would result from presentation and adjudication of the truth.
In addition, Mr. Turse–while avoiding self-righteous posturing–highlights the doctrinaire racism of many U.S. combatants, who committed war crimes behind the “MGR”–the “Mere Gook Rule.”
“ ‘An important addition to Vietnam war studies . . . . Turse’s study is not anti-veteran, anti-military, or anti-American. It does not allege that the majority of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam committed crimes. . . .” Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute).
Nick Turse traces the strategic use of overwhelming firepower and de facto countenancing of civilian casualties owes much to the tactical approach of Japanese forces during World War II in China: “ . . . . These efforts were commonly known as ‘pacification,’ but their true aim was to depopulate the contested countryside. ‘The people are like water and the army is like fish.’ Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution, had famously written. American planners grasped his dictum, and also studied the ‘kill-all, burn-all, loot-all’ scorched earth campaigns that the Japanese army launched in rural China during the 1930s and early 1940s for lessons on how to drain the ‘sea.’ Not surprisingly the idea of forcing peasants out of their villages was embraced by civilian pacification officials and military officers alike. . . .”
Exemplifying the brutal reality of the crimes committed by G.I.‘s in Vietnam is the “double veteran” manifestation. Before killing them and adding them to the body count of “enemies” killed, GI’s raped female “guerillas.”
In FTR#1142, we detailed the little-known involvement of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek in the 1943 conferences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chiang Kai-shek was the sister of T.V. Soong, one of Chiang’s finance ministers and the richest man in the world at one time.) This low-profile involvement apparently gave them considerable gravitas in helping to shape the postwar geopolitical agenda. While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
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