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.
No discovery by the ARRB was more important than its uncovering of the Operation Northwoods contingency plan to set up a provocation to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
The lawsuit filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation aims at compelling further disclosure about Northwoods.
At loggerheads with then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Taylor, unaware that Taylor and Lemnitzer were close.
The ARRB faced serious resistance from the Secret Service in its attempts to shed further light on the JFK assassination. Although prohibited by law from doing so, the Secret Service destroyed documents.
Particularly noteworthy are documents from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the constellation of events leading up to Dallas on 11/22.
That agency was particularly reluctant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.
ARRB member Douglas Horne uncovered some fascinating information about pay records of both Oswald during his last months in the Marines and TSBD manager Roy Truly, Oswald’s supervisor at the building.
Continuing our discussion with Jim DiEugenio about JFK Revisited, we begin with analysis of comparison between the “stab in the back” hypothesis floated by reactionaries in Weimar Germany, denying that they lost World War I, with similar revisionism floated by the right wing concerning America’s defeat in Vietnam.
Bridging discussion that will be continued in our previous program, 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. . . .
Exemplifying Kennedy’s understanding of how nationalist aspirations were at the forefront of struggles for national independence that were cast into the annihilating Cold War meatgrinder, we detail his trip to Indochina, where he networked with French generals, who told him that France was winning its struggle against the Viet Minh, and then with State Department professional Edmund Gullion, who opined that France was losing the war and would, in the end, lose.
Gullion also told Kennedy that, if the U.S. got involved, it would lose as well. It was Gullion’s conviction that the Vietnamese peoples’ desire for independence trumped anything the West could do.
We note that roughly 80% of the budget of the French war effort was bankrolled by the U.S. We also note that there was a contingency plan developed for a massive U.S. air support operation on behalf of the French called “Operation Vulture.” Part of that plan was the deployment of three atomic bombs for use against the Vietnamese.
For more about Kennedy’s early education about the realities of war in Southeast Asia, see—among other programs, FTR#1031.
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.
Despite having promised during the 1964 campaign that no American combat units would be committed to Vietnam, within three months of the election, the first combat units were dispatched to that unfortunate nation.
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.
McNamara did commission the Pentagon study of Vietnam policy that became the Pentagon Papers.
Jim notes that Noam Chomsky and Professor Howard Zinn initially opposed discussion of how JFK’s assassination changed U.S. Vietnam policy.
There is a clip in the film of a conversation between LBJ and McNamara where LBJ codifies his opposition to the JFK/McNamara policies in Vietnam.
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.
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.
JFK’s policy vis a vis the war of independence being waged by the French in Algeria is of particular importance.
The program reviews 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.
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, Jean Souetre–a French OAS-linked assassin was in the Dallas Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.
JFK, Algeria and operational links between JFK’s assassination and OAS attempts on De Gaulle’s life are discussed in FTR#1162.
Note that JFK told the French that he could not control his own intelligence services.
The program concludes with discussion of JFK’s policies with regard to Africa, the Congo in particular. This topic is presented at greater length in our next interview with Jim.
In the latest series of three, one-hour talks per week, Mr. Emory sets forth a number of points on his Patreon site: The return to power of the Marcos family in the Philippines may have significant effect on U.S. Pacific policy; U.S. Asian policy in Cold War period was in many ways an extension of Japan’s Worldl War II policy; “The New York Times” continues its Monkey Love for Ukrainian Nazis. 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.
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. . . .”
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