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Alex Jones on the Kennedy Murder:
A Painful Case

by Seamus Coogan

August, 2010

Part Two

In Part One, we examined Alex Jones’ beginnings and his success. Not to mention, his extraordinary case of foot-in-mouth conspirahypocrisy, which he has packaged and sold to the world inspiring hordes of conspiravangelists. With regards to his upcoming documentary, this is not so much a review but more of an insight into what we can expect. To show the potential for failure, I then take a look at two of Jones’ most prominent players—and potential bedfellows in his documentary—Jason Bermas and Paul Joseph Watson.

Though my extensive examination of Bermas’s film Invisible Empire may seem to take us off the path of Alex Jones and the Kennedy case, Kennedy is still very much in the picture, if a little more to the background. What this does is serve to give us an insight into the poor grasp of history, society, and theology which abounds in the Jones nexus. Though Paul Joseph Watson had little to do with Bermas production, I would imagine they share many of the same opinions since Watson is one of the top (if not the top) researchers in the Jones organization. Both individuals, like Jones, are repeat offenders in endorsing long-dead (or soon-to-be-dying) Kennedy assassination myths.

The conclusion I reach relates back to the slim chances of such incompetence ever creating a meaningful or useful documentary on anything related to Kennedy’s, or anybody else’s, assassination.

Jones may well be getting ready for another bite at the Johnson did it cherry via Howard Hunt in his long rumored film, Black Sunshine (discussed shortly). Hunt’s “confession” is not a way to get a good take on the killing of President Kennedy. It is pretty much old hat, and the version Hunt gave to his son before he died is slightly revised from the one he published in his last book. Anybody who has read Plausible Denial by Mark Lane knows that no one believed Howard Hunt’s story of being with his family that day. And then there’s the 1966 “secret” James Angleton memo to incoming Director of Intelligence Dick Helms about the need to provide Hunt with an alibi.

The problem is that, given E. Howard Hunt’s spook-riddled past, who can really tell where the truth lies? For example, in light of Gaeton Fonzi’s first-rate book, The Last Investigation, the Marita Lorenz aspect of Lane’s volume is (to put it mildly) rather weak today. (See Fonzi, pgs. 83-107) And when, eventually, Gerry Hemmings backs up her Miami-to-Dallas “travelling assassination team,” then one’s antennae should stand up. (Lane, p. 300)

But these are not the only problems. Another is this: Many respected researchers find Hunt’s family a tad too self-promoting to be readily believed. The man who brought the dying Hunt’s confession to light was his son, “Saint John.” (Apparently, Hunt-the-elder just couldn’t resist foisting his wry humor upon even his own son—for life.) St. John has a colorful past. He also deserves credit for overcoming his well-publicized demons. And maybe some of his insights into life with his father could have been illuminating. It’s Hunt’s commodification of practically everything around him that raises eyebrows.

He has a website and also had some companies up and running called Dreamlike and Spook Productions. Hunt will sell anything “Hunt” you want. There’s Hunt’s online book you can buy, an autographed manuscript you can purchase, an interview with St. John you can own, and of course there’s “dad’s confession” itself. Yes, for 20 bucks they’re yours forever. But it gets worse or more humorous—depending on your viewpoint—very soon.

In Part One, we mentioned that Hunt had been extremely forthcoming with information about his personal life to a number of people who emailed us after Jim DiEugenio announced my Alex Jones project on Black Op Radio some months ago. But some conspiravangelists, conveniently turned a blind eye at our pointing out Hunt’s self-voluntary participation in the process. So before we go any further, I have to forego any niceties and repeat that we did not seek out this information nor did we dig into Hunt’s background in any way, shape, or form; quite frankly, we have better things to do.

What we reluctantly learned from the emails was that for a buck thirty-four per photo (click on the necklace) his wife’s likeness is yours. But that’s only the start. Apparently, you can also purchase Mrs. Hunts’ XXX action DVD’s and two different types of calendars in which she stars. Hunt, who photographed his wife, likely also filmed her. Does this then make “Saint John” (do you suppose that he’s in on the irony?) the JFK equivalent of Larry Flynt?

Which begs the further question: In his conspirahypocrisy, exactly how low will Alex “LBJ, bazookas, and grenades” Jones stoop? Though he openly congratulates Naomi Wolf’s stance on the destructiveness of pornography and generally displays contempt for that industry (as do many of his listeners and viewers), Jones nonetheless jumps at the chance to embrace the likes of a Saint who appears more than willing to bare all.

Many have posited that people with dubious reputations may be able to find redemption with precious nuggets of truth and insight. Thus if Hunt’s information was truly insightful, like say Rose Cheramie’s (who shared something of a similar history), then Jones could be forgiven for using him. The problem is that St. John is no Cheramie and Jones is no officer Francis Fruge. Not by a long shot. Cheramie never sought remuneration for her story, nor did Fruge who investigated it. Unlike Hunt she never lived to tell it to a wider audience (which may tell us something).

Instead, Hunt and/or his father clearly had a business motive in place to spill the beans, which as said earlier, if handled better could have given some real insight into Hunt Sr. Yet, as it stands now most people schooled in the JFK case had known about the first confession for some time, barring the dubious addition of Lyndon Johnson. It’s this addition which has endeared him to a certain section of the JFK community which, like Jones, took Barr McClellan’s Blood, Money & Power seriously.

Howard Hunt turned down the chance at 5 million dollars from Kevin Costner to set the record straight; yet for little or no reward he divulged a cock-and-bull story for his son to market to anyone who would buy it. Even the factually challenged John Hankey had an all too rare moment of insight when he stated something along the lines, “If Hunt says Johnson did it, that’s all the more reason not to believe he was behind it.” (John Hankey: Black Op Radio Show #424, 5/21/09). Hunt is something of a first: An X-rated photographer who is also appears to have no qualms about promoting himself as a “witness to history” in the Kennedy assassination. But in his attempt to market anything not nailed down, he seems a natural match for Jones.

Why is this important?

The rumors around Prison Planet forums are that Jones is planning to release what will likely be an awful production for JFK’s 50th anniversary in 2013. Yet people closer to Prison Planet have informed CTKA that it is coming out near the end of this year. The only hint of what it is like is a brief, two-part 20 minute promotional clip at YouTube featuring St. John Hunt and Jim Marrs. (Click here for: Part 1 & Part 2.) But I have no confirmation that this sneak will even be seen in the final form.

Till that fateful day, we can be comforted with the words of a keen Ron Paul supporter from the Ron Paul War Room:

I have high expectations that Alex Jones’ forthcoming documentary, Black Sunshine, will be the most penultimate coalescence of the truth about the JFK assassination and how those involved in it have usurped virtually every position of major power in government today.

This tells us a lot about Alex Jones, his Libertarian leanings, and his media allies. If the Paul fan’s lack of judgment is not depressing enough, Jones’ own inflated opinion of his scholarship is utterly troublesome. In his interview with Marrs (discussed earlier in Part One), Marrs told Jones that he had his work vetted by Oliver Stone’s research team led by Jane Rusconi. Jones, obviously feeling himself to be Marrs’ equal, replied:

I wanna be clear, I can’t say too much on air, but some of my work is being looked up for a film similar to JFK and the way it’s presented and there’s a team of seven people looking at everything I’ve put out and found it all to be accurate, and found a lotta times it’s worse than what I am presenting.

Who are or were “The Magnificent Seven” he’s had looking over his evidence? Jones’ idea has been in the pipeline for some time so it’s time we had a look at the leading individuals within the Jones nexus, his “brain trust,” so to speak.

Thus let us take a look at some of his other friends. For once we measure Jason Bermas and Paul Joseph Watson, we will begin to understand all the mega-conspiracy giddiness that populates all of Jonestown. A giddiness, that overrides factual accuracy not to mention the rules of logic and history.

III.1  Why We’d “Rather” He Didn’t Bother

Jason Bermas, joined up with Jones sometime in 2007 (after Jones’ interview with Marrs). Bermas may not be one of the current “heads“ working on the project but should Jones project go ahead, Jason Bermas could well be involved in the editing and design of the project. Bermas is a man well known for his efforts in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Along with Dylan Avery, he put together the massively popular Loose Change 9/11 which appeared in its final form, Loose Change 9/11 Final Cut, in 2007. When it comes to the Kennedy assassination, however, Bermas, like the rest of Prison Planet, really would be better off butting out. It’s clearly not their area of expertise.

It was in his pre-Prison Planet days that Bermas first came to this writer’s notice: In a scene from an early version of Loose Change (2005 or 2006?), Bermas is seen engaging a rather agitated off-duty fireman in a debate at Ground Zero. One onlooker mentions that the same people who pulled off the Kennedy assassination were also behind the Twin Towers collapse—to which Bermas enthusiastically agrees. Which, as we have seen, is rather odd, because it appears Bermas knows about as much about the JFK case as Jones—which is very little. Or, to put it another way, he knows just enough to be “factually challenged.”

In Loose Change 9/11 Final Cut, Bermas and Avery utilized an interview with Dan Rather from a BBC Newsnight May 16, 2002. Of course the interviewer, Madeleine Holt, never asks Rather any questions pertaining to his blatant lying about the Zapruder film: How he reported on national television seeing Kennedy’s head move forwards as if shot from behind. Rather’s career took off from that point onwards. Unsurprisingly, the issue was never brought up in Loose Change nor does it seem to exist anywhere on any Prison Planet/Infowars site. Instead, Rather is lauded for observing the buildings as coming down as if by controlled demolition.

In September of 2007, the brilliant Greg Palast, a person supposedly admired on Prison Planet (though I see little of his influence in their continuously dubious output) lampooned Rather’s gutless display concerning “Top Gun” Bush and his running AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Yet the only criticism of Rather found on any Jones-related site was an article dated 8/6/2008 by Kurt Nimmo. Nimmo, knowing no better than Bermas or Avery, mentions a brief interview with Rather in which he denied any knowledge of the Bilderberger group. Now, anybody who knew about Rather’s obsequiously self-serving lies wouldn’t need to bother asking banal questions about his ties to the Bilderbergers.

Regardless of Nimmo and Palast, it still means that by 2007 Bermas and Prison Planet clearly had no idea of Rather’s shenanigans. Thus they had no idea whatsoever that Dan Rather will always be regarded as an utterly gross and cowardly sell-out and shill by anybody well-versed in the Kennedy case (or reality for that matter). In 1993, Dan Rather told Robert Tanenbaum, the former deputy chief counsel to the HSCA, “We really blew it on the Kennedy assassination.” But the sincerity of Rather’s late-arrived realizations on the Kennedy assassination must be judged in light of his most recent foray into assassination-shilling because Dan “we-really-blew-it” Rather still has the death of Martin Luther King pinned solely on another lone gunman, James Earl Ray (Jim DiEugenio; Review of The Road to Memphis, May 3^rd, 2010 & Black Op Radio, Show #477; June 3^rd, 2010).

III.2  The Inflatable Empire

Unlike Jones, Bermas has sometimes put out some thought-provoking stuff. He gave a good account of himself on Black Op Radio. And while Loose Change, and his other documentary, Fabled Enemies, asked some good questions, Bermas’ latest presentation, Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined, has little of the guerilla charm his previous works possessed.

First, let me ask this: How can one define something as nebulous as the New World Order? –especially when resorting to the likes of Hankeyian histrionics, Bircher-Society logic, and Jonesian contradictions and generalizations as the basis for building historical perspective? For Bermas and Jonesville it is, quite predictably, a secret amalgamation of globalists cabals intent on taking over the world and planning for a draconian one-world government.

While it would be difficult to argue against the presence of powerful individuals and globalist groups operating throughout the world today, rather than constructively imagining a “New World Order,” critical thinking would seem to indicate that a “nebulous world order” is more to the point. According to National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA) studies, as of 2005, there are over 500 powerful think tank groups worldwide. Think tanks, whether government funded or privately endowed (well known or not) have often had a disproportionate influence over governmental policy decisions, yet have often competed against each other. If Bermas (a person who has clearly never seen The Corporation, nor Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares) had just kept to the lines of logic outlined in these fine works, rather than journeying to the land of the flakes, Invisible Empire would have made for far more worthwhile viewing.

III.3  The Origins of the NWO (according to Bermas)

About 11 or so minutes into his documentary, Bermas shows that he is an individual in possession of very little historical or theological knowledge. The notion of the New World Order hasn’t actually been around for a long time. Individuals like Dennis Cuddy like to trace its origins back to the early 20^th Century. The modern right-wing take on it is that it was born out of the crazed and confused Christian fundamentalist, racist right-wing politics of groups like the John Birch Society in the late ’50’s.

Bermas wants us to believe that the concept of the NWO came from a little known manifesto called New World Order by American Samuel Zane Batten, which came out in 1919. To Bermas’ credit, this does appear to be the first book to carry the title. The problem is that many theologians and writers were contributing numerous works about a more united and egalitarian world at the turn of the 19^th and the early part of the 20^th centuries. This influenced the great Utopian-Dystopian debates, which increased after the First World War. Batten was nothing new or, indeed, revolutionary.

It is heavily implied by Bermas that Batten’s New World Order influenced Hitler. But there is no evidence that Hitler had ever read Batten’s works (or that it was even translated into Deutsch for that matter). He then goes on to mention that Hitler’s little known second book was dubbed The New World Order. Now, let the following be a reminder that this is what happens when you hang out with unscholarly people. The book was never named nor dubbed by that title. It was called Zweites Buch, which literally means Second Book, in which Hitler merely postulated challenges facing a Nazi global hegemony. While Bermas is correct in stating that it was completed in 1928, he fails to note its interesting history: It was not published until well after the war, in 1961 in German; and not until 2003 in English.

The meaning of an idyllic universal utopian New World Order differs from person to person. A John Birch Society member like G. Edward Griffin would have his own version, as would the reader, as does Bermas. Yes, it is that complicated a deal. Someone’s heaven is invariably someone else’s hell. Martin Luther King’s Dream would be David Duke’s Nightmare. So let’s look into the many groups and individuals that help make up the New World Order and—for most conspirahypocrites—the amorphous group that invariably killed Kennedy.

III.4  The Hives of Tyrants

Bermas’s film was spoiled right off the bat—three minutes and forty-two seconds into the production—by his misappropriating Kennedy’s April 27, 1961 speech made to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Granted, Kennedy does discuss the need for a free and open society, and yes, he does speak out against secret societies, secret oaths and the potential power of government taking advantage of any given situation and imposing censorship. It’s powerful stuff. In particular, Kennedy’s prophetic jibes at the “trivialization” and “tabloidization” of the media, which few people seem to note, are arguably the most important part of his speech.

What is alarmingly dishonest, however, is that Bermas has used an edited version of this speech to make it appear as if Kennedy is rallying against a Jonesian-style secret society, when in point of fact, he clearly is not. In his speech, before Kennedy famously states “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,” Bermas has removed three contextually related paragraphs which precede this famously quoted line, and which, to all but the most imaginative thinkers, make it quite clear that Kennedy is referring not to some collusive NWO conspiratorial-style cabal, but rather to the conventional Cold War forces of communism. And sadly, there are more than a few wishful thinkers out there. Places like YouTube (where it’s quite likely Bermas picked this up from) abound with edited versions of “The speech that got Kennedy killed” or “JFK New World Order Illuminati Speech.” No one realizes (least of all Bermas) that Kennedy delivering a speech to the likes of Henry Luce about secret groups is akin to Mowgli giving a warning to Shere Khan about his human diet. Thus, Bermas, without even knowing it, stands guilty of “cutting the cloth to suit the fit,” in much the same way as John Hankey inventively turns John Connally into an arch-conspirator and has George Bush threatening Hoover with a dart gun in his Hoover’s FBI office.

In Bermas’ history lesson about the NWO, he completely overlooks the fact that Hitler himself was a conspiracy theorist of some renown. It was this, plus his own racist beliefs, that led him to exterminate millions of Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, Socialists, as well as some 20,000 to 80,000 Freemasons (Christopher Hodapp, Freemasonry for Dummies, pg 85). Bermas goes on to name numerous secret groups from the Masons to Bilderbergers, Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, and the ever-present Skull and Bones. Collectively, according to Bermas, these groups form the New World Order, and together they inflate his hypothesis that all are working toward the same goals. Let’s have a quick look at this twisted mass Bermas construes.

Masons   Though the Masons only account for a speck of the invisible empire on Prison Planet, the Libertarian Jones has a strange relationship with Freemasonry. According to Jones, groups like the Freemasons supported many prominent “founding fathers” of the United States.

Alex Jones, in one of his more sober moments, in a discussion with a caller on his show, actually said much of the above. However, he couldn’t help but add that only the higher levels, or 33^rd degree Masons, are dangerous or enlightened.

President Harry Truman was a bona fide and ardent mason and reached the much-vaunted 33^rd degree level of Masonry. He also created the CIA in 1947. Yet in 1963 he wrote a famous editorial decrying the some of the operations that the CIA had partaken of as being way beyond what he had imagined. Allen Dulles was so worried about this column, which was published a month after JFK’s murder, that he paid a personal visit to Truman and tried to get him to retract it. (Jim DiEugenio; Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Bugliosi's Bungle, Part 8; Section VI)

Further, Truman’s 33^rd degree level of Masonry didn’t stop his administration from being undermined by the Republicans and the likes of Joe McCarthy which eventually saw the resultant rise of Eisenhower in 1952 over Adlai Stevenson (Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red pgs 7-10, 16-17). Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell was a high-level Freemason. He was also the most ardent critic of the lone gunman line on the panel (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, pgs 282-298). And he was the first of the Commissioners to break away from the Oswald-did-it-alone scenario. In fact, he actually conducted his own private inquiry while the Commission was in progress.

Bohemian Grove, CFR, Trilateralists, Skull & Groaners   According to author Michael Wala, Eisenhower was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and a regular visitor to Bohemian Grove. That didn’t stop him from warning the US about the acquisition of power by the Military-Industrial Complex. Being granted entrance to a place like Bohemian Grove did not stop Bobby Kennedy (who addressed a Grove retreat while Attorney General) from having his brother and himself both shot under the most suspicious circumstances. (William Domhoff, The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats; p. 27)

Richard Nixon, also a CFR member, didn’t get any help from his fellow Bohemians during Watergate. Likewise, for Jimmy Carter: Being a member of Bohemian Grove, the CFR, and an ardent Trilateralist didn’t stop him from signing into existence the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) which concluded there was a probable conspiracy in the killings of both Kennedy and King. Nor did the protection of these groups help Carter when the Republicans derailed his re-election campaign with the October Surprise.

Touching on the Skull and Bones fraternity, Bermas has clearly never heard of another prominent Bonesman, Robert Lovett, who was scathing of CIA foreign policy under the Eisenhower administration. (Jim DiEugenio; Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Bugliosi's Bungle, Part 8; Section V)

Another Warren Commission member, John Sherman Cooper, was also a member of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, and his doubts about the lone gunman conclusion have been well documented. Being a member of Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, the Trilateral Commission, and the CFR didn’t help George Bush get elected over Bill Clinton. Clinton is a known Bilderberger whose connections didn’t save his “socialistic” healthcare initiatives, nor save him from being smeared in numerous supposed scandals around his business dealings in Little Rock, Arkansas, nor from being impeached by the US House of Representatives when his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was exposed.

The point is (as anyone who studies the Power Elite well knows) that there are splits among the upper classes. For instance, there can be little doubt that around 2004-2005, when the Iraq War began to head south, that there was a powerful reaction against the Bush family. For Bush was such a horrible president that he endangered the future of the GOP. None of the Bush family connections saved them from this. It’s a little known fact that many a “crank’s” arch-conspirator, George Bush Sr., signed the JFK Act in October of 1992. The tickler here is that it came under the steerage of Bill Clinton and led to the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1994, whence a number of sealed documents from Carter’s HSCA saw the light of day.

III.5  The Dim Politics of Bermas, Oswald, Bush, and Scott

In the documentary I saw, Bermas had fully bought into the utterly contestable documentation that named Oswald as a CIA operative under the cover of the Office of Navy Intelligence (ONI). It was also posted on Prison Planet in September of 2004. This should be of some concern. Because before his film was released in April of 2010, Bermas had boisterously promoted the document on his Prison Planet radio show in late October of 2009.

As we saw in Part One, Bermas (like Jones) continually finds new and inventive ways to self-destruct with practically anything to do with the assassination. In the above video, Bermas cannot even pronounce CIA Director John McCone’s name correctly. Had he taken some time out to have read or listened to someone like John Newman, he would likely know how to pronounce the name, and he would also realize that Newman (a man who has dealt with more genuine CIA documents related to Lee Harvey Oswald than any current researcher) has, to the best of my knowledge, never endorsed the McCone/Rowley papers.

Newman is clearly in a different league from Bermas. However, had Bermas taken a step back and looked around he would have found that many commentators of various shades in the JFK nexus believe the document to either be a fake or something to be avoided due to its dubious association with the likes of Jim “The Gemstone Files were my idea” Moore. Indeed, that Bermas never thought to look at the opinions on JFK forums like Spartacus or JFK Lancer, for example, says something about his rather lax levels of evaluation. While Bermas is clearly not interested in the truth of the matter I hope the reader is.

Despite my reservations about aspects of Gary Buell’s rather eclectic work I encourage anyone to visit his blog on the subject as it’s also where one will find some interesting points of view (John McAdams aside) and arguably the most influential post on the topic by Anthony Marsh:

When I looked at it I knew instantly that it was a fake. How? It is not written in the proper format using the proper CIA style. One tip off is the marking “CO-2-34,030.” That is actually from a Secret Service report. How would I know? Because I had obtained and used on my Web site some of the pages from that SS report, so the notation jumped out as a fabrication. What someone did was take a page from the SS report, maybe even downloaded it from my Web page, removed the original text and wrote their own. Also the wording is not how the CIA would word a document of that type at that time. They would not refer to Hoover by name or agencies by common names. Instead you would see code words like ODACID. You need to look at hundreds of thousands of genuine CIA documents as I have to develop a mental database of what genuine CIA documents look like. I have no doubt that the hoaxer really thought that something like that was said. I don’t think the intent was like the other hoaxes to discredit all JFK assassination research. I think someone just assumed that he knew enough to create a realistic fake to incriminate the CIA.

Bermas also repeated another inflated myth on his show that made it into his film: that Bush, as head of the CIA, stopped and stymied the government investigations of the 1970’s. The insinuation here is that he did so to cover up his roles in the Kennedy assassination and Watergate. Bermas’ musing sounded scarily like a John Hankey perpetuated myth.

In order to gain a little more credibility with regards to entwining 9/11 with the Kennedy assassination, Bermas has utilized Peter Dale Scott. However Scott’s track record on the Kennedy assassination is regarded by many as inconsistent. His needlessly convoluted book, Deep Politics and the Murder of JFK, in which he posits that the all-powerful mafia were prime players in the killing of Kennedy, is simply not supportable today in light of the ARRB releases, Or in light of the information that other researchers like Lisa Pease, Gaeton Fonzi, Jim DiEugenio, Jim Douglas, Bill Davy, and John Newman have unearthed from those files.

III.6  The Kennedys, King, and Diana Spencer?

Another fatal and unforgivable error in Bermas’ documentary is that shortly after discussing the deaths of JFK, King, and RFK, he omits Malcolm X and allows a certain Diana Spencer to share the spotlight with these three eminently more important individuals. At one point in the show, Bermas had indulged in a spiel about the low standards and trivialization of the news media, which Kennedy had warned about. Now Bermas turns around and places “The Paparazzi Princess” with the Kennedys and King. But it should be noted that Jones himself has also courted a number of celebrities—like Charlie Sheen—to boost his own profile. Bermas also ignored a mountain of criticism and research from the right and the left that has not only been critical of Diana, but of the way her death had senselessly dominated the media and been elevated to quite unmerited levels of martyrdom.

No researcher I know of or associate with would demean the legacy of JFK, RFK, King, and Malcolm X by relating the importance of Spencer’s life and death to theirs. It’s the kind of thing that maybe Hollywood would indulge itself in (perhaps someone as frivolous as Tom Hanks) and in so doing, thereby inflate Muhammad Al Fayed as some kind of truth-seeker. For yes, Bermas includes Al Fayed bleating on about a plot against Spencer and his son enacted by the Royal family. To see what a cretinous, paranoid, sexist, and racist individual Al Fayed is, and how little water any of his future claims of a plot would hold, Bermas should have dug out Maureen Orth’s fine 1995 Vanity Fair article entitled, Holy War at Harrods.

Because on top of embarrassing himself with Diana, and making a most unworthy hero of Al Fayed, Bermas also missed this fact from Orth’s report: Al Fayed’s ex-brother-in-law was the infamous arms dealer, Adnan Khasoggi, a character even more despicable than Al Fayed himself. Khasoggi is a person most people interested in a range of international conspiracies and criminal activities have a word or three about as Timothy Noah from Slate points out. And as if that’s not bad enough, Bermas’ comrades at Prison Planet have Khasoggi in a number of articles supporting the Bush regime, an example of which can be seen here. Clearly, Bermas had a chance for some “meat and veg” here but instead he went for the tub of corn and the E Channel.

IV.1  Leading Questions?

What would your reaction be if I told you that Paul Joseph Watson is someone who, at one time or another, has been either wholly or partly responsible for promoting the work of Gerald Posner, Gary Mack, Dave Perry, Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartmann, and Bob Woodward? What if I told you that Watson also believes that the Oklahoma City bombing and the Kennedy assassination are related, with no evidence to support it? (Watson, Order out of Chaos p. 7) –And that he also believes that Madeleine Brown is credible, and that Johnson and Bush committed the JFK murder? –And then has the audacity to write that "[p]eople are mentally lazy?" (Watson, Order out of Chaos, p. 196).

Now, would you trust any information given to you from a man who on page 16 of his book, Order out of Chaos, states that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned yet has little understanding that it is an allegorical tale, nor any idea that the violin was not invented until some 1000 years later? I would like to add, do you think an introduction dubbed as a first chapter and a bibliography consisting of nothing but advertisements for Jones’ products makes his book “one of the many keys you will need to unlock the truth,” as he seems to believe? (Watson; pg 7)

What would your reaction be, then, if I then told you that Watson is very likely the chief writer and editor for Jones’ web sites?

Well, I know I’d be afraid.

Sheffield, England based Paul Joseph Watson seems to be at the very nerve center of Jones’ operations. He is described as the chief researcher and editor for Prison Planet.com and Prison Planet.tv. And he is the Orwellian moderator who constantly deletes any voices critical of Jones from the Prison Planet forum. Watson is also something of a prolific writer and contributes numerous articles and observations throughout the Jones Empire. If the Jones’ gang’s embarrassing levels of knowledge and the often contradictory reportage and vetting of articles pertaining to the JFK assassination can be placed at the foot of any one individual, it may be Watson’s. He is a young man who has come to see himself as something of a historian, seer, and Prison Planet’s in-house Kennedy assassination expert.

IV.2  Dancing With Dave P

Though Fletcher Prouty’s musings on The Christchurch Star had been around for sometime prior, it gained prominence thanks to the film JFK in 1991. It has been a point of study for myself coming up on 3 years now. Though I cannot be too harsh on Watson for not grasping the situation (it took me a while), I did not publish anything online till I was totally able to back up my conclusions. It doesn’t work like this in Jonestown. As we have seen, Watson, in keeping with the best traditions of knee-jerk posting, has no such scruples. So he goes on to quote JFK disinformation specialist David Perry, as a way to counter Prouty’s supposed claims.

As I said, this author has been studying The Christchurch Star for some 3 or 4 years. In the second part of my essay, which will likely come out in December of this year, I discuss the fact that The Men Who Killed Kennedy and JFK are ironically somewhat to blame for the Dave Perry induced controversy, in that they oversold the idea that Prouty believed New Zealand got the word ahead of others. The reality is that Fletcher Prouty never said New Zealand got the news ahead of anyone else in the world; he just happened to be in New Zealand when he picked up a newspaper and got the news.

Now, the time that Prouty actually picked up his newspaper is immaterial. Prouty understood that concept that many, including Watson, do not: Upon his return home he consulted numerous other newspapers that confirmed it was more or less instantaneous around the world. Due to international timelines, New Zealand is the first and arguably most modernized state to collectively see every new dawn. Thus Prouty, like the many New Zealanders he was amongst, may well have bought one of the first printed accounts of the tragedy. (A host of Prouty’s replies to questions about The Christchurch Star can be seen at http://www.prouty.org/.)

IV.3  Larry “The Fable Guy” Dunkel: A Watson Source

The “experts” at Prison Planet display an amazing level of naiveté with regards to frauds in the JFK field. (What this means for their dabbling in other areas I shudder to think.) And they have little understanding of either the pro-Warren commission individuals or their positions.

Dave Perry, is a slippery, clever, and connected individual, and as Bob Fox, Jim DiEugenio, and others have noted, he, like his companion Gary Mack (real name Larry Dunkel, famously dubbed “The Fable Guy”), has made a career out of misrepresenting events and people like Prouty. They also rail against easy prey like Madeleine Brown, and then paint all researchers—most of whom have never advocated her—with the same brush. Yet, Mack and Perry both know that someone like Watson will never fully read nor comprehend the intricacies of the Kennedy assassination. Hence, Watson is perfect fodder for their disinformation.

Mack’s dubious reputation matters not to Watson. This can be seen in his use of Mack in discussing the 15,000 pages of documents brought to public attention by new Dallas DA Craig Watkins in November of 2007. What got most attention in the press about this story was a transcript in which Ruby and Oswald discussed killing RFK in October 1963. This was simply not deemed credible by both pro- and anti-conspiracy groups. What is of interest here is a copy of a screenplay signed by DA Henry Wade, circa 1967, which had included this alleged transcript.

After using Mack to lay doubt on the transcript, what does Watson do? He then writes “the fact that a CIA team was hired to kill Kennedy is documented.” And what is the Watson “documentation?” Well, it’s the apparent key to the upcoming Black Sunshine: St. John—and his father, Howard Hunt’s “confession.” But that’s not enough for Jones’ expert on the Kennedy case. Watson then writes: “Hunt was photographed in Dealey Plaza along with other members of the hit team on the day of the assassination.” This must refer to the discredited thesis of A.J. Weberman and Michael Canfield about Howard Hunt being one of the so-called “three tramps”, a precept no serious photo analyst adheres to today.

But then, in the same article, Watson even tops that. He says that the MSM ignored the Hunt confession just like they ignored the Barr McClellan revelations in his 2003 book Blood, Money & Power. This book, established in Part One of this review as a “Jones tome,” is considered by many to be one of the worst books on the subject to come out in the past 15 years and embarrassingly its only piece of interest is the fingerprint work of Nathan Darby—and that’s in the appendix. Now, considering the fact that the works of Waldron &amp Hartmann, Myers, and Bugliosi were published in that time span, that is surely saying something.

So what Watson does is use Gary Mack to discredit questionable information in the first article. He then goes on to “save the day” for conspiracy by using even worse information like Hunt, the three tramps, Barr McClellan, and a dubious photo alleged to be George H. W. Bush outside of the Texas School Book Depository in the second. What can one say about such a recurrent journalistic pattern? Except that it’s incredible that the Prison Planet gang think that they can get away with it.

This brings us back to Jim Marrs. If Watson and Jones truly respected Marrs’ research, or knew anything about the research community (whom they scorn with their lack of knowledge), they wouldn’t include pieces with Perry or Mack in it. They clearly haven’t seen Robert Wilonsky’s July 6^th, 2006 Dallas Observer article on Marrs entitled, The Truth Is Way out There. While Perry seemed to give an even-handed (if slightly condescending) opinion of Marrs in the article, at the same time, he and Gary Mack (according to Marrs himself) made it a regular practice of rudely interrupting Marrs’ lectures at the University of Texas, Arlington. And those interruptions became so disruptive that Marrs eventually decided to retire from teaching the course. (Jim DiEugenio; Inside the Target Car, Part Three: How Gary Mack became Dan Rather; Section IV)

Ultimately, this entire essay begs one serious question: How could an organization like Jones’—with the likes of Bermas and Watson on hand—ever hope to produce a documentary honoring what occurred on the 22^nd of November, 1963? In Jonestown, we have seen Vince Bugliosi, Gary Mack, Dave Perry and others utilized. And on the other hand, Jones has no problems cavorting around with Barr McClellan and St. John Hunt. This is schizophrenia, which results in the on-air goofiness described above. And with the complete lack of any quality control or fact-checking apparatus, the general feeling is a sort of steady-stream, “bread and circus” fodder for the the Jonestown dumbed-down masses. In a weird way, it’s a reverse template of the MSM. The MSM sees no conspiracies anywhere. With Jones, any conspiracy anywhere is A-OK, whether it really happened or not. And the more sensational, the better.

So even after the ARRB’s two million pages of documents have demolished former myths and theories, making them deservedly the scrap of historical oblivion, these sage prophets of conspiravangelism march on into their own oblivion—as if the ARRB never existed. Russ Baker, John Hankey, Barr McClellan, Howard Hunt (as one of the three tramps), specious “Oswald as a CIA trained operative,” and LBJ pulling up the rear with grenades and bazookas in hand, framed by the mysteries of The Christchurch Star—all join the ranks of the parade. With circus acts like these, one pities the poor listener or reader who nonetheless sits in seeming awe of Jones, The Human Cannonball, splendidly arcing across three rings under the cover of the Prison Planet Big Top. Like a modern day P. T. Barnum, Jones understands his audience’s hunger. And he apparently doesn’t give a whit at passing off ersatz-cotton-candy-info for the authentic alternative his flock should crave. Have your credit card ready please.

If the likes of Jones, Bermas, and Watson cannot understand a case which has slowly become easier by the year to unravel—thanks to the work of real researchers (who they largely ignore), then what can the discerning reader make of anything else they will ever say about any topic?

Bottom line: Don’t hold out a lot of hope for Black Sunshine. Pity the country that, on the JFK case, has to choose between Tom Hanks and Reclaiming History and Alex Jones and Black Sunshine.

(The notes I made which helped form this essay on Jones and may shed further light on him can be found at Greg Parker’s ReopenKennedycase in three roughly edited parts. Should anybody want to examine Jones in a bit more depth, I invite those interested to have a look.)

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