There isn’t now, nor has there ever been any issue raised by DiEugenio or
Coogan that is worth discussing except one:
Does the evidence support the finding that George HW Bush was involved in the assassination. All else is obfuscation.
DiEugenio and
Coogan
concede that the Bush of the memo is our very own George HW. McBride
(all praise and glory to him; blessed be his name) located another
George Bush at CIA and got a statement from him that he wasn’t the Bush
of the memo. That, says, DiEugenio, settles the question and “proves”
it was our George. Fine and dandy. I felt it wasn’t sufficient, and
tried to gather the circumstantial evidence to prove the point more
definitively. But fine. It was him.
DiEugenio and
Coogan
(henceforth D&C) say that’s all it means. It doesn’t connect Bush
to the assassination or to the “misguided anti-Castro Cubans”. So let
me ask you, Jim, or Seamus, and any one else, to take up these following
points, which are relevant to the issue; and to skip the bullshit:
1)
The title of the memo in question is, “Assassination of President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy”. The title is NOT “Misguided anti-Castro Cubans”;
or “Response to State Dept. Inquiry”; or any of dozens of other possible
titles. Hoover thought it was relevant to the assassination,
obviously. D&C don’t think so; they don’t want you to think so; and
they attack me for drawing what seems to me a starkly obvious
conclusion: that a memo, titled “Assassination of President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy”, that named Bush as a member of the CIA, ties him to
the assassination. I mean, are these not ludicrous points for me to
have to make? Why the Bleep do you, D&C, think Mark Lane saw fit to
include the memo in his book??? Why The Bleep did he feel it was
relevant to a book about Hunt, Lorenz, and the assassination??? I may
have holes in my socks. My underwear may need changing. I haven’t
vacuumed my carpet in a couple of weeks. Attack me for that. But good
grief!! For me to suggest that this memo links Bush to the
assassination is not something that deserves to be attacked with the air
of disregard both of you have brought to this debate. I think the
entire discussion group should be offended. And say so. For an
important number of researchers, the minute Hunt told the Washington
Post “I’m a CIA assassin,” their immediate reaction was “OMG. He killed
JFK!”
I was a teenager when I attended a speech by Donald Freed entitled,
“From Dallas to Watergate.” He connected Hunt to the misguided
anti-Castro Cubans and then to the assassination; and he did it without
the benefit of the Hoover Bush memo.
2) The Hoover Bush memo
says that the FBI requested that the CIA send representatives to receive
this report. If the report had been presented telephonically, Hoover’s
memo would have said so. Bush received the report in person. No
reasonable doubt. The report was given by a man in the FBI’s upper
echelon. I presume, therefore, that it was given at FBI headquarters in
Washington. That would be standard. If it was given somewhere else, I
think we might assume that Hoover would have mentioned it. But it’s
not an important point. The critical point is that if the FBI calls you
up and says they want to give you a report, you don’t send the teenager
who walks your dog. Jim is a school teacher. If the FBI calls the
principal and says that they have a report that the English teachers are
using bootleg copies of some textbook, and they want the principal to
send someone to receive their report of the results of their
investigation, who is the principal going to send? The janitor? A PE
teacher? Or the English Department chair? Duh! Again, it is an
obvious point. Not quite so obvious as the first. But it is an
extremely reasonable extrapolation to say that the memo powerfully
suggests that Bush was supervising these Cubans. So why the attack upon
me for doing so?
3) “So!” say D&C, “what is the evidence
that they are the same as those in Lorenz’s group? He produces none.”
(That is an exact quote, by the way) Well, if I had provided no other
evidence than the implications of the memo itself, I think the points
1&2 above are sufficiently powerful so as to suggest that the
allegation of Bush’s connection to the assassins is worth considering.
Don Freed figured that if you were in the CIA in ‘63, you were suspect.
D&C characterize the following as “none”.
a) Bush and Hunt came
to the White House within a few months of each other, to work for
Nixon. Bush insisted on a White House office, very unusual for a UN
ambassador. Again, regardless of D&C’s objections and obfuscations,
Haldeman says that no one could figure out how Hunt got an office in
the White House. OK. They both worked in the White House at the same
time. DiEugenio would not dispute that Watergate was a CIA operation.
He probably would dispute that Bush was a high ranking CIA officer at
this time. But it’s obvious that he was. I’m sure DiEugenio would say,
that doesn’t connect him to Hunt! He would have you believe that Bush
had nothing to do with Watergate. Or if he did, that doesn’t connect
him to Hunt. Or if it did, that doesn’t connect him to Hunt in Dallas
in 1963. We’ll get to that in a minute. D&C both continue to
ignore Haldeman’s statement that when Nixon told the FBI not to
investigate Hunt, because “you’ll uncover the whole Bay of Pigs thing”,
that Nixon was talking about the Kennedy assassination. Come on Jim.
Take this up. It links Nixon to the assassination. It shows that he
knew Hunt was involved! But DiEugenio tries desperately to make the
point that Colson, not Nixon, hired Hunt. The implication is that Nixon
knew nothing about Hunt, because Colson hired him. Well who the Bleep
told Nixon that Hunt was connected to the Kennedy assassination? Jim?
Can you help us out? Do you want to suggest that Colson told him?
Based upon what? Colson had no connection to CIA operations. But, as I
point out in the movie, Bush was involved in the same operation, the
Bay of Pigs, at the same time, in the same location, that Hunt was.
DiEugenio, on Black Op radio 463, raises the strawman, that I said Nixon
hired Hunt; and that means, according to DiEugenio, that I say that
Hunt was serving Nixon’s interest. Of course I never said any such
thing. If I were asked, I’d say that Hunt was working for Bush during
Watergate, as he was at the Bay of Pigs, and in Dallas on November 22,
1963. Well, there can scarcely be any doubt whatsoever about two of
those. In the context of the Hoover memo, its title, and its naming of
Bush, there can scarcely be any doubt about any of them. How can anyone
honestly characterize this as “no evidence”. They can’t. DiEugenio is
not who he pretends to be; he is not who I, until a little over a week
ago, I thought he was. At very least, he’s vastly dishonest in the
defense of Bush.
b) I linked Connally to the assassination. Well,
you buy that or you don’t. The day of the assassination, Connally said
he saw the president slump before he was shot. That was a lie. The
film shows he did not see Kennedy before he was shot. He said it, I
supposed, to counter the numerous witnesses who said
JFK
was thrown violently backwards by a bullet from the knoll. And then
months later, on cue, Connally changed his story to accord with the
single bullet theory. In addition, Connally says the recognized the
first shot as an assassin’s rifle shot; but the Zapruder film shows him
sitting there calmly, holding his Stetson. You make of that what you
will. D&C thinks it means nothing. I think it links Connally to
the assassination. And Haldeman says Connally said, “You can’t bring me
to the White House until you find something for Bush.” Ok. Pretty
weak. I’ve actually cut it out of the latest version. But it’s not
nothing. It’s clutching at straws. And it’s a straw. But it’s not
nothing. It’s worthy of discussion. It reveals an otherwise invisible,
that is secret, connection between Bush and (to me) a clear
assassination participant.
c) Bush’s co-founder in Zapata Oil, Bill
Liedtke, provided the hush money that was paid to Hunt. It’s another
connection between Hunt and Bush. No doubt. Well, no doubt in anyone’s
mind but D&C. They can’t even see it. To them, it’s not weak
evidence. To them, it doesn’t exist.
d) When CIA agent Felix
Rodriguez went to Ramon Rodriguez, the cocaine money launderer, to ask
for money, he said, “Bush sent me.” Ramon had written the checks for
Hunt, with the money from Liedtke. Felix didn’t know Ramon. But
obviously Bush did. How? I suggest that Bush knew Ramon because he was
in charge of getting the hush money for Hunt from Liedtke, and to Hunt
through Ramon Rodriguez. If it weren’t for all the other stuff, this
would be pretty slim. Taken altogether, I think this wraps up Bush
pretty tightly with Hunt, before, during, and after Dallas ‘63. The
Kennedy assassination is the most tightly held CIA operation in all of
history. Given that, we should expect to find nothing. In that
context, this is a load of evidence. But forget all that.
e) The
FBI memo, recording Bush’s phone call the day of the assassination,
claiming he was in Tyler Texas, but explaining that he would be in
Dallas that night. Russ Baker in Family of Secrets, reveals that the
Dallas Morning News carried an ad saying Bush was speaking in Dallas the
night before. DiEugenio called this truly wonderful book “vaporous”,
whatever that means. But it’s not a nice word. I raised this book and
the evidence in it in my first response. And what is DiEugenio’s
response? Read for yourself:
“He (
Hankey)
talks about a call to the FBI by Bush that is related to the James
Parrot matter. He then says that Seamus concedes the point with his
silence. John: Take a look at your film
JFK 2 again. The Parrot matter is not in it. That is why Seamus is silent about it. You didn’t mention it there.”
No
Jim? I suppose. I needed Wim Daankbar to hook me up with this FBI
memo (thanks Wim!). And in every rehash, of the four or five I’ve done
the last six years, it’s been there. But, OK, Seamus didn’t see it.
He’s off the hook on that one. But you’re not. Where’s your response
to this memo, putting Bush in Dallas, on duty, the day of the
assassination??? Your response is to call this powerful list of
connections between Bush and Hunt “none”. What are we to make of this?
What are we to think about a person capable of such lies, and in such a
dubious cause.
I have, until this episode, been a huge fan of
Jim’s. When it comes to dismantling the Warren report and it’s
defenders, he is incomparable. No? Or that was my opinion. What the
hell happened? Why is he defending Bush in this insanely dishonest
fashion? Mike Ruppert was my hero before he persuaded me he was an
evil prick. DiEugenio actually makes a favorable mention of Ruppert on
Black Op radio 463. I thought I was going to be physically ill when I
heard this. So on Black Op he promotes Ruppert. But in his rebuttal in
this forum, he doesn’t make any mention of Ruppert, or my charges
against him and Lisa Pease for their role in denying Gary Webb an
autopsy. How about that, Jim? Care to weigh in on a Bush critic who
shoots himself in the head twice, with a .38, and doesn‘t get an
autopsy? No. You’re right to shut the bleep up on that score.
In
his rebuttal on this forum DiEugenio makes this stunning remark: “So
Lane made an error with Lorenz.” This remark is stunning on a number of
counts.
1) It is stunning, for a person of Diegueno’s
(now-apparently ill-deserved) status to be so evasive and deceptive.
The issue is not really Lorenz credibility. It is Mark Lane’s. It is
Lane who says Hunt is guilty; and Lane cites Lorenz, as part of a vast
array of evidence in support of that finding. I said this in my
original remarks, that it is Lane who said Hunt was guilty. DiEugenio
misdirects your attention away from the primary “Lane says Hunt is
guilty” thesis towards the “Lane believes Lorenz” thesis. Lorenz is a
distraction. And DiEugenio, for good reason, avoids confrontingm Lane’s
central thesis in order to harp on a single piece of evidence for that
thesis: Lorenz.
2) DiEugenio gives us “So Lane made an error with
Lorenz;” and what does he offer in support? Zip. We are to discard
Lane in favor of DiEugenio based upon what? DiEugenio’s incomparable
credibility? Not anymore, I hope. Destroying DiEugenio’s credibility
is my central goal at the moment. Have I accomplished it yet?
3)
DiEugenio was on Black Op radio to promote Coogan’s attack on me on Feb.
28 (463), But a week later, Lane was on, minutes before DiEugenio came
on (this is 464). They shared the same show (though not
simultaneously). During his portion of the show, Lane pointed out that
Lorenz had cited Sturgis and Hemmings as being in the cars that drove to
Dallas for the assassination. And Lane, on the show, says that both
Sturgis and Hemmings have corroborated that story, saying that they were
there and involved in the assassination. So Jim, Mark Lane has the
statements of two of the killers to back up his belief in Lorenz’s
story. And you have what?
Finally, during his time on Black Op
Radio #463, Jim also attacks somebody’s website for not allowing
rebuttals. He laughs about it. It’s ridiculous to him. And then he
writes in his rebuttal to me “And no we do not run rebuttals.” Well, I
won’t dispute the wisdom of that policy when applied to Warren
Commission defenders. However, I’m not a Warren Commission defender.
But I’m interested in much more than attacking the Warren Commission.
I’m interested in getting beyond the obvious point that Oswald didn‘t
act alone, getting at who was behind the killing, and going after them.
How can you possibly fail to distinguish between the two? I think that
is an essential question for us, your former fans, in trying to divine
your motives. Everything you have said on the subject of Bush’s guilt
is fundamentally dishonest, in that even when you are right on some
minor point, you utterly misrepresent the significance as being somehow
fundamental. The good thing is we have learned something important
about who you really are. The terrible thing is that you have been a
spokesman for the assassination community on important other matters,
and you have utterly undermined our faith in your honesty.
******************
That’s
a rousing close; and I hate to bring this up, instead of ending there.
But in divining who Jim DiEugenio is, and what is going on, I think
it’s worth noting: The person representing themselves as Seamus has
gotten his hands on a disk that doesn’t contain the Hoover memo, and
does contain all this other stuff about Oswald and ice darts and
whatnot. That’s interesting. There probably never were more than a
dozen such disks on the planet. Maybe fewer. I sent one to Kris
Millegan; who offered some suggestions for corrections, which I
incorporated; and he referred me to Wim; and I sent him one. And he
made some additional suggestions, including getting rid of the
Bush-with-the-ice-dart story; and incorporating the Ruby Nixon memo, and
the Bush FBI memo from the day of the assassination. And I immediately
incorporated those changes, before offering the disk to the public at
large, ever. So I would guess that absolutely no one who actually
dragged themselves all the way through to the end of Seamus’s hatchet
job recognized what he was talking about. Now I know Seamus didn’t get
this early early version from Wim. Or from Kris. He’s in bleeding New
Zealand for Krike’s sake; or so the story goes. But I smell a big fat
rat. And I call on Seamus to explain himself. Where’d you get it
Seamus? From the FBI? It reminds me of Bush’s phone call the day of
the assassination. I love it when smart asses screw themselves up,
being so damn clever. By the way, I’d be happy to sell a copy of the
latest version. Wait! He knows the latest version exists. He knows
it’s “slick”. So why the hell is he using a six-year old version? To
what purpose? And where’d he get it?
***************************************
Anyone
who cares to can take up for themselves the myriad irrelevant details
that DiEugenio raises in objecting to my work, and decide for themselves
if they have any merit. But he raises four as being major, and they’re
easily dispensed with, so let me take them up, after pointing out that
they indict him more than me, for suggesting that they in any way relate
to the case against Bush.
He says 1.) “Jim, didn’t Kennedy know the
Bay of Pigs was going to be launched in advance?” This is an utterly
irrelevant distraction from the question at hand; but it is a vitally
important point, I think, in terms of understanding History, and current
affairs. And for that reason, it seems appropriate to me that
DiEugenio should rail about it, from the wrong side. That is, I see him
as a key disinformer, so if he portrays this as key, it might be - just
not in the way he suggests.
I understand that the vast majority of
expert opinion is that Kennedy approved the invasion and then refused to
provide air cover. This includes experts like Fletcher Prouty, who had a
very inside view from which to judge. But I don't find the story that
Kennedy approved the invasion plausible on a number of scores. But my
opinion is beside the point, in the face of cold hard evidence:
Days
after the assassination, Kennedy called Maxwell Taylor out of
retirement and assigned him and Bobby to conduct an investigation into
what happened at the Bay of Pigs. They conducted a series of depositions
with leading players, including frontline CIA officers on board the
Houston and the Barbara J, and Cubans, and cabinet officers. The
transcripts of these depositions was published under the title Operation
Zapata, about 20 years ago. I think I encountered a reference to it in
Fabian Escalante's book, or in ZR Rifles. In any case, I found the
actual US Gov. publication in the local library. The transcripts reveal
that when the CIA proposed the invasion, Kennedy turned it down flat. He
said he didn't want any "D-day sort of invasion" (his exact words), but
that if the agency wanted to sneak some guerillas into the mountains at
night, that would be acceptable. One of the cabinet officials tried to
claim that the large invasion had been approved at one particular
meeting, and Bobby interrupted him to let him know that he (Bobby) was
there and there was no such discussion. One of the CIA officers in
command of one of the ships explained that he had been instructed to
tell the Cubans, after they were all loaded up and on their way, that
the invasion had been called off; and to make sure that they mutinied
and went ahead with it anyway. There is real drama in all this. Dulles
is sitting there. His underling is ordered, by Maxwell Taylor, the
highest rank in the military, to rat Dulles out. The underling looks at
Dulles, then at Taylor, and then tells this detailed story of how
Dulles planned to get around Kennedy's rejection of the invasion by
pretending to call it off at the last minute, and then blaming it on a
Cuban "mutiny". The officer explained how he had been instructed not to
wear side arms, and to be sure to encourage the Cubans to mutiny. But,
he said, the Cubans weren't having any part of a mutiny, and he had to
explain the entire scenario to them and assure them that it wasn't
really a mutiny, that they had the complete backing of the US, and that
had to proceed. Which they reluctantly did, now unnerved by this
attempted charade.
You could argue that this document is somehow
dishonest. But I don't find this plausible on a number of counts.
First, why would create this false document, and then tell absolutely no
one. I have never encountered anyone who has heard of it. Second, I
find the story more than plausible. The Pentagon had approved the
CIA's plan, stupid as it was. But none of the generals got fired. If
Dulles, Bissell, and Cabell got fired, it could not have been for
offering a bad opinion, could it? You see, if the President agreed to
the invasion, it was his opinion too. That's just not how things work.
You don’t fire knowledgeable people because you and your advisors all
decided to take their advice. But if Dulles etc. went ahead with an
invasion plan that Kennedy had explicitly rejected, that's quite another
matter, isn't it? The notion that Kennedy would approve the invasion in
the first place is also implausible. Kennedy believed in the right of
people to choose their own form of government, and he was sympathetic
with Castro's populism. Bobby, in particular, would have been hugely
sympathetic to what Castro did to the Mafia. This first is a critical
point. Kennedy was not willing to fight a popular movement in Vietnam,
even if it was communist; because it was popular. Kennedy was genuinely
pro-democracy. He was also against murdering foreign leaders, whether it
was Diem or Castro or Khruchev. And finally, Kennedy objected to the
notion that the giant power of the US should be brought to bear upon
this tiny little island. He said so, in so many words.
This is not a
small deal. It is thoroughly revealing about the extent to which we
watch a shadow show, and the extent to which 99.99999999999% of the
population may be left in the dark about really large and critical
issues (like whether Kennedy approved the initial invasion or not). I
think it relates to a number of issues. Clinton says he knew nothing
about the genocide in Rwanda. Romeo Dillaire and many others attacked
Clinton bitterly for his failure to take low-cost zero-threat actions to
scare the killers (like jamming their radio station, threatening the
leaders by name over their own radio, and buzzing the treetops of the
capital with jets). Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, a
Kissinger protégé, apparently didn’t tell Clinton, though Lake had
complete information on events in the first minutes that they began. I
believe the Fort Hood shooting was an op. But I think the evidence
shows powerfully that Obama wasn‘t involved in it. Obama has been
attacked by the PNAC crowd for refusing to call this Islamic Terrorism;
and he ordered the FBI to investigate itself about how they could have
failed to open a file on the shooter, Malik Hasan. And the day Obama
received their report, he took one sniff and called William Webster out
of retirement (see Maxwell Taylor above) to conduct a new investigation,
and ordered everyone involved to stop leaking the manufactured
background of Hasan-as-Islamic-terrorist. I think this shows that Obama,
like
JFK at the Bay of Pigs, was not in on the plot.
DiEugenio’s
ignorance on this point would be excusable if I hadn’t shown the title
of the book, Operation Zapata, and the actual pages with the quotes, in
my video. As I’ve said, I held him in the highest regard, but he’s just
half-assed on this point.
(There is a point I have to make
parenthetically. JFKMURDERSOLVED fans will appreciate it. James Files
describes how Nicoletti told him that the CIA had called off the
assassination at the last minute, but that he and Nicoletti decided to
mutiny and go ahead with it anyway. Ring a bell? This is totally
Dulles’ modus operandi.)
More from Jim
2.) “Did Delphine
Roberts know Oswald was at the Lake Ponchatrain training camp?” I said
she knew and that she said so. I spent 20 minutes online and can’t
find the source for Delphine Roberts saying this. I spent another 20
going through my books. Garrison didn’t say it, Lane didn’t say it,
Marrs didn’t say it. I didn’t just make it up. Perhaps Sutton or
Hinkle. But it’s the most very minor point. Peter Dale Scott says
Oswald was there at the camps. (
www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr10.html
- Deep Politics - 251) Scott may have gotten the information from
Robert Tanenbaum, the original Deputy Chief of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, who resigned saying the HSCA wasn’t
interested in the truth. He says he saw a film of Pontchartrain showing
Bannister and Oswald.
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr10.html
Explain to us, Jim: If Oswald was there, if such rock solid sources
say he was, why are you even raising this point, much less making a huge
issue out of it? (D&C: “I said, ‘Are you serious?’ He said, ‘Yes,
I am. Its that bad.’) That’s pretty bad. I said the secretary said.
Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she lied. Maybe she didn’t.
But Tanenbaum is vastly more credible, and says he saw incontrovertible
evidence. I should have used Tanenbaum instead of Robets. OK. Score a
big point for D&C for misdirection.
More from Jim
3.) “Who
hired Hunt at the White House?” I said Nixon. DiEugenio says Colson.
Colson worked for Nixon. There can be no dispute about that. Did
Colson hire Hunt on behalf of Nixon? Of course. So were dealing with
misdirection here, as usual. And now check this from Haldeman’s The
Ends of Power:
p. 12 Erlichman to Haldeman the morning after the
break-in “He (Colson) doesn’t know anything (sic) about Watergate, and
he hasn’t seen Hunt in months.”
Colson to Haldeman: “he (Hunt) was
off my payroll. You gotta believe me, Bob. It wasn’t me. Tell the
President that. …Hunt left my office months ago, like I said.” So to
say that Colson hired Hunt, as DiEugenio does, is useless. In what
sense did Colson hire him, if he didn’t pay him? and Hunt didn’t work
for him? And more to the point, MUCH MORE to the point, who was Hunt
working for? Who was he answering to? Is there any doubt in anyone’s
mind that Hunt was answering to the CIA? And what CIA officer was
closest to him, with a White House office? Bush. No possible question.
Now D&C want to insist that somehow this doesn’t constitute a
connection between Hunt and Bush. And in order to distract you from
this obvious connection, they raise silliness like “Nixon didn’t hire
Hunt. Colson did.” Which is not only silly; and not only a dark
misinformative piece of misdirection; but it’s essentially wrong.
and
finally from Jim 4.) “Have you ever heard anything about Prescott Bush
actually running the CIA while Dulles was DCI?” And if Prescott ran
the CIA from the shadows, you’d expect to have heard of it? I answered
this in my first rebuttal, to
Coogan.
Briefly, then, Joseph Trento tells how, when Dulles inquired about
Prescott’s activities investigating an assassination attempt by the
agency against Chou En Lai, Dulles was told he didn’t have sufficient
security clearance. But how is this an important question? First of
all, I never said Prescott was Dulles’ boss, though I suggested that it
was possible. So saying I did is more misdirection and straw
man-obfuscation. But if I had said it, so what? It’s not essential.
There’s evidence to support it. But the real question is, which of
these men, Dulles or Prescott, is highest rank in the Rockefellers’
army? Because that’s all the CIA is or ever was, the publicly funded,
officially sanctioned, covert army of the Rockefellers. So does Dulles
or Prescott Bush rank higher? Answer that and you will have answered
the question, “who was the boss of whom?” But who the hell cares?
I
thought I’d include that, reviewing Haldeman’s book, I encountered an
incident where Connally calls Nixon and says “burn the tapes.” Bush Jr.
did burn the Nixon tapes, in case you missed it. When experts
suggested new technology might be able to recover the erased segments,
little George ordered the 18 minute segment removed and destroyed. Go
ahead, Jim. Explain how that one doesn’t connect George Sr. to Hunt or
to the “whole Bay of Pigs thing.”