As many of you know, I am a history nut and I could not ignore the 100th anniversary of the murder of the entire Romanov family on July 17, 1918. It is an ironic anniversary after the disastrous meeting of President Donald Trump in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There are perils to trusting some Russian leaders and I am afraid that Putin, the former KBG officer, would be one of those least worthy of trust.
The Bolsheviks promised to treat the family fairly but instead left them in worse and worse conditions while being verbally abused. They ultimately murdered Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei). They also murdered their companions Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov.
They then mutilated their bodies and and burned them. It was one of the most heinous acts by the Communists and a precursor of blood soaked history of the NKVD and later the KGB.
Putin’s record of killing journalists and political enemies shows how little has changed in some quarters of the Russian government. His well documented history of murders and misrepresentations makes him a particularly lethal and untrustworthy adversary.
The Romanovs trusted their “competitors” in 1918 and it was the last mistake Tsar Nicholas ever made.
While Obama licked Putin’s caviar at Putin’s Dasha the Russians placed their heavy foot on eastern Europe and America.7688787687i7
“Trump Stood Up to Putin, Obama Appeased Him
Just ask Ukraine and Poland.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism
“How did we get into this mess?” Obama asked Putin.
It was the summer of ’09 and the two men, one a former community organizer and the other a former KGB officer, were sitting on the veranda of Putin’s dacha. While Obama noshed on three types of pricey caviar, Putin took a bite out of his junior colleague by delivering an extended denunciation of America.
Obama listened without a word of protest to Putin’s attack on America. According to Michael McFaul, his point man on Russia who has been attacking Trump prominently in the media, “the history lesson was even rather helpful because it enabled him to emphasize to Putin: well, I’m different, I’m new.”
Putin’s litany of American foreign policy crimes was cunningly fitted to the politics of the left. On that summer day, Russia wasn’t an enemy, but a victim of the Bush administration’s cowboy diplomacy. And Obama was seeking common ground with Russia, Iran and the Brotherhood against the Republicans.
By different, Obama meant that he didn’t care about traditional alliances or national interest. Selling out American allies like Poland had gotten Barry a taste of Vladimir’s beluga. The cost of the caviar was missile defense for Eastern Europe. America wanted it there and the Russians didn’t.
The caviar followed Hillary Clinton’s comically disastrous reset button push. Both Hillary and Obama needed these photo ops. Putin didn’t need the photos. He wanted concessions. And he got them.
The betrayal and abandonment of Poland was only the first of Obama’s many concessions to Putin.
The architects of Obama’s appeasement of Putin have been some of the most militant voices denouncing Trump. McFaul among them. Trump has been accused of making concessions to Putin. But, unlike Obama, Trump made zero concessions to Putin. Not on missile defense. Or on anything else.
Instead President Trump has steadily reversed Obama’s tide of concessions to Putin.
The media is outraged over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But when that happened, Ukraine asked for weapons and the only aid that Obama offered their country was MREs. It took months for Obama to come through with boots and tires. Meanwhile Trump has delivered actual weapons.
Why did Obama refuse to provide Ukraine with weapons? According to senior officials, to avoid antagonizing Moscow. Trump isn’t afraid of Russia. Obama however was shaking in his loafers.
While Trump approved anti-tank missiles for Ukraine, Obama slow-walked shipments of boots, putting them on trucks instead of planes so that they took months to arrive, so as not to upset the Russians. Meanwhile the Trump administration cut the red tape by dipping into its own European stockpiles.
In the time it took Obama to ship boots to Ukraine, Trump shipped Javelin missiles.
Obama shelved missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic. Trump cut a multi-billion deal for selling Patriot missiles to Poland. When Obama provided Patriot missiles to Poland, he neglected to mention that the batteries would not actually contain missiles. The ambassador to Poland, had noted, “The Poles have not been told that the battery will rotate without actual missiles… but it will also not be operational, and certainly interoperable… this will be a question of basic definitions for the Poles: is it a Patriot battery if it doesn’t have live missiles?” Trump’s missile deal comes with actual missiles.
When Obama’s old foreign policy hands crowd the green rooms of CNN and MSNBC, when they pen editorials for Foreign Policy and the Washington Post, accusing Trump of betraying Eastern Europe to Russia, remember these are same people who sent fake missiles on Poland to go with the fake news.
Every new president is entitled to the occasional foreign policy blunder. But sacrificing Poland to Putin wasn’t a singular event. Three years later, Obama was caught on a hot mic assuring Medvedev, Putin’s political flunky, that he needed space on, “missile defense” until the Republicans were defeated.
“This is my last election,” Obama wheedled. “After my election I have more flexibility.”
“I understand,” Medvedev offered. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
Obama was conspiring with Putin against the American people. He was assuring Putin’s man that he would have more flexibility to appease Russia after he had fooled America.
The media has been screaming that Trump was a traitor, when it was their man who sold out to Putin, while President Trump held the line on missile defense without caring about what Moscow thought.
And it wasn’t just missile defense in Eastern Europe.
Obama’s obsession with dismantling our national defenses led him to ignore Russian violations of the INF treaty. Not only did Obama ignore the violations which had been going for an entire term, but he and his political allies helped cover them up. The motive was a mix of appeasement and cover-up.
“We’re not going to pass another treaty in the U.S. Senate if our colleagues are sitting up here knowing somebody is cheating,” John Kerry said.
Obama officials lied about Russian treaty violations to Congress while pushing new treaties with Russia. Then they went on to pull the same trick over their fake WMD deals with Russia’s allies in Syria and Iran. Each time, violations were ignored and a fake agreement was trumpeted by Obama for political gain.
The caviar conference in ’09 set the template for eight years of Obama’s sellouts of America.
The Obama administration hid the Russian violations, not only from Americans, but from NATO. When a former Obama official piously lectures Trump about the importance of NATO, he ought to be asked why his administration put Putin ahead of NATO. The media ought to be asked why it ignored the violations.
In the winter of last year, the media buzzed with stories about Russia deploying a new cruise missile in violation of the INF. And, as the New York Times put it, “challenging Trump”. But when Russia was violating the INF under Obama, the media accepted the Ben Rhodes spin about smart diplomacy. All the smart appeasement in the world though failed to get compliance or punish the Russian violations.
Instead Obama sold out America by unilaterally complying with a treaty that the Russians were violating.
The Russians rolled Obama on the INF and START treaties. Then they rolled him on Assad’s chemical weapons. And then they went for a triple score by rolling him on Iran’s nuclear program.
That’s how we got into this mess.
Obama did not care about missile defense. The diplomatic outreach of the newly selected leader traded resets with enemies for the betrayal of allies. In Egypt, Obama would abandon Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood. When democracy protests broke out in Iran, Obama urged waiting for the dust to settle. The resets were paid with the blood of Iranian protesters, with Christian churches in Egypt and with the Russian expansionism that would lead to the loss of Flight MH-117 and the annexation of Crimea.
The media has spent a day losing its mind because of what President Trump said or didn’t say. Yet Obama not only obsequiously praised Putin, “I am aware of not only the extraordinary work that you’ve done on behalf of the Russian people in your previous role as prime minis-, uh, as president, but in your current role as prime minister,” not only failed to stand up for America when Putin lashed out at the United States, but betrayed us in deeds.
Obama thought of the world as moving in tune to his speeches. His old associates are angry that Trump hasn’t said the right words. But Trump knows that it’s not words that move the world, but actions.
Unlike Obama, Trump doesn’t just talk, he acts.
We do not measure Obama by his words, but by his actions. It was not his speeches that mattered, but the empty Patriot batteries in Poland and the trucks taking two months to deliver boots to Ukraine.
If you doubt who actually stood up to Putin, don’t ask the media. Ask Ukraine and Poland.
We are being lectured on appeasement, treason and weakness by the very people who dismantled our nuclear defenses, who sold off our uranium to Russia, and who rewarded Iran for its nuclear program.
None of their speeches will wash away their appeasement, their cowardice and their treason.
Unlike Obama, President Trump sold weapons to Ukraine. Unlike Obama, he bombed Assad. Unlike Obama, he provided Poland with working Patriot missiles. Unlike Obama, he stood up to Russia.”
I think that placing the missles in Poland was provocative, and unnecessary.
Poland is ok, anyways.
I also think Ukraine was illegally overthrown by a coup backed by the West. It’s very troubling pattern and maybe they have what they did to Yuk. planned for Trump.
The incursion into Donbass was a predictable move to move the Russian strategic border west to the Dnieper in light of the changed conditions. I can competely understand that and if Russia overthrew Mexico then the US damn sure would occupy the northnmost region if not the whole thing.
Crimea, as legit as the Kosovar secession.
“I think that placing the missles in Poland was provocative, and unnecessary.”
I don’t fault anyone with this opinion rather I was pointing out what an as$ licker Obama was and how he deceived America and our western allies but not the eastern ones under the shoe of the Soviet’s (Russians) for so many years.
I believe in cushions so depending on world events my views might change to meet the new realities. I’ll extend the debate. No, I would not have offered to expand NATO to Ukraine or many of the other countries now part of NATO. Yes, I would have threatened the Russians with American missiles given to the rebels if Putin moved into Syria as they did. Syria is not a border nation rather it was an aggressive expansion of Russian foreign adventures.
Kurtz, after Putin’s ally flew into exile, his palace and estate were explored by journalists. Putin’s ally was living in tasteless extravagance; a peasant’s idea of classy.
Kurtz, you should know that ethnic Ukrainians are the majority in Ukraine. Ethnic Russians are the minority. I know a Ukrainian in L.A. who’s ethnic Russian. That’s how Russia chipped off Ukraine’s eastern border.
But ethnic Ukrainians have been struggling for decades to stay independent of Moscow. For that reason Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. That’s how desperate they were to be free of Moscow.
yeah pete i know all that. so what.
Yuk was the lawful president. the coup was illegal. and it was aided and abetted noisily by the US. it’s not surprising the Russians laugh at our hypocritical complaints.
im sure you also know it was firmly part of Russian Empire for centuries. Have you ever heard of the “kievan rus?”
and Kruschev gave it its present socalled “independence” which was nominal at the time anyways
bottom line: Russia has strategic geopolitical interests too. We are not the only nation allowed to act like a sovereign. We can pretend to be the new world-emperor or we can get back towards a more Westphalian type of diplomacy. I know the Hillarite faction of the Dem party is all in favor of global conquest, backed by the military industrial complex. But the current POTUS is not quite so inclined, even if he has to deal with the war and intel infrastructure too. Time will tell and I guess we will see how it all goes. Hopefully.
Kurtz, you’re response makes a good transcript. It illustrates how Trumpers are deeply concerned for the welfare of Russia.
Ireland was a British colony for 600 years. That doesn’t mean it didn’t want independence. So this ‘historic’ argument is simply bowing to the old Russian Empire. Like we should respect the claims of ancient czars!
By that logic California and Texas should be returned to Spain.
Peter Hill – Ireland has been a nominal and actual colony of England since 1171 when it was invaded by Henry II.
Well I hear that kind of crap from the Reconquista crowd of university overeducated Hispanics so turnabout is fair play eh?
and btw the Northern 6 counties of Ireland are part of the UK still and have been since 1922 and a lot of them want to stay that way. Stop being a simpleton
Peter,…
Mr. Kurtz gavevyou an accurate account of what happened in “The Orange Revolution”.
He knows something about what happened in early 2014, and I do as well.
I wrote and posted, 2-3 weeks ago, a detailed account of the Ukraine uprising.
Then come back with something about “Trumpers”.
You can do better than that lame response.
Mr.Kurtz,…
I just reviewed my impressions of the events and media coverage of ” The Oramge Revolution” in Kiev, so I won’t go over it again.
It was in the dead of winter, I had multiple cable news channels, some free time, and an interest in a riveting story.
One interesting event that was somewhat emblematic of the nature of the uprising when the great boxer Klitscho(sp?), a leading and popular opponent of Yanukovych, went into the crowd.
I think he was involved in negotiations with the Yanukovych government, seeking a hasty exit of the (.still) president, and other changes.
He apparently was going to update them about the negotiations, and try to tamp down the violence and skirmishes with police, etc.
In short order,vthe crowd turned on Klitscho, spraying him with a fire extinguisher, and josteling him about….nothing too rough, but shoving, etc.
Klitscho probably could have demolished the attackers in his immediate vicinity, but he did not respond or retaliate physically.
That seemed to illustrate a turning point in the uprising; Yanukovych was losing ground, looked like he was on ths way out ( inpeached if he would not resign), but the crowd seemed to “want him gone yesterday”, not “today or tomorrow”.
I was wondering at the time what Putin was thinking as he watched unfold.
It’s not like I predicted the uprisings in Eastern Ukraine,or the takeover of Crimea.
But I did wonder if the leaders bofv the uprising really thought through what would follow the ouster of Putin’s ally, Yanukovych.
tom nash, i was perplexed as it all unfolded too. i have nothing against ukrainians btw, I always cheered for “Kitsch” when he fought
but listening to Vitoria Nuland talking about who the US would pick as the next Ukrainian capo really agitated me, remember that?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
Americans don’t notice these things and often if they do, forget
Mr. Kurtz,
The guys that sprayed Kitsch are lucky that he didn’t retaliate.
That guy is one of the heaviest hitters I’ve seen in watching scores of boxers over several decades.
I think Kitche is pretty even-tempered and patient; I think he’s still involved in reforming government in the Ukraine.
Mr. K,
Yes, I do remember Ms. Nuland.
I thought it was a mistake for her to meet/ stand with the “demonstrators” massed in the streets.
To a lesser extent, Kerry expressed support for the anti- Yanukovych “protesters”,
I don’t remember who tapped/ hacked her phone, but she was caught saying “F*** the EU” in a conversation….I think she was talking to another State Dept. official when she said that.
I don’t think diplomats should be caught making “what would seem to be”😏😉 undiplomatic language.
Putin sez:
“We see that there are forces in the US which are prepared at the drop of a hat to sacrifice Russian-American relations for the sake of their internal political ambitions in America,” he said.
“They are prepared to sacrifice the interests of their own businesses” and “the interests of their allies in Europe and the Middle East,” as well as “their own national security,” Putin said.
“These people are neither despicable or pathetic,” he said referring to famous Russian satirists. “The opposite, they quite powerful and strong of they can peddle, sorry for my expression, various hard to swallow stories to millions of people,”
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/putin-goes-off-script-slams-us-forces-undermining-russian-american-relations-video/
Autumn, I’ve been told that only China spies on us more than Israel.
That’s interesting IB – gonna look that up. It would be easy wouldn’t it for them to install devices in the phones and other electronics they produce.
Ind. Bob,…
– It was odd that there was very little news coverage when China hacked into the FEC in 2013.
I think there was a bit of coverage on the illegal Chinese campaign contributions to Clinton in 1996.
I think that there were some indictments and maybe convictions resulting from 1996 scandal.
Ind. Bob,…
– It was odd that there was very little news coverage when China hacked into the FEC in 2013.
I think there was a bit of coverage on the illegal Chinese campaign contributions to Clinton in 1996.
I think that there were some indictments and maybe convictions resulting from 1996 scandal.
It’s not odd. Coverage depends on what’s in the interest of the Democratic Party.
TS to Dance,….
– a week or two ago I commented that actual fake news/inaccurate reporting is not real common among the established media publishers.
It is the prioritization of certain stories and ignoring others that are newsworthy that I object to.
That widespread bias is hard to miss. “Managed news” and “filtered” news is how they manipulate the news.
I remember CNN ‘s Don Lemon refusing to report on a major story once.
The story was negative for the DNC, I think.
Lemon claimed that he was “protecting” viewer from that news.
Most reporters/ editors do “tinker” with the news in rhe way that Lemon did, but don’t annouce/admit it.
Israeli Cyber-Election Meddling Is Its Newest Industry
” Those US and British politicians who are bashing Russia for foreign “election meddling” could use a more honest set of talking points. It is Israel, not Russia, China, or North Korea, that hosts a blossoming industry of cyber-election meddlers who operate from corporate offices in Tel Aviv, Cyprus, London, Washington, and Tortola. Most, if not all, of these firms, received their start-up funds from Israeli government-backed business development venture capital funds, some of which are solidly linked to right-wing American financiers like Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The US media, subjected to a constant barrage of pressure from the all-powerful Israel Lobby, has refrained from reporting that when it comes to provable election meddling, including social media campaigns to smear politicians, Israel has become the “go to” place for politicians to seek election victory through guile and deceit.”
Entire article:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/07/12/israeli-cyber-election-meddling-is-its-newest-industry.html
Autumn – isn’t Kushner a registered Democrat? Wouldn’t that mean Democratic money was behind election meddling?
Paul, I don’t know if that sinister creep is a registered DIm – in any case he’ll play both sides as his loyalties lie wholly with Bibi. After all he’s got investments in the “settlements” And there are as many Zionists who are Dems as well.
But yeah, the Dims meddled for sure as we’ve learned from the DNC lawsuit, Wikileaks and the “hearings”/IG report.
So liberals on this blog — how can you account for the fact that Leftie Independents are all about Trump crafting a working relationship with Putin?
What does Russia export outside of energy? I see lots of products being sold here in US that were made in lots of other countries. I don’t see anything manufactured in Russia. I would think if their energy sales were to be severely curtailed their economy would crash. If that happened how would Putin react. There certainly would be problems at home for Vladimir.
If that happened how would Putin react. There certainly would be problems at home for Vladimir.
Bob,
We are supposed to believe he and his entire country would suddenly see the error in their ways and become better partners on the world stage.
Think of it as a Reset Button, but this one goes BOOM!
Exporting war materials might be growing – the S-400 SAM that Turkey and India is buying and potentially other nations
Ind. Bob,…
Russia is probably in a 3-way tie ( with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia) as the world’s largest oil producer.
Saudi Arabia is, of course , a key member of OPEC.
Their influence in affecting prices and production quotas has waxed and waned, but any disruption in the level of production of a major oil-producing country can have a big impact on prices and supply.
I think oil/ gas is their main export, but Russia also has vast reserves of timber, and that is a major export.
Mining/ precious metals/ steel/ stategic metals are another major export.
I think they still have a balance of trade surplus, but I’m not sure if that’s still the case.
There have been some complaints by European farmers that the sanctions are hurting them ( by impacting their export market), but I don’t have a good overall grasp of how the sanctions are affecting overall Eurozone countries’ exports.
European countries are heavily reliant on Russia’s oil and gas exports.
If Europe was cut off from Russia’s energy exports ( or “refused” to buy oil and gas from Russia), I think it would be a disaster for Russia, and very painful for Europe.
diamonds, ak 47s, mostly cool stuff. LOL
So let me see if I understand the entire Russian meddling argument in our 2016 election correctly.
1. The Russians hacked into the DNC servers and John Podesta’s emails which ultimately revealed the depth of corruption within the DNC/Clinton campaign and their conspiracy to fraudulently secure the nomination.
2. The FBI did not take custody of the servers in question and instead relied on an analysis by Crowdstrike.
3. The Obama administration did nothing regarding Russia’s meddling including issuing a stand down order for his IC.
4. There is zero evidence Russia’s efforts did anything to impact the legitimacy of our voting system.
5. Trump wins; Clinton loses.
We can eliminate #2 and #3 as relevant because of #4. If we are to believe it was a Russian hack and not anything else, the only thing the Russian meddling did was expose the electorate to the reality of the corruption within the DNC/Clinton machine. It appears the only entity to have successfully conspired to influence our 2016 election was the DNC/Clinton machine. They we were derailed by the truth.
This begs the question: If we are to truly be concerned about the integrity of our electoral process, why should the American people have to rely on a foreign agent(s) hacking into the servers of our political class to know the truth about our candidates for office? Isn’t this precisely why freedom of the press is so important? If anything, the MSM functioned as co-conspirators with the DNC/Clinton machine.
And now because of the above, the Left wants us to go to war with Russia.
Great.
Olly….Great synopsis.
Thank you Cindy. 😎
While the MSM goes on and on about Russia Russia Russia we love it that Trump brought out the missing HRC emails and the Awan brothers scandal
so lots of Dems want to “abolish ICE” i have read.
the idea of abandoning a national border is preposterous
even Costa Rica that has no army has a border guard
the real threat to America comes from who?
Someone has Peter Shill’s number
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/07/17/lunatic-politics-part-1-russiagate-is-a-religion/
wow spastic that’s a great one thanks
“As the Snowden documents and David Sanger’s great new book and other books make plain, and as U.S. officials are wont to brag, the U.S. intelligence services break into computers and computer networks abroad at an astounding rate, certainly on a greater scale than any other intelligence service in the world. Every one of these intrusions in another country violates that country’s criminal laws prohibiting unauthorized computer access and damage, no less than the Russian violations of U.S. laws outlined in Mueller’s indictment…
It is no response to say that the United States doesn’t meddle in foreign elections, because it has in the past—at least as recently as Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Russian presidential election of 1996 and possibly as recently as the Hillary Clinton State Department’s alleged intervention in Russia’s 2011 legislative elections. And during the Cold War the United States intervened in numerous foreign elections, more than twice as often as the Soviet Union. Intelligence history expert Loch Johnson told Scott Shane that the 2016 Russia electoral interference is “the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades, whenever American officials were worried about a foreign vote.” The CIA’s former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, told Shane: “If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all.” Hall added that “the United States ‘absolutely’ has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it.”
Nothing gets the phony “Resistance,” corporate media and neocons more hysterical than when Trump isn’t belligerent enough while meeting with foreign leaders abroad. While the pearl clutching was intense during the North Korea summit, the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday’s meeting with Putin in Finland.
The clown parade really got going after compulsive liar and former head of the CIA under Barack Obama, John Brennan, accused Trump of treason on Twitter — which resistance drones dutifully retweeted, liked and permanently enshrined within the gospel of Russiagate.
John O. Brennan
✔
@JohnBrennan
Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???
11:52 AM – Jul 16, 2018
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Some people hate Trump so intensely they’re willing to take the word of a professional liar and manipulator as scripture. In fact, Brennan is so uniquely skilled at the dark art of deception….”
Did a cabal of former CIA whacked JFK, disgruntled old timers like Dulles, Cord Meyer, and E Howard Hunt; green lighted by LBJ? i often wonder.
but hearing from Clapper and Brennan these instigating remarks really makes me wonder if they arent edging towards that kind of thing today
Did a cabal of former CIA whacked JFK, disgruntled old timers like Dulles, Cord Meyer, and E Howard Hunt; green lighted by LBJ?
No
thanks for your certainty.
do you find it odd that E Howard Hunt both claimed that he did not, when he sued Victor Marchetti the former CIA agent who accused him of it,
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmarchetti.htm
and then at the end of his life he reversed himself and claimed he was a bag man for such a cabal?
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhuntH.htm
The ‘end of his life’ was a hoax engineered by his son, who was looking for a payday.
The CIA and the FBI for some reason wish to replace one mainstream Democrat with another mainstream Democrat so contrive to assassinate the former by hiring a 24 year old man (dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps) whose most notable feature would be his delusions of grandeur and whose most notable talent is for getting fired from his job. Sounds like a plan.
i listened to the tape and it is really remarkable to me what E Howard Hunt said. it definitely sounded like a confession and in context of his prior statements, very surprising. I am not sure how St John Hunt could have engineered that as you say.
Have you ever read this transcript? I wonder what Nixon was talking about with respect to Hunt and the dirt he had about the “bay of pigs thing.” I don’t think Nixon was talking just about the Bay of Pigs but perhaps tangential mattes. I guess we will never know.
http://watergate.info/1972/06/23/the-smoking-gun-tape.html
I have a hypothesis also about what you said in the second para and thanks for that btw. You articulate a good point.
LBJ transformed the Democrat party in a way that JFK could not. I won’t elaborate but its worth thinking about.
the hypothesis is that a cabal of former cia did him in, not the acting cia.
i listened to the tape and it is really remarkable to me what E Howard Hunt said.
Again, his widow said he was non compos mentis at the time. And it reads like a salad of conspiracy memes which have been floating around for decades.
Listen to it, dont just read it. I am familiar with dementia and he does not sound all that demented to me. It’s a condition that fluctuates day to day and moment to moment.
Also, we are not talking about any conspiracy, we are talking about him apparently confessing to something that he mounted years of litigation to deny. Check out Hunt v Liberty Lobby, Marchetti, etc.
And in the second case after the first was reversed on appeal, Hunt lost, and the jury found by a preponderance of evidence that Marchetti’s allegations against Hunt were likely true. So, i find these admissions by Hunt, exactly opposite those prior inconsistent statements, credible, coming as they did from the horse’s mouth.
Oswald marched to his own drum.
You now the funny thing is that Roger Stone has an interesting book on the subject. Previously revisionist viewpoints on this topic that were eschewed by Republicans.
Poor Roger, everybody hates him now, except the swingers and potheads maybe.
Roger Stone is a professional campaign hack, a competitor to Karl Rove. What could he possibly bring to the table writing a volume on contemporary history?
Well he is a lobbyist like Rove, and he worked with Nixon. Maybe that gives him some insight There are other things Nixon said besides the tape referring to “bay of pigs” things that Hunt could expose, that suggests he thought LBJ did in Kennedy. For example, Nixon said “we both would have killed to become president, lbj was the only one who did”
the Stone “conspiracy theory” about this corresponds well to “conspiracy theories” that other people with close knowledge of LBJ have advanced, such as Barr McClellan, who worked for the law firm that did LBJ’s work in Texas, and LBJ’s mistress Madeline Brown says essentially the same thing, that LBJ greenlighted JFK.
Considering the history of assasinations of heads of state, is it not a valid and observable historical pattern, that oftentimes the one who succeeds the victim, was instrumental to removing his predecessor? LBJ certainly had motive. Others supplied the means, and the opportunity presented itself and was taken. I find that considerably more plausible than the Warren Report. Which a lot have impeached, including, the HSSA, which one might say was part of the US government as much as the Warren commission was. So if the US government doesn’t agree on what happened, I don’t think that it’s paranoia to continue to wonder.
Motive, means, opportunity
Mr Kurtz – one of the running jokes after the Warren Commission concluded was “LBJ wants his rifle back, now.”
Roger Stone was a subaltern employee in his early 20s during the Nixon Administration.
Lyndon Johnson was occupying a ceremonial position in 1963 and had no authority over anyone or anything but his own staff. He had no ‘means’ nor any ‘opportunity’.
Why is that supposed to be funny, Paul? The rifle belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald. Connections between Oswald and anyone of consequence (intermediated or no) were nil.
DSS – it was the times. Everyone knew that JFK and LBJ hated each other. They were in LBJ’s state. Hmmm??????
PC Schulte,…
-Jimmy Hoffa hated the Kennedys, Castro hated the Kennedys ( Castro was upset at the attempts to kill him…go figure….Castro also issued a fairly specific threat of retaliation two months before JFK was killed), the anti-Castro Cuban hated Kennedy, Southern segregationists hated JFK, etc.
That potentially is motive, but a long way from evidence that any or all of the above actually had a role in the assassination.
Bobby Kennedy was actually the one that LBJ actually hated, snd the feeling was mutual.
At any given time, any president is likely to have, or make, bitter enemies.
But it’s a real stretch to conclude that a particular enemy killed JFK.
That’s a pretty long list, and if potential motive is to be regarded as real evidence, then one can” create” dozens of flimsy scenarios in which this or that persion or groupe was involved in killing Kennedy.
Tom Nash – we know LBJ did not do it personally because we know where he was at all times. Still, he could have loaned the rifle out. 😉
Again, so what? Oswald had no connection direct or indirect to anyone of consequence. They were, by the way, in John Connolly’s home state.
Gov. Connolly got a bullet in him. People in the Paine / Oswald social circle were willing to attest to reporters that Oswald had a cold fury toward Connolly and didn’t have much to say about the President. Marina Oswald has also said that her husband’s table talk did not include much about Kennedy. There was existing correspondence between Oswald and Connolly’s office when the latter was Secretary of the Navy and Oswald evidently blamed Connolly for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps.
Spastics is seriously dilusional.
David Benson needs to change his Depends.
John Kennedy was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald. Josiah Thompson and Cyril Wecht have spent 50+ years attempting to demonstrate that there must have been at least one other gunman and they keep coming up short. Others given to fancies (like the writers of the film Executive Action have attempted to promote the idea that Oswald was an innocent bystander. The number of details which conspirators would have to deftly choreograph to implicate Oswald so precisely beggars belief (especially since the details include three fortuitous decisions the ‘patsy’ Oswald made which incriminate him and which could not have been readily induced by conspirators.
DSS if someone could make up a politically correct story that satisfied people’s end desires the story could say that Kennedy committed suicide and some of these people would believe it.
No. People like Thompson and Wecht aside, Kennedy assassination aficionadoes are drawn to a certain conception of public life and a certain assessment of themselves in contemplating that public life. The late Richard Grenier offered the view picking over some of this literature that they aren’t of the conventional left or right and that prominent leftists of various stripes tend to be dismissive of them (he mentioned Alexander Cockburn in particular). There’s a reason James Fetzer and Morgan Reynolds hold to conspirazoid conceptions of 9 / 11 and these assassinations now nearly two generations past, and it hasn’t a thing to with similar fact patterns.
I don’t know who Wecht and Thompson are, but I know who Robert Blakey was, and the House Select Committee on Assasinations investigation he lead, came to the conclusion that there was another shooter. Moreover, Blakey said long after that, that the investigation was flawed because CIA deceived him. And that they have an institutional culture of deceit or words to that effect.
The conclusion you’re referring to was based on acoustical evidence that was called into question immediately upon the report’s publication and definitively discredited by a report of the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. David Belin, interviewed at the beginning of 1979 about the acoustical evidence noted (among other anomalies) that features of the recording suggested that it wasn’t taken in Dealy Plaza. That was later demonstrated.
https://freepress.org/article/did-cia-try-thwart-nation%E2%80%99s-last-investigation-president-kennedy%E2%80%99s-assassination
“The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation,” says G. Robert Blakey, the former general counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which issued its report in 1979.
“It is time that either Congress or the Justice Department conducts a real investigation of the CIA,” Blakey said at a conference last month. “Indeed, in my opinion, it is long past time.”
Blakey, shown at left, urged the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to comply promptly with a federal law unanimously passed by congress in 1992 requiring release of JFK records.
Archives leadership refuses to release the documents until 2017 without CIA or presidential approval. The CIA has said it lacks the personnel to process the documents sooner in ways that protect national security.
But at what point does refusal to cooperate with a murder investigation signify a broken system?
As part of our ongoing Justice Integrity Project Readers Guide to the JFK murder, today’s column examines Blakey’s allegations. They exemplify the intelligence community’s ongoing resistance to congressional oversight. A future column here will examine evidence that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had secret working relationships with the CIA and FBI.
Today, we focus on the late CIA officer George Joannides, at right, the agency’s liaison to Blakey’s congressional staff as they reexamined the validity of the 1964 Warren Commission report on JFK’s murder.
Blakey’s written statement here attacked Joannides for obstructing the congressional probe under the pretense of help. Blakey announced his views Sept. 26, 2014 at a three-day conference in Bethesda, MD organized by the non-profit Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).
The AARC conference title was “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures.” Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren had led the seven-member commission, which included former CIA Director Allen Dulles among its membership of high-ranking federal officials and former officials.
The commission announced that Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, had acted alone in killing Kennedy with three shots from behind.
Blakey and two fellow congressional researchers, Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway, said at the AARC conference they will seek missing CIA records about JFK later this fall — unless the Archives complies with their recent request.
Critics have long attacked the Warren report as a whitewash. Some critics cite medical and other scientific evidence to show that it was impossible for Oswald to have accomplished the crime alone, especially if Kennedy’s fatal shot was from the front.
Others argue the commission intentionally covered up embarrassing if not criminal ties between itself, the FBI, Oswald, the Cuban exile community, and/or such organized crime leaders as Carlos Marcello, whose turf included the Gulf State region encompassing New Orleans and Dallas.
The CIA had the motive and opportunity for a cover-up and a killing, critics have alleged in multiple books, including JFK and the Unspeakable by peace activist James Douglass, JFK by the late Pentagon liaison to the CIA and Air Force Col. Fletcher Prouty, and Breach of Trust by historian Gerald McKnight.
Some in the Cuban exile community, CIA and elsewhere regarded JFK “as a traitor,” as Prouty wrote before his death in 2001 and as former Cuban militant leader Antonio Veciana told the AARC gathering last month.
Veciana is now 86 and was the victim of a shooting in the head in 1979 after he revealed his experiences to House investigators. He formerly led the Cuban exile anti-Castro military operation Alpha 66, a major opponent of both Castro and Kennedy.
Veciana described last month how he saw his CIA handler, David Atlee Phillips, meet Oswald in the lobby of a Dallas office building six weeks before the JFK shooting.
Phillips, a former actor and master of false identities, had nurtured the growth of the DRE, the acronym in Spanish for the Student Revolutionary Directorate, another of the most popular and important CIA-funded anti-Castro groups in the United States. In 1962, Phillips, shown at right, handed over DRE liaison to Joannides, according to historian John Newman, author of Oswald and the CIA and a speaker at the AARC conference.
Phillips was the CIA’s chief of Cuban operations in the CIA’s Mexico City office in 1963, and after retirement founded the influential Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
Oswald In New Orleans
The Warren report’s theory of the assassination depends in part on Oswald’s activities during several months in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 before the Nov. 22 assassination of Kennedy that year.
Oswald, an ex-Marine and former defector to the Soviet Union, worked during the early part of the summer as a maintenance man at the Reily Coffee Company, whose owner is reputed by historians to have been involved with the CIA and anti-Castro actions.
In August 1963, New Orleans police arrested Oswald, shown at right, after he distributed pro-Castro literature on a downtown street and brawled with anti-Castro activists from the DRE.
Oswald then generated newspaper coverage by debating on radio the local DRE leader, Carlos Bringuier — whom Oswald had privately visited previously in seemingly friendly fashion at Bringuier’s clothing store. That visit was one of many curious activities by Oswald that undercuts conventional wisdom.
In September, Oswald traveled to Mexico City for still-disputed purposes.
The CIA reported that it lost or destroyed key documentation, including a tape recording purportedly showing Oswald (or an imposter) talking with Soviet embassy staff in Mexico City. Voice analysis showed that the purported “Oswald” on the CIA tape was someone else, according to a now-public confidential briefing from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination.
Even so, the Warren Commission report and the media focused almost entirely on the theory that Oswald was a leftist misfit and murderer. It disregarded evidence that authorities used him as a patsy or that he was a low-level government operative acting under instructions.
Blakey’s Background As Congressional Investigator
In June 1977, HSCA Committee Chairman Louis Stokes (D-OH) hired Blakey as chief counsel. Blakey was a Cornell University law professor after an illustrious career as a congressional staffer helping devise legal strategies against the mob, as I reported in a 2011 column, “Learning from Heroes Who Fought the Mafia.”
At the committee, Blakely succeeded Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague, whom the committee had forced out after Sprague and his deputy Robert Tanenbaum aggressively pursued conspiracy leads involving Phillips, among other CIA officials. As experienced prosecutors of many murder cases, Sprague and Tanenbaum wanted to follow evidence wherever it led.
Instead, Blakey deferred to the CIA, according to committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi, an independent-minded former magazine writer who described their experiences in The Last Investigation.
“Unlike his predecessor Dick Sprague,” Fonzi wrote, “Blakey saw nothing wrong in seeking a ‘working arrangement’ with one of the subjects [i.e. the CIA] of his investigation….Yet, in the end, Blakey was suckered.”
Fonzi’s book and many articles reported also how pressure by congress, including staff firings and tight deadlines, blocked a thorough congressional investigation of the JFK murder.
Blakey and his congressional team tried to explore, among other things, suspected relationships between Oswald, Cuban exiles and the CIA.
Investigators asked Joannides, for example, the name of the CIA case officer for the DRE.
Joannides denied the CIA was working in 1963 with the anti-Castro group. That, of course, frustrated document requests on the topic as the committee’s two-year existence sputtered to an end.
In fact, Joannides had been the CIA’s liaison for the DRE’s still-vibrant relationship in 1963 with the agency. Joannides, who died in 1990, had led the CIA’s anti-Castro psychological warfare operations among South Florida Cuban exiles.
The deception came to light because JFKFacts.org founder Jefferson Morley and his attorney James Lesar obtained CIA records during more than a decade of litigation in the federal civil case Morley v. CIA.
Lesar is a longtime specialist in federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) law who also leads the AARC as president.
Morley is a former Washington Post reporter who left the paper after it proved reluctant in his view to pursue leads in the JFK murder case. Morley authored the 2008 book, Our Man In Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA. Scott was the CIA’s station chief in Mexico City and helped the embassy foster fears in Washington immediately after JFK’s death that Cuban’s leader had ordered JFK’s murder. The trail implicating Castro, which most historians now dismiss as false, helped steer the Warren Commission into claiming to reduce world tensions that Oswald acted alone.
One secret CIA document even described the Joannides work with congress in the late 1970s as an “undercover” assignment — a remarkable description for the CIA in its work with elected officials who are supposed to supervise the agency.
A vivid perspective comes from two of Blakey’s researchers, his former Cornell law students Dan Hardway and Edwin Lopez.
Their assignment was to investigate CIA awareness of Oswald’s activities in Mexico City during a seven-day trip Oswald took in late September 1963. “Implicit in that assignment,” Hardway wrote, “was the issue of whether Mexico City indicated any operational connection between Oswald and the Agency.”
Hardway has described in two recent speeches and memos, available on the AARC website, how the CIA sought to control his part of the committee’s investigation.
Hardway said he received from a CIA liaison at the beginning of his work a flattering preliminary suggestion that he work for the agency.
But the agency increasingly gave Hardway and Lopez false information and withheld information, Hardway recalled, and then complained to the House committee chairman that Hardway and Lopez were behaving improperly as too aggressive.
In March 1979, the committee issued a 686-page report (not counting 12 volumes of exhibits) that concluded that Kennedy was probably killed in a conspiracy by Oswald and other unknown persons. The committee suppressed Lopez and Hardway research, a 300-page document that has become known as the “Lopez Report.” In 1993, the Lopez Report was released in redacted form, available here.
At the committee’s 1979 press conference announcing the public committee report, Blakey provided his personal view that the Mafia had been involved in JFK murder planning. He repeated that theme in two books and last month at the AARC conference.
Last month, Blakey says he still believes that Oswald killed Kennedy. Blakey also fielded a question on whether he believed in the commission’s so-called “Single Bullet Theory.”
“Yes!” Blakey responded. The Single Bullet Theory advocated by the Warren Commission majority (but with a dissent long hidden from the public) is that one bullet fired by Oswald caused seven wounds in JFK and Texas Gov. John Connally and then emerged in near-pristine condition. The purported bullet is shown at right after allegedly found on a hospital stretcher.
Why Care About What’s Next?
Blakey’s criticism of the CIA for lying to congressional investigators is significant regardless of what the still-hidden evidence might show. In a sense, his continued support for the Warren Commission’s main conclusions on Oswald’s guilt and the Single Bullet theory helps underscore the diversity of those calling for release of secret evidence.
Blakey made his allegations most formally in an eight-page letter, which is now on the AARC website, which contains also a link to his former researcher Hardway’s recollections.
Hardway, an attorney based in West Virginia, said he has come to believe that Blakey, while showing a certain “naïveté” toward to the CIA’s intentions at the beginning, ultimately did the best he could in gaining access to CIA records in the face of the “political reality” of the agency’s power in the nation’s capital.
“Given those constraints,” Hardway said, “I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Bob for getting us to where we are today.”
Regarding ultimate guilt, Hardway wrote in 2013 after remaining away from research for many years, “I still believe it is more probable than not that there was an intelligence operational involvement in the assassination. We may never know how closely Phillips worked with Joannides.”
Official Responses To Requests for CIA Documents
Morley and Lesar have identified 1,171 CIA documents that the CIA and Archives have refused to release on national security grounds until 2017. Morley fears the agency will stall again on delivery in 2017. Aside from that prediction, the last witnesses and suspects in the JFK murder are dying off, hindering further investigation.
In response, NARA Public Affairs and Communications Director Miriam Kleiman told me, “We are on track to release the remaining withheld information by 2017, as the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 requires.” She directed me to a 2012 letter from NARA General Counsel Gary M. Stern to Lesar providing reasons for delay.
More generally, Hardway recalled an incident that summarized his observations during his year of work from 1977 to 1978. He said he and Fonzi showed their credentials to a retired CIA officer in Florida prior to an interview.
“So you represent congress,” the officer said. “What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in a few years, and the CIA will still be here.”
“That,” Hardway wrote, “really sums up a lot of the problems that we had.”
No News Is Good News?
In last month’s conference, Blakey said the CIA’s misconduct hurt the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB), which congress created to administer the 1992 JFK Act following public outrage triggered by Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK.”
“I believe,” Blakey continued, “that this rises to the level of probable violation of the law that prohibits impeding the due and proper inquiry of a committee of Congress….I no longer trust anything that the Agency [the CIA] has told us in regard to the assassination.”
Official Washington mostly ignores these disputes, or treats them as trivia that will vanish in good time.
Neither President Obama, nor congress, nor the media have paid much attention. A rare exception in the mainstream media has been Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender, who attended the AARC conference and published a column Oct. 15, “Answers sought on CIA role in ‘78 JFK probe.”
To date, the CIA has not explained why it misled Robert Blakey, congress, the Warren Commission and the public.
At this point, only an informed public can assess whether the congressional probe was “The Last Investigation” — or was a stepping stone to a new commitment to the truth about a president’s murder that continues to taint American public life.
What Blakely and others consistently fail to mention is that the Committee confirmed virtually every aspect of The Warren Commisions conclusions, and found nothing to support a conspiracy.
Then the “experts” produced the bogus evidence based on “accoustical patterns” that “with 95% certainty ” that more than 3 shots were fired”.
The problem is that the dictabelt tape that “the experts” studied recorded those “accoustical patterns about 2 minutes after the JFK limo raced from the scene to Parkland.
So the Committe was “turned around” late in its investigation by junk scuence; absent that bkgus “accoustical evidence”, that committe had uncovered nothing that showed the existence of a conspiracy.
Frank Sturgis was said by many to be part of the hit squad, who knows.
I think Oswald was a lot more than a lone gunman. I am not sure if patsy or something else, who can say, but newly declassified documents complicate the simplistic rendering of the fallacious Warren report
you may want to update your studies on debunking all this
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/jfk-assassination-lone-gunman-cia-new-files-215449
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/03/new-batch-of-jfk-assassination-files-oswald-in-mexico-city-and-watergate-burglars/
Paul C. Schulte,,..
The paperwork on the purchase of Oswald’s rifle was examined.
I think he had it shipped to his P.O. BOX under the name of one of his aliases, A. Hidell.
That Hilell I.D. was found on Oswald after he was arrested at the movie theater.
Additionally, there is a photo of Oswald with the rifle. And his wife knew where he kept the rifle in the garage of the house where she was living.
When officers came to her residence, she led them to where is was normally stored; it was gone.
There is also the issue of Oswald’s .38, which killed Officer Tippet.
Tom Nash – I think he is guilty as hell for Tippet. However, how do we know that LBJ did not secretly send that rifle to him at that P.O. Box? Hmmm???? Hmmm????? Who gains most in all of this?????
[]David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after two months, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – and you seriously cannot spell. I thought you claimed to have a Cambridge Dictionary?
DB Benson,..
No, he presented a set of actual FACTS which you can not dispute.
You are “delusion” if you think that you can make facts disappear with a wave of your Magic Wand.
The Widow was kiiiilled when the plane she was on bleew up What are the stats on how many times that happens? LOL)
flying into Chiraq on her way to spill the beans on , minutes before, what she knew.
Did you read any of the gov mat. Trump released on 26 or 27, Oct 2017?
Proves at least 2 shoooters, etc…,, etc….,,
Mean while for a moment back on the topic of this thread, please tell us the names of the banker families out of the US, UK & west Europe that sent train loads of gold to finance their Bolshevik Revolution, muuurder the Romanov family that brought in the Commies?
Howard Hunt’s 1st wife died in December 1972 in a plane crash in Chicago. The plane did not blow up and about 1/3 of the people on board survived. His 2d wife was married to him at the time of his death and currently lives in Dallas.
The Widow was killed when the plane she was on bleew up What are the stats on how many times that happens? LOL)
flying into Chiraq on her way to spill the beans on , minutes before, what she knew.
Did you read any of the gov mat. Trump released on 26 or 27, Oct 2017?
Proves at least 2 shooters, etc…,, etc….,,
Mean while for a moment back on the topic of this thread, please tell us the names of the banker families out of the US, UK & west Europe that sent train loads of gold to finance their Bolshevik Revolution, muuurder the Romanov family that brought in the Commies?
Again, you’ve confused his 1st and his 2d wife. His 2d wife is the widow and she currently lives in Dallas. His first wife died in a plane crash in Chicago in December 1972. The plane did not blow up and 1/3 of the people on board survived.
TS to Dance…
– I think $10,000 in cash ( c.$ 60,000-$70,000 in 2018 $$$) was found in Mrs. Hunt’s possesions pulled from the wreckage.
She was likely an intermediary in the delivery of “hush money”, and the discovery of that currency was a boon to investigators.
The Widow was kiiiilled when the plane she was on bleew up What are the stats on how many times that happens? LOL)
flying into Chiraq on her way to spill the beans on , minutes before, what she knew.
Did you read any of the gov mat. Trump released on 26 or 27, Oct 2017?
Proves at least 2 shoooters, etc…,, etc….,,
Great, it finally starts posting so you can read & reread lol.
No, no one has proved there were 2 shooters. No clue where you pick up this rubbish.
“Teaching Spastics to Dance says: July 19, 2018 at 12:53 AM
No, no one has proved there were 2 shooters. No clue where you pick up this rubbish.”
You must have missed it, AlexJone/Infowars/Roger Stone kept the pressure on Trump from before he was elected, he said he would release it all.
Trump fulfilled his promise & released almost all of the gov’s remaining JFK report on Oct 26 or 28, 2017.
In which there was the Surgeon General’s report that the Trac cut below the adams apple was to hide the bullet hole threw the throat, aka the 2nd shooter!
There’s much more, like the incoming bullet hole threw the front windshield.
It’s public now all you have to do is look it up & read it.
I understand that at least part of the unreleased info is about the Son of A Nazi, GHW Bush & his connection to JFK/Dallas.
Or maybe you’re just another that foolishly slanders Jones/Infowars/Stone & you’ll just have to what on the Wapo/NYT/CNN to tell you the same in 5-10 years like a very small few others.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report
Again, the acoustical evidence was definitively discredited in 1981 by the National Academy of Sciences. Avocational researchers had previously provided proofs of it’s unreliability. As early as January 1979, David Belin pointed out that the committee’s acoustical experts had paired particular ‘shots’ with particular frame numbers on the Zapruder film and that if you took them seriously, they had Lee Harvey Oswald shooting at the presidential limousine through a tree in full foliation. I have no clue why you’re pushing this rubbish on this thread. The matter was settled 37 years ago.
Charlatons like Blakely fails to mention that little detail ( the discredited “acoustical evidence”) in hawking their conspiracy theories.
It was that one piece of junk science that turned the Committee around, and led them to the “likely conspiracy” conclusion.
Robert Blakey is not a charlatan. He is respected by government and academia, Republicans and Democrats. And pretty much his entire career, and incredible career as a lawyer and professor. He is retired now.
And his comments on being mislead by the CIA are germane to understanding their culture of deceit.
Mr. Kurtz,..
I have watched a number of interviews with Blakely.
He mentions the “conspiracy” conclusion frequently.
I have NEVER seen him mention that the expert “accoustical evidence” that produced the “conspiracy conclusion” was discredited.
If he’s “well respected”, I can’t account for why a charlatan and a liar would be “well respected”.
But hey, that’s just my opinion, and if people want respect a liar and a charlatan, that’s their business.
Well, Mr Kurtz given that LBJ totally ignored the plight of the USS Liberty AND covered it up — with every successive president and administation continuing to there is THAT
Nothing was covered up. The subject is velcro for vicious crackpots.
Do you credit James Bamford? He is usually considered an expert on the NSA and covered the topic in one or two of his books.
again, most people have never heard of it. and among those who have, a lot of people are obsessed with the USS liberty incident and, maybe, perhaps, overplay its significance.
I can accept that the Israelis did not want anything to foil their surprise attack and that’s why they sunk it. It was a choice of a sovereign belligerent, maybe a hard choice, but a necessary one in their choice to launch their war. They were willing to risk it. It was an act of war but war on the US was not the intention. It was a “wrong place wrong time” situation. Well, I dont know but that is the best I can make of it, playing the devil’s advocate. I never liked the story once I learned it but I can see their possible stratetic perspective.
And it came at the expense of US sailors and intelligence personnel. A political choice was made to downplay it on the part of American government. That choice has been ratified ever since. Maybe not because American government approved of it but maybe because nobody ever thought there was much to gain by discussing it. So it is a matter of please ignore this and move on. I am just trying to make sense of why choices have been made not to cover the topic at length.
Politicians at the highest level get a lot of conflicting information, and the world is filled with scary bad things happening. Politicians elected get to choose what way to go and what way not to go. That’s our system. JFK made his choices, LBJ made his, Nixon made his. They might have all decided their precessors differently but once in charge did not revisit certain choices.
Trump is making a lot of choices as the top guy, on what kinds of mischief by our “competitors” to make a big deal out of and what not. Meuller’s fault in a way and Rosenstein’s, is that they seem to be rowing upstream from legitimate political diplomacy and undermining the CIC.
“I can accept that the Israelis did not want anything to foil their surprise attack and that’s why they sunk it.”
There are a lot of theories and there are the junk theories provided by the likes of Autumn. I don’t know what happened. The Israelis certainly didn’t want to alienate America.
A book was written by Tom Loftus “The Secret War Against the Jews” and you might want to read it. Loftus is a Catholic who was given top secret clearance to all sorts of records and that clearance was augmented to code secret far higher than top secret. I read his book and had the opportunity many years ago to speak to him personally. He made a fair and very good case and while I believe in his integrity I can never know with absolute certainty that his opinion was the right one. Apparently, no one knows for sure and certainly not the actual participants for they were only arms and legs, not the ones creating policy. The Israelis and Americans put that story aside, but the anti-Semites have used that story to paint their own picture when there is no way in hell anyone really knows what happened.
Ask yourself what type of ship it was, why it was where it was and why communication with its base ship could not be made. Ask yourself why only people in a certain location were killed. The Israelis had the flying capacity to sink the ship immediately and kill everyone on board. Why was the ship shot at wildly and did that get people away from danger? Ask yourself what would have happened to Israel if some externality turned the war around? Ask yourself how many mistakes might have been made by fallible human beings. The questions become so complex that there might never be a perfect answer.
Again, people pushing Autumn’s preferred thesis have been reduced to inventing hypothetical military operations to conceal because nothing known of Israel’s military operations would explain why they would attack the U.S.S Liberty. Here’s a hint: their assumptions are wrong, and for reasons they do not want to admit to.
Bamford is yet another ‘investigative journalist’. There are three problems with ‘investigative journalists’: (1) if you’ve got not scandal, you’ve got no book; they take advances and their publishers want sales; (2) no one checks their work and much of it is unverifiable; (3) journalists give them professional courtesies; some of them have stepped on enough toes over the years (Seymour Hersh) that they will be smacked in reviews, but as a general review nothing is so implausible that the reviewer or reporter won’t take it at face value as a professional courtesy. See, for example, Bob Woodward’s claim that he’d had 12 hours of interviews with Wm. J. Casey while the man was bedridden during his final illness (and managed to get past hospital security, the nursing staff, Casey’s wife, and Casey’s daughter). He was treated respectfully by the media even when Sophia Casey said, publicly and insistently, that he was lying his tuchus off.
For sure covered up. Never a real investigation even by the last Dim who served Jimmy Carter.
Aware of the USS Liberty. And aware that aid to Israel went up a lot under LBJ.
I see no evidence or plausible hypothesis that could put the blame for JFK on Israelis. I have heard that a lot and it lacks no factual support at all. You could come up with a lot more plausible notions than that.
However Sy Hersh did say that JFK wanted them to give up Dimona I think, in his book the Sampson option. So they may not have liked that. But there are no facts to support blaming them for it at all. Not that I have ever heard or read. But what do I know. Some people will blame Israelis for anything. It kind of reminds me of the Democrats who blame Russians for everything sometimes.
Israel has stated their self preservation policy is to usher in global nuclear winter if they perceive that someone intends to take back their alleged God-ordained land (still waiting to see God’s signature on the deed).
JFK “forbade” Israel’s request to go nuclear. Considering they’d end life on earth to maintain their land grant, they’d certainly and positively enter JFK’s name to a Kill List for the same reason. Heck, Obama incinerated two American citizens with a drone without judicial charge. Obama entered the name Anwar Al-Awlaki to Obama’s Private Kill List. The two killed were father and son by the same name, the son being a child only age 16. All in the name of democracy, right?
Joseph Jones:
Exactly right. Lincoln invinerated hundreds of thousands of equally rebellious American citizens on their own land without judicial charge or hearing. Hell 2/3rds of Pickett’s command in one battle. No crime there either except by the incinerated.
Israel has stated their self preservation policy is to usher in global nuclear winter if they perceive that someone intends to take back their alleged God-ordained land (still waiting to see God’s signature on the deed).
In your imagination only. Israel has never made a public point of having nuclear weapons technology. Obama insisted on making disclosures out of spite.
They have them for sure, no admission is needed. Martin van creveld said about 200. that is not enough warheads to make nuclear winter. the RUSSIANS are the one that have a lot lot more and we need to worry about nuking us.
I don’t know of any credible evidence that suggests Israelis were part of cabal to assassinate JFK and yet there is plenty of evidence that there was such a cabal and how it operated.
I think you can blame Israelis for plenty of bad things that may have come at America’s expense, and, certainly the USS Liberty is an example. JFK Is not.
JFK may have opposed the work at Dimona but as far as I have read, he did nothing to stop it.
“I think you can blame Israelis for plenty of bad things that may have come at America’s expense, and, certainly the USS Liberty is an example.”
Mr. Kurtz if you can ask that question should not the alternative question be asked?
You can blame the Americans for plenty of bad things that may have come at Israel’s expense, and, certainly, the USS Liberty is an example.
I’m not saying one thing or the other, but there was a spy ship in an awkward place at an awkward time. For all you know, a wrong decision might have been made by the wrong person on either side or both sides or even neither side.
Ever read about flight 655, The Iranian plane shot down by the ship USS Vincennes? Formal hearings were held to determine who was at fault. I think they blamed Captain Rogers for the incident but later a very qualified individual went over all the data to come up with a new story. It demonstrates how difficult it is to draw conclusions regarding this type of incident. After reading Klein’s account I felt Rogers should never have been blamed. When push comes to shove we frequently blame the subordinates while playing Monday morning quarterback.
You might find the story interesting. It is a small portion of a book called “Sources of Power” by Gary Klein. Very informative on a whole host of issues. At Amazon, you can read most of the story that occupies maybe a dozen pages by searching for flight 655.
interesting thought, thank you
Aware of the USS Liberty. And aware that aid to Israel went up a lot under LBJ.
American aid to Israel was inconsequential prior to 1973. The run up in American aid was a function of various efforts to broker a settlement between Israel and various Arab parties. It was contextually quite large ca. 1984, then went into terminal decline.
There is plenty of evidence that suggests LBJ was most favorably inclined to Israel. That is the conclusion of this, you may let us know if you can show this conclusion is flawed
https://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/abraham/publications/johnson_israel.pdf
I think the confluence between LBJ’s succession to JFK and the difference vis a vis Israel is coincidental, however.
Here is a blast from the past I found on the internet that’s kind of fun to read
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/07/archives/those-arabists-in-the-state-department-those-arabists-in-state.html
Mr Kurtz – didn’t we get caught breaking into Merkel’s phone?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-german-chancellery-decades-wikileaks-claims-merkel
oh but when they were doing the undermining of our gallant NATO allies it was all ok Paul you cynic you
Mr Kurtz – damn that good memory. And Benson thinks it is fading. 😉
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/farewell-address/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/07/butina-butts-in.php
Scott Johnson discusses the latest chump change – this time from a different set of Rosenstein’s minions.