On this, the 45th anniversary of A Certain Event, I direct all readers to check out the most recent issuance of Oswald and the CIA by former Army intelligence officer John Newman. Even if you can't afford the book, even if you don't have the time to read the whole thing, run to the nearest Borders, order up a mocha and read the lengthy "update" section in the back. That's where the new info is.
You can follow Newman's argument even if you haven't read the preceding material. The new piece, which centers on the mysterious trip to Mexico, may be the most important and intriguing essay on the assassination I've ever read.
In essence, Newman solves the case. That is to say, his excruciatingly-detailed documentation and reasoning direct his attention to the same CIA insider that I have long considered Suspect No. 1. For over a decade, I have felt that this individual had the motive and the contacts to mastermind the crime. Newman not only fingers the same suspect, he provides persuasive evidence.
And that man is...
(Hee hee. This is how Dan Brown writes bestsellers, isn't it?)
24 comments:
I wonder if our incoming president has ever expressed an opinion about this still-unprosecuted crime.
What an amazing coincidence that future presidents #37 and #41 just happened to be in Dallas that day (along with #35 and #36, who were riding in the motorcade). And future president #38 was named to the commission that investigated the murder. Talk about a small world!
I tried to watch Oliver Stone's JFK movie tonight as it was aired on TV, but I simply can not stomach fake Southern accents for any cause.
I'd never watched an Olive Stone movie as yet, and I was shocked it was that bad...is he that lousy a director that he's unable to cast actors who can handle Southern accents?
No doubt Stone's an Obamabot. Obama's fake Southern preacher delivery is so heavy-handed and RANK amateur I'm shocked anyone can call him "eloquent" with a straight face. But, apparently millions can.
I haven't read up on JFK conspiracies, and I was sorely disappointed I couldn't watch the movie tonight....so I appreciate the reading recommendation, Joseph!
David Atlee Phillips?
If so, all of this should be of interest:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4681&st=0
If not, never mind.
Personally, I take a different approach to who done it, but as Joseph would rather I didn't get into it, I won't.
How could someone who doesn't even know what 'Borders' is have a clue anyway. (A chain of booksellers who lets patrons slop coffee on the books?)
zee, I think JFK is brilliantly directed. That said, I disagree with the decision to have Costner play Garrison with an accent. Garrison came from up north.
Which brings us to an interesting game: Who should have played Garrison if box office viability were no factor in the decision? The only actor big enough -- physically -- was Fred Gwynne. Maybe (at an earlier time) John Wayne. Wayne wouldn't have done it, of course. Bill Holden? Heh. That would have been cute, given Holden's ties to the CIA...
Accent issues aside, Joe Pesci is one of the few individuals who could have captured Dave Ferrie's crazy universe. I thought he was brilliant.
Oh...and go higher than Phillips.
Let's see...
James Jesus Angleton? Winston Scott?
Boston Boomer
Newman, an astute, under-the-radar Army intelligence alum, fingers Angleton through substantial evidentiary slogging. Still, no fingerprints, but the trail that leads from DeMohrenschildt (who even the Warren Commission felt queasy about) to J. Walton Moore on the ground in Dallas and over to William Harvey and JJA is intriguing. Besides emerging dementia, raging alcoholism flips the tripwire all along the DeM-Harvey-Angleton linkage.
Robert Trumbull Crowley?
Ken, we're talking about NEW stuff, okay? I was done with Lifton before you were born.
Zee...I'm so tempted to tell Joe to just ban you. Condemning a brilliant film (best of the '90s, if you ask me) because the accents are overdone? This isn't the blog for you.
On the subject of who could've played Garrison other than Costner (who I think did a great job with the role, accent and all)...well, I tried Googling around to find out who else Oliver Stone considered and got nothing. Off the top of my head: James Garner? (Fred Gwyne is a brilliant suggestion, Joe.) For some reason I also want to say William Hurt. Still, I'm glad they went with Costner. Curiously, I just read that he initially passed on the film (couldn't find out why).
Here's another vote for "JFK" being a brilliant film. It is on my all-time Top Ten list. And yes, I am a professional movie critic.
I have had the opportunity to discuss conspiracy theories with the very well-informed Oliver Stone, whose audio commentaries on the new "JFK" box set are remarkable. (However, he did scoff when I insisted that Bush 43 was wearing an earpiece during the first debate with Kerry.) When I half-seriously showed Stone that the Hebrew lettering on Jack Ruby's grave is a mirror image of the word "Nixon," Stone said I was even loonier than he was.
Try it for your own amusement: Jack Ruby's grave
James Woods for Garrison, especially the manic obsession later on. Not sure that he's considered sexy enough to pull in movie goers but I think he would have done a great job when the film was made. Now, he's tarnished his name with that terrible TV show.
CIA insider: George H.W. Bush? pure guess on my part. I know he's mentioned in a couple of CIA memos back then and Prouty goes around & around about him. Damn, I wish I'd read this yesterday when I was at Union Square right by a Borders!
On All Things Considered about ten years ago a dialogue coach talked about Hollywood and accents, how Southern native Julia Roberts had to learn Hollywood's dialect for her role in Steel Magnolias, and apparently the Hollywood Southern dialect is based on Foghorn Leghorn. A true measure of Stone's JFK's greatness is if you can watch Costner's - there are no words for it except BACK AND TO THE LEFT - summation without thinking of Mel Blanc. Most important, if not for the fake accents how would future generations tell movies from YouTube captures?
"That said, I disagree with the decision to have Costner play Garrison with an accent. Garrison came from up north."
Oh, ouch! Even worse. I wasn't singling out any one actor, btw. The accents were atrocious. But how funny you mention Fred Gwynne alongside Joe Pesci...haha, they were together in My Cousin Vinny!
Nibbles, I'm sorry I'm the way I am. The fact that there are grating Southern accents is an insurmountable flaw to me. I can't sit back and suspend belief and enter what should be a cinematic recreation when every word screams "I'm acting!"
I don't care how brilliant any fatally flawed film is "otherwise." I remember a movie about Alice Little and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and everyone thought it was cast so brilliantly when in fact the actor cast as Rev. Dodgson was a craggy old man instead of the thin, "youthful looking" man of 30 he actually was when he first knew Alice. Unforgivable.
It's sad when a director's blind spot ruins an otherwise detailed endeavor. Artistry counts in a work of art.
Jack, Joe and others - what do you make of the fact that Oliver Stone's 'JFK' was financed by Arnon Milchan?
On Borders - they've recently opened a lot of stores in the UK, but I find it impossible to browse because of the loud music they play. The posers I can screen out, but not the musak. Once a guy next to me was supposedly reading a book and tapping it with his hand in time to the musak.
b
Joe - what motive do you propose Angleton may have had?
b
b, read Newman.
But you could supplement it with Robin Ramsey's book on Harold Wilson, and perhaps the other books to come in the wake of "Spycatcher."
Golitsyn also demanded an audience with JFK to lay out the theory that that Sino-Soviet split was fake. JFK blew him off. We've been talking a lot about narcissistic personality disorder lately, and if anyone was NPD, it was Golitsyn. How would he respond to a snub like that...? It's obvious.
By the way, b -- when dealing with loud muzak, you know what works? Complain to the manager. More than once. If possible, have friends complain.
I never gave the Milchan thing much thought. I know some people who were incredibly paranoid about him, but...so what?
And zee, you have to have a little leeway on the accent thing.
Clark Gable didn't even bother trying to talk like someone from Charleston. Vivien Leigh's accent was, I thought, quite good, but the Brit came through now and then; fair Olivia never struck me as a southerner.
In "Sound of Music" all the "good" Austrians speak with veddy proper English accents, und all der Nazi sympathizers are talking like ZISS, ja?
James Bond is Scottish, which means that every actor aside from Connery got it all wrong.
In "Song of Bernadette" (okay, I'm going through one of my Bernadette phases), Jennifer Jones talks American, the girl playing Toinette sounds like she came to the Pyrenees by way of West Texas, Vincent Price sound vaguely British (even though he was from St. Louis) and a few actors in minor roles actually try to sound French.
In "How Green Was My Valley" most of the "Welshmen" sound Irish -- what we might call "John Ford Irish."
Christopher Lee had maybe ten lines during his entire run as Dracula. He never talk-a like-a da Romanian. And did Peter Cushing, as Van Helsing, even TRY to sound Dutch? The book makes clear that both characters speak English with thick accents.
In the final "X-Files" movie (which I quite enjoyed) Billy Connally plays what I presume to be an Irish priest, yet he sounds like pure Glasgow.
I could go on in this vein for a good long time.
You actually liked the most recent X-Files film, Joe? I'm surprised.
Sorry, I have a hard time buying any of the "insider" conspiracy theories regarding JFK. If you are a CIA faction, you have many easier ways to get to the President than getting a bunch of people to shoot at a motorcade. All you'd need to do is have a little something slipped into his morning coffee, or into one of those drugs his doctor was always giving him. It's a lot easier to cover up a "sudden, unexpected heart attack" than a public shooting, and you'd need to control the autopsy in either case.
I once argued this point on an old BBS, and was told that the secret cabal needed to do it in public because "they wanted to send a message." Exactly why a secret cabal wanted to send a public message was never explained.
I've read Ramsay's book on Wilson. Angleton was crucial in spreading the 'Wilson is KGB' rubbish, and in setting the meme running which eventually led to Wilson's removal. Ramsay's book is OK but weakened by how he sees Wilson as someone who for policy reasons was anathema to the bourgeoisie. It's true a lot of them hated him (as I think was also true about FDR), but mainly this was because he was the Labour prime minister who took office when the Tories' public image collapsed as 'Victorianism' came to an end in a media bonfire in the early 1960s. He was from Yorkshire too, which doubtless didn't go down well. The industrial bourgeoisie didn't hate him particularly, even if he wasn't highly favoured on the grouse moors. (Nor have subsequent prime ministers been, although David Cameron is). Wilson's own background included involvement with SIS (in relation to western-backed business contracts in Eastern Europe post-WW2). Politicians don't have as much power as might be inferred from Ramsay's book. Wilson was scared sh*tless when he saw tanks at Heathrow airport. The one-page chapter in his book 'The Governance of Britain', entitled 'The Prime Minister and the Security Services' (if memory serves) is a hoot. When he left office, he asked 'Lord' Weinstock to find out what had happened. (I wonder how Weinstock got on with Angleton). I haven't read a great deal about Angleton, but from what I've read about him in a British context, he seems like a nutter. Last point: the change in the media spectacle in the UK in the early 1960s ('That Was the Week that Was', 'Private Eye', 'Beyond the Fringe') had a lot of spookoid/Oxbridge input. There are always some in the ruling elite who have a bit of sense, even a lot of sense - otherwise the entire elite is in big trouble. A look at 'Private Eye' is especially instructive. I'll look up Newman.
b
b, glad you read the book -- and wish I still had my copy. (It's really rare over here.) But understand that, for present circumstances, it's not about how you see Wilson but how his enemies saw him. This has always been the problem with the Cockburn/Chomsky position on JFK: To their eyes, the establishment had no beef with Kennedy, therefore there was no conspiracy to kill him. As Michael Parenti counter-argued, "Yeah, but did THEY see it that way? Intelligence operatives are notorious for not seeing things the way left-wing writers do."
Angleton was a nut indeed, but he a LOT of power, and he had a circle of contacts throughout the services. Moorer at Defense, Sullivan at FBI. He was given WAY too much credence by the Brits (hence the Wilson plot) and even by a faction within SDECE (specifically, de Vojilis).
The Angletonians had a headquarters in scenic Harper's Ferry, a clubhouse where they got together and made schemes, and also kept files. The Hoover blackmail files probably ended up there. The place mysteriously burnt down in the early 1970s, just as the larger CIA was turning against Angleton. At the same time, Sullivan was shot "mistaken for a deer."
I first learned about all that from a visit to Harper's Ferry back in the 1980s. The locals know the story, or at least they used to. That's what led to my interest in JJA.
The next step woudl be Tom Mangold's bio, incidentally. Well, maybe first interested parties should go here:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSangleton.htm
And here:
http://www.ctka.net/pr700-ang.html
http://www.ctka.net/pr900-ang.html
And the small bit about Newman at the end of this:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Assassinations_page/Enduring_JFK_Mystery.html
I know it's rather non-Marxist to argue that powerful nutjobs can change the world, but...
You're all wrong. It was Fidel Castro. And before you dismiss the moribund Comrade, think about this.
When have Republican and Democratic presidents EVER agreed on ANYTHING for over 50 years?? And why is it that once Fidel is dead, America can then start a dialogue??
Let's not forget that Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City two months before shooting Kennedy. And it's not like Kennedy wasn't trying to do the same thing to him.
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