Paperback preface of
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
by Peter Dale Scott
xiv. Cites A.J. Liebling on Chicago, "how difficult it was to separate
the power of the mob from the power of City Hall...whether the powers of
both were not a front for those private corporations who preferred
endemic corruption to the enforcement of laws against themselves."
Mario Brod, the case officer for Lucky Luciano in Italy became the
case officer for mafioso in Cuba in 1960-61.
xv. a recently declassified government document referring to "our
production of packaged radio programs for placement on radio stations
throughout Latin America"(cf. to INCA "truth tapes").
Howard Hunt had not retired from the CIA by the time of Watergate
(as Stephen Ambrose and Stanley Kutler have accepted), but was released
on covert assignment to the CIA-linked Robert Mullen PR agency.
xvi. Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis and Reinaldo Pico (all Watergate) were
involved in CIA information-gathering on Paulino Serra, a high-level 1963
disinformation campaign to embarrass RFK.
James McCord and David Atlee Phillips worked together on a CIA
counterintelligence and propaganda campaign against the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee.
Stephen Ambrose also accepted the claim that Richard Helms stood
firm against Nixon's attempt to use the CIA to cut off the FBI
investigation in Mexico, but in fact the CIA got proposed interviews
called off, including one with the CIA man who ran the electronic
intercept program which overheard Oswald. (also xxiii, note 14).
xvii-xix. Discussion of New York Times disinformation on the case. (also
xxiii, note 17, xxiv notes 19, 22)
xx. FBI "Agent-in-Charge Oliver 'Buck' Revell, a former Marine who
shifted to the FBI after he served as liaison for the investigation of
Lee Harvey Oswald. Revell was demoted from FBI headquarters to Dallas
after his controversial collaboration with Oliver North in the
Iran-Contra affair. Now retired from the FBI, he continues to speak out
on the Oswald case. He is also a lead spokesman for an Anti-Terrorism
Bill to restore the kind of centralized anti-terrorist powers which he
and North once enjoyed together."
xx-xxi. Random House and Newhouse discussed, 1981 aid to Mob. (also xxv,
notes 34, 35, 36, 39.)
xxv, note 29. False information from William Roemer in Posner.
note 31. CIA fronts critical of conspiracy books.
How to Solve a Murder: The Forensic Handbook
by Michael Kurland
pp. 5-6 "...in localities where the forensic specialists are less than
well trained, their tendency is to find what they expect to find and to
dig no deeper. This is especially true of regular hospital pathologists,
untrained in the criminal aspects of medicine, who are asked to perform
forensic autopsies in jurisdictions that cannot afford the services of a
full-time medical examiner. Medical pathologists are trained to identify
disease, not crime. They look for pathogens, not poisons; heart attacks,
not injections of insulin or the track of an icepick skillfully inserted
in the ear.
"On the reverse side of the coin there exists the terrible danger
that an overzealous, poorly trained technician will read more into a
crime scene's physical exemplars than the evidence warrants...
"This raises the even more frightening specter of the venial
technician, interested more in pleasing the police or district
attorney--and thus enhancing his own career--than in determining the
truth and protecting the rights of the accused. In Texas a medical
examiner recently was found to have fudged the results of hundreds of
autopsies...to get the results the police wanted....In New York
State...there is an ongoing investigation of technicians in the State
Police who may have forged the fingerprints of suspects to strengthen the
cases against them."
pp. 8-9: Scale for evaluating guilt (10-15 score before a case is worth
pursuing).
MOTIVE
0 No evidence suspect ever met the victim or had any reason to have
ill feelings about the victim.
1 The suspect and victim were rivals, but not bitterly.
2 The suspect and victim had been heard to have argued.
3 The suspect believed the victim had wronged him, and was believed to
be brooding about it.
4 The suspect believed the victim had done him great wrong, and told
friends he was just waiting for a chance to get his hands on the victim.
5 The suspect had just been victimized by the victim, and had been
seen with a weapon, pursuing the victim, muttering death threats.
MEANS
0 The suspect was physically unable to have committed the crime.
1 The suspect was not known to own the weapon, but knew how to use
one.
2 The suspect was an avid hobbyist user of that type of weapon, and
owned quite a collection.
3 Evidence from the victim's body linked the murder to the type of
weapon used by the suspect.
4 The suspect was seen with such a weapon prior to the crime, but
claimed it had been stolen from him.
5 Evidence from the victim's body had the suspect's fingerprints on
it; DNA evidence from the scene matched the suspect.
OPPORTUNITY
0 The suspect was at the White House, having lunch with the President
at the time of the murder.
1 The suspect said he had been playing poker with three close
buddies, who back up his story.
2 The suspect claims to have been to a play, and even has the ticket
stub, but saw nobody he knew there who could corroborate his story.
3 The suspect was in the area of the murder, but nobody can place
him at the scene.
4 The suspect was seen leaving the scene but claims the victim was
dead when he arrived.
5 The suspect, weapon in hand, was found standing over the body of
the victim as the victim expired.
pp. 54-55 Repeats the misinformation from Michael Baden's book that an
inexperienced FBI photographer took the JFK autopsy photos.
pp. 122-124 Offers a basic, detailed physical identification form and
explanations.
The Dillinger Dossier by Jay Robert Nash
p. 177:"Where and when Piquett [Dillinger's mob-connected attorney] hit
upon the 'patsy' plan is not known. But Piquett did know, along with the
rest of the underworld, that Roger Touhy had been neatly framed as a
patsy for a crime he did not commit [p. 168:"the cosa nostra blew Roger
Touhy, an old man, to pieces with shotguns when he was finally released
from his long prison term; he knew too much, he could talk, so he was
murdered]. a frame engineered by the syndicate and gullibly prepared and
prosecuted by the duped Melvin Purvis of the FBI a year earlier. Other
famous patsies known to Piquett and the syndicate in 1934 were the
hapless bank robbers Adam Richetti and Pretty Boy Floyd, whom the FBI
wrongly tagged as the machine gunners in the Kansas City Massacre. So
strong was the FBI insistence that they were the killers that even to
this day [1983] most crime authorities completely overlook the fact that
the Kansas City affair was a syndicate-originated 'hit.'
"The patsy plan (where one man unknowingly assumed the guilt and
identify of another) was a sophisticated device developed and frequently
practiced by a syndicate whose identity was supposedly unknown to the
FBI."
Options: the syndicate provides a patsy; a patsy is supplied, and
the syndicate arranges his death; a patsy is told part of his role, but
not all of it.
Looking for the Enemy by Dr. Michael D. Morrissey
pp. 72-73 McGeorge Bundy drafts the pre-assassination (Nov. 21) version
of NSAM 273, which is apparently contrary to JFK's policy without having
discussed the Honolulu conferene with JFK. Bundy was a hawk with strong
ties to the CIA through his brother William Bundy, and his former Yale
professor Richard Bissell (CIA covert operations chief fired by JFK in
1961). He was JFK's personal liaison with the CIA, and the highest
national security official to remain with LBJ after JFK's death.
p. 108: Quoted Herman and Chomsky:"Most biased choices in the media arise
from the pre-selection of right-thinking people, internalized
preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of
ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is
largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the
realities of source and media organizational requirements and by people
at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement,
and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and
other market and governmental centers of power."(xii, Manufacturing
Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.)
pp. 115-121. How the media handles a conspiracy theory it
dislikes--Newsweek on the "October Surprise" story: label it a myth, call
it "a mother lode for conspiracy junkies" (thus not serious people), "the
key claims of the purported eyewitnesses do not hold up. What the
evidence does show is the murky history of a conspiracy theory run wild,"
superficially review only some of the evidence, avoid the most compelling
or persuasive evidence, label the story Old News, compare the conspiracy
theory to a virus "run wild," mention an unreliable source (preferably
far right) which advocates the conspiracy theory, misstate the content of
the theory, describe support for the theory as "boosting" the story,
claim it was piggybacked on a "real" story, find the theory dangerous,
allege that the conspiracy theory was foisted on the public by unnamed
instigators (a conspiracy), illogically allege that proof of one
conspiracy (Iran-Contra) proves the falsity of the other (October
Surprise) but don't explain this, treat issues of fact as an
afterthought, attempt to discredit researchers by misrepresenting their
work, confuse the researcher's politics with a fringe, rely on dubious
"evidence," ignoring mutually contradictory content, cite less convincing
arguments and examples and ignore compelling ones, accept documentation
that is heavily censored or written well after the fact and backdated,
express surprise at the lack of evidence in a place where it is unlikely
to be found, offer an alternative explanation (ignoring its
contradictions), compare believers in this conspiracy theory to those in
other "unacceptable" conspiracy theories.
pp. 121-123: How the media handles a conspiracy theory it is willing to
entertain: Newsweek on alleged foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor by FDR and
Churchill in a conspiracy to drag the U.S. into World War Two: call it
"among the great American conspiracy theories," call supporting arguments
"convincing," present a fair sampling of the evidence, ignore contrary
evidence, examine the "conspiracy's" long-term effects and legacies, but
still call conspiracy theorists "buffs" who are looking for a gimmick
that sells books, allow that the theory is Old News (relevant only to
history, not to current events), treat conspiracy theories in general as
wild and dangerous, suggest that conspiracy theorists are trying to trick
us, compare conspiracy theory to a fire that "sprang to life," was "fed,"
and "rekindled," softpedal the magnitude of crime due to its distance in
the past.
p. 123: Discusses when wrongdoing is Old News enough for the media to
admit: "Hoover's FBI was an American gestapo"(20 years after Hoover's
death), Reagan's Nicaragua policies were "bellicose" (10 years late), but
not Bush's policies in the Gulf War (current).
pp. 153-155: 1932, the Third International Conference on Eugenics,
members included: Mr.s H.B. Dupont, Harriman investment banker Col.
William Draper, Mrs. Averill Harriman (mother of recent Averill), Dr. J.
Harvey Kellogg (cereals), Maj. Leonard Darwin (son of Charles), two women
from Standard Oil families, a couple from the Phelps-Dodge mining
interests, and a nephew of J.P. Morgan. They unanimously elected Dr.
Ernst Rudin (architect of Hitler's racial hygiene policies) as President
of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.
Hitler's eugenics policies were supported by the Harriman-founded (1910)
Eugenics Record Office, which had tried to discredit 1915 studies showing
pellagra (whose victims were mostly rural poor and 50% black) could be
cured by a balanced diet (the ERO claimed pellagra resulted from a
genetic defect, the position of the National Pellagra Foundation which it
controlled), resulting in non-acceptance of the studies until the
mid-1930s, and 6 million more pellagra deaths.
p. 158: Robert McNamara (10-2-79 to international bankers group):
"...there are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion
people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more
quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way.
"There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go
up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and
decisively. Famine and disease are nature's ancient checks on population
growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene."