IP & War / The Murder of JFK, MLK etc.

Deliberate mis-info

"Halberstam won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his reporting on Vietnam. And he wrote two books on that subject: The Making of a Quagmire (1965), and The Best and the Brightest (1972). To read the two books today is a bit schizophrenic."
 
"In the first of a two part study, Jim DiEugenio reexamines, in the light of what we now know, the book which perhaps more than any other epitomized the accepted wisdom on JFK's role in US involvement in Vietnam." David Halberstam and The Second Biggest Lie Ever Told. Part One: Halberstam and Kennedy, 2011

The Murder of JFK, MLK etc.

"Cyril Harrison Wecht (born March 20, 1931) is an American forensic pathologist. He has been a consultant in numerous high-profile cases, but is perhaps best known for his criticism of the Warren Commission's findings concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy. - He has been the president of both the American Academy of Forensic Science and the American College of Legal Medicine, and currently[when?] heads the board of trustees of the American Board of Legal Medicine. He served as County Commissioner and Allegheny County Coroner & Medical Examiner serving the Pittsburgh metropolitan area." Wikipedia 
 
You only need to see this single lecture to know for sure that there was a CIA conspiracyA Case for Conspiracy with Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, June, 2017, SixthFloor Museum
 
Very good introduction and explanation of how the media have kept people in ignorance about the JFK assassination for the past fifty years: American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part I - What Happened?, June 2018, Ron Unz

 
 
"In this book, DiEugenio, who has been investigating the Kennedy assassination for ten years, expands on the major points brought out in JFK , the Oliver Stone movie. Both Stone and DiEugenio agree with Jim Garrison's findings that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, that members of the U.S. intelligence community were involved, that Kennedy was assassinated to allow U.S. foreign policy to be changed, and that the assassination amounted to a coup d'etat. While DiEugenio discusses Kennedy's rocky relationship with the CIA, he focuses on the Clay Shaw trial and the media's unfair depiction of Garrison as a crank. DiEugenio also points out that in 1975, both the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, as had Garrison, that Lee Harvey Oswald was linked with the CIA and Cuban exiles." Gary D. Barber. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case, 2. ed. 2012, by James DiEugenio
 
"Recently some 2,800 secret government files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released by President Trump. But Mr.Trump delayed releasing some 300 other files after last minute appeals from the CIA and the FBI citing "irreversible harm" to national security if he were to allow all the records out now. So, we now seem to have at least as many new questions about the Kennedy assassination as we have answers. In this Primal Interview, Paul Guggenheimer talks with forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, a longtime critic of the Warren commission and its' finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK on November 22, 1963. In 1972, Dr. Wecht was the first civilian given permission to examine the Warren Commission's evidence at the National Archives." Kennedy: The Endless Cover-Up by Cyril Wecht, November, 2017
 

JFK's Politics

'Historians of the Cold War have long criticized US leaders for unsophisticated and heavy-handed policies toward the Third World. Robert Rakove convincingly challenges this view, demonstrating that for a few years in the early 1960s, US decision makers embraced a remarkably nuanced, tolerant approach to India, Egypt, and other 'nonaligned' nations. The book fundamentally alters our understanding of John F. Kennedy and underscores the tragedy that occurred when subsequent presidents abandoned his approach. Anyone interested in the Cold War and the roots of present-day tensions between the United States and the developing world will gain much from this elegantly crafted, deeply researched study.' Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas, Austin. -- "Professor Gibson has written a unique and important book. It is undoubtedly the most complete and profound analysis of the economic policies of President Kennedy. From here on in, anyone who states that Kennedy was timid or status quo or traditional in that field will immediately reveal himself ignorant of Battling Wall Street. It is that convincing." -- James DiEugenio (author of Destiny Betrayed. JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison CaseKennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World, 2014 CUP, by Robert B. Rakove 
 
 
JFK's policy on Israel/Palestine is noted if not explained here. Jeffrey Blankfort - Are there Israel lobby gatekeepers and damage control squads on the Left?, 2014
 
"LBJ and Indonesia
As others have noted, foreign policy changed rapidly after Kennedy's death. Donald Gibson says in his book Battling Wall Street, "In foreign policy the changes came quickly, and they were dramatic." Gibson outlines five short term changes and several long term changes that went into effect after Kennedy's death. One of the short term changes was the instant reversal of the Indonesian aid package Kennedy had already approved. Hilsman makes this point as well: 'One of the first pieces of paper to come across President Johnson's desk was the presidential determination ... by which the President had to certify that continuing even economic aid [to Indonesia] was essential to the national interest. Since everyone down the line had known that President Kennedy would have signed the determination routinely, we were all surprised when President Johnson refused.' JFK, Indonesia, CIA & Freeport Sulphur, by Lisa Pease
 
Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalist Leaders, 2013, Philip E. Muehlenbeck OUP - Review: Philip E. Muehlenbeck's well-researched work offers a compelling challenge to the conventional wisdom of continuity in American Cold War foreign policy toward Africa. The book's deep examination of the courtship of African leaders by President John F. Kennedy provides a unique perspective on personal diplomacy, specifically, and U.S.-African relations, generally, during one of the more volatile periods of the Cold War. Although the author makes a persuasive case regarding the significance of Kennedy's leadership, the argumentation has its limitations.

Muehlenbeck's objective is to explore Kennedy's use of personal diplomacy with African nationalist leaders. To this end, the book offers detailed accounts of Kennedy's correspondence and face-to-face meetings with men from Julius Nyerere and Gamal Abdel Nasser to Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Ben Bella. Kennedy's most public and “overt” courting of African leadership was directed at Left-Liberal African nationalists, rather than their more conservative peers. Kennedy did not avoid statesmen like Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire or William Tubman of Liberia; he simply placed greater emphasis on getting to know and seeking to influence the rising generation of elites who had captured the imagination of much of Africa and the world. The book also chronicles the president's effort to establish a diplomatic team for Africa made of people who shared his perspectives and sympathies, who could credibly communicate with African governments, and who would provide some counterbalance to the Europe-centered approach of much of the foreign policy bureaucracy.

This volume is reminiscent of the best of traditional, “great man” histories and, in this regard, there is much of note. The top-down, multi-archival research base provides a detailed portrait of the administration's interactions with African dignitaries. Aside from the president, people like Mennen “Soapy” Williams, Barbara Ward, and Chester Bowles feature prominently. The tensions between Africanists and Europeanists in the State Department, as well as those between Kennedy and French leader Charles de Gaulle, crystallize on the page under the author's skillful hands. The text also offers both sides of interesting correspondence between Kennedy and various leaders. The author moves a seemingly peripheral issue—the Cold War battle for dominance of African civil aviation—toward center stage, adding to the holistic nature of this well-written text. Yet, the volume's reach exceeds its grasp.

The author's starting point is a comparison between Kennedy and his predecessor in the White House. Clearly, Kennedy spent a great deal more energy on African diplomacy than did Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Muehlenbeck's withering assessment of Eisenhower policy toward Africa is warranted. However, the book is much less persuasive in other crucial areas. For instance, the author's assertion that Kennedy's commitment to African decolonization placed the Cold War in the background does not withstand scrutiny. The author's documentation indicates that the exigency of the Cold War, in large part, drove Kennedy to appeal personally to nascent African leadership. Although Kennedy's tolerance for Pan-Africanism and neutralism may have been greater than Eisenhower's, Kennedy was not interested in allowing the Africans complete self-determination. Indeed, when it came to making a choice between African independence and Cold War/white nationalist needs, Kennedy sided against the Africans.

The author also asserts that Kennedy was an avid supporter of the civil rights movement, adding to his rapport with African leaders. Unfortunately, this argument is dubious given Kennedy's caution on domestic human rights issues. His efforts to derail the 1963 March on Washington find no mention in this volume. John Lewis, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist and speaker at the march, had his original remarks censored because of his condemnation of the federal government's inaction. Even though Kennedy personally wrote to a number of governors asking them to help end discrimination against African diplomats, the administration refused to safeguard nonviolent protesters throughout the South and never granted expatriate artist/activist Elizabeth Catlett a visa to return home, among other things. Perhaps Kennedy's effort to befriend African leaders was a way of engaging the global black liberation struggle without risking racial privileges.

Also noteworthy is the text's implication that Kennedy's charisma had a powerful motivating effect on many African leaders. Of course, the author acknowledges points of divergence between Kennedy's wishes and African actions. However, he seems to suggest that any convergence was the result of Kennedy's courtship. Ignoring black agency, Muehlenbeck implies—quite ironically—an agreement between Kennedy and Eisenhower that African leaders were easily influenced by the flattery of a little attention from the Great Powers. This problematic formulation is especially apparent in the chapter regarding the development of African civil aviation. Ostensibly of tangential significance, African landing strips and overflight rights became dramatically important during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The author attributes the willingness of African leaders to lock out Soviet aircraft from African airspace to the successful lobbying of State Department Africanists and the residual goodwill from Kennedy's strategy of personal diplomacy. However, it seems equally plausible that African leaders made their choices because they saw themselves as the only rational, objective parties standing between extremist factions prepared to destroy so much over something so small.

In the end, Muehlenbeck has provided a wide-ranging analysis of Kennedy's strategy of personal diplomacy with African statesmen. Despite its limitations, the work is a significant addition to the literature on U.S. diplomacy with Africa. As such it provides a thought-provoking opening, rather than a coda, to our ongoing analysis of Kennedy foreign policy." George White, Jr. The American Historical Review, Volume 118, 2013
 
 

JFK Peace Speech 1963

Recommended Literature

 
"If anyone believes the intel agencies today, we have completely lost it." Oliver Stone with James DiEugenio – “If JFK Were Alive Today”, 2017
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

US State Convicted on the Murder of Martin Luther King

"Dr. Martin Luther King’s family and personal friend/attorney, William F. Pepper, won a civil trial that found US government agencies guilty of assassination/wrongful death. The 1999 trial, King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators, is the only trial ever conducted on the assassination of Dr. King." Martin Luther King assassinated by US Govt: King Family civil trial verdictj,2015 by Carl Herman
 
 
 
 
"One of the most infamous and devastating assassinations in American history, the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was also one of the most quickly resolved by authorities: James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime less than a year after it occurred. Yet, did they catch the right person? Or was Ray framed by President Lyndon B Johnson and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover?

In Who REALLY Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?, Phillip F. Nelson explores the tactics used by the FBI to portray Ray as a southern racist and stalker of King. He shows that early books on King’s death were written for the very purpose of “dis-informing” the American public, at the behest of the FBI and CIA, and are filled with proven lies and distortions.

As Nelson methodically exposes the original constructed false narrative as the massive deceit that it was, he presents a revised and corrected account in its place, based upon proven facts that exonerate James Earl Ray. Nelson’s account is supplemented by several authors, including Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, Dick Gregory, John Avery Emison, Philip Melanson, and William F. Pepper. Nelson also posits numerous instances of how government investigators―the FBI originally, then the Department of Justice in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigators in 1978 and the DOJ again in 2000―deliberately avoided pursuing any and all leads which pointed toward Ray’s innocence." Who REALLY Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?: The Case Against Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover, April 3, 2018, Phillip H. Nelson