MSM reports as we approach the 50th

[echelon]

[start edit]

I came back to this post after thinking about it during the day.  Perhaps it would be more useful to have a general thread in which members can record all interesting media reports in the lead up to the 50th, rather than just this particular one.  So I changed the title.  [Alan, can you move it to JFK General?]

What do you think?

Please feel free to add your own news stories.  Here is my first offering.

[end edit]

Oswald in Minsk (BBC report)

For members' interest, a BBC radio report from Minsk which attempts to follow in some of Oswald's footsteps.

Surprisingly balanced, I thought, for an MSM point of view:

Kate Adie (introduction): "It might be 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but there is still heated debate about the circumstances of his death, and particularly about Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of killing him."

KA: "... and he [David Stern] found that people there still remember Kennedy's supposed killer ...".

David Stern (reporter): "Lee Harvey Oswald - his name can evoke a range of emotions: anger among those who believe him to be the lone gunman who assassinated President Kennedy, militant disbelief among those who don't.  And perhaps most of all, a yearning among those who want to know what exactly happened during those fateful November days in Dallas ...".

DS:  "I was not hoping to find the smoking gun, so to speak, conclusive proof that Oswald was, in fact, Kennedy's killer.  No, too many people had sifted through the details of Oswald's life ... and failed to come up with any nugget of evidence."

DS:  [reporting Ernst Titovets] "I couldn't believe my ears.  I deeply believe he was innocent.  He was incapable of killing anybody."

DS:  "No-one believed that Oswald could have assassinated the US President."

DS: [reporting Vladimir Dzedovich (sp?)] "If [you] ever go to Dallas, [please] lay some flowers on Oswald's grave, from [me] and the other colleagues at the factory."

DS:  "Dzedovich's appeal came from the heart.  He obviously cared for Oswald."

Maybe, just maybe, there is hope that one day the MSM facade will crack.  (OK, lock me up).

Full report available from:  www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fooc/all

Scroll down to the August 17th edition and download to listen.

[Redfern]

I don't pay much attention to the media these days.

In fairness, most of the comments seem reasonable, although I suspect we'll see something of a LN onslaught in the months ahead.


The BBC lowered its standards on the 40th anniversary with a programme based on Gerald Posner's nonsense.

One senior journalist (Gavin Esler) and a prominent contrivbutor (David Aaronovich) bought into this.

[echelon]

I understand that this writer is an adherent of the Oswald-done-it theory.  Nevertheless, his article does illustrate nicely the stresses and strains between JFK and his military chiefs in the years leading up to Dallas.

We are free to decide if this adds weight to the MIC-done-it theory.

JFK vs. the Military
by Robert Dallek

The Atlantic
August 2013

From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased—or understandably frightened—to know that Kennedy distrusted America’s military establishment almost as much as they did.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff reciprocated the new president’s doubts. Lemnitzer made no secret of his discomfort with a 43-year-old president who he felt could not measure up to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former five-star general Kennedy had succeeded. Lemnitzer was a West Point graduate who had risen in the ranks of Eisenhower’s World War II staff and helped plan the successful invasions of North Africa and Sicily. The 61-year-old general, little known outside military circles, stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, with a bearlike frame, booming voice, and deep, infectious laugh. Lemnitzer’s passion for golf and his ability to drive a ball 250 yards down a fairway endeared him to Eisenhower. More important, he shared his mentor’s talent for maneuvering through Army and Washington politics. Also like Ike, he wasn’t bookish or particularly drawn to grand strategy or big-picture thinking—he was a nuts-and-bolts sort of general who made his mark managing day-to-day problems.

To Kennedy, Lemnitzer embodied the military’s old thinking about nuclear weapons. The president thought a nuclear war would bring mutually assured destruction—MAD, in the shorthand of the day—while the Joint Chiefs believed the United States could fight such a conflict and win. Sensing Kennedy’s skepticism about nukes, Lemnitzer questioned the new president’s qualifications to manage the country’s defense. Since Eisenhower’s departure, he lamented in shorthand, no longer was “a Pres with mil exp available to guide JCS.” When the four-star general presented the ex-skipper with a detailed briefing on emergency procedures for responding to a foreign military threat, Kennedy seemed preoccupied with possibly having to make “a snap decision” about whether to launch a nuclear response to a Soviet first strike, by Lemnitzer’s account. This reinforced the general’s belief that Kennedy didn’t sufficiently understand the challenges before him.

[...]

During the Cold War, LeMay was prepared to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. He dismissed civilian control of his decision making, complained of an American phobia about nuclear weapons, and wondered privately, “Would things be much worse if Khrushchev were secretary of defense?” Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy’s speechwriter and alter ego, called LeMay “my least favorite human being.”

The strains between the generals and their commander in chief showed up in exasperating ways. When Bundy asked the Joint Chiefs’ staff director for a copy of the blueprint for nuclear war, the general at the other end of the line said, “We never release that.” Bundy explained, “I don’t think you understand. I’m calling for the president and he wants to see [it].” The chiefs’ reluctance was understandable: their Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan foresaw the use of 170 atomic and hydrogen bombs in Moscow alone; the destruction of every major Soviet, Chinese, and Eastern European city; and hundreds of millions of deaths. Sickened by a formal briefing on the plan, Kennedy turned to a senior administration official and said, “And we call ourselves the human race.”

[...]

“The first thing I’m going to tell my successor,” Kennedy told guests at the White House, “is to watch the generals, and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”

Persuading the military chiefs to refrain from attacking the test-ban treaty in public required intense pressure from the White House and the drafting of treaty language permitting the United States to resume testing if it were deemed essential to national safety. LeMay, however, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, could not resist planting doubts: Kennedy and McNamara had promised to keep testing nuclear weaponry underground and to continue research and development in case circumstances changed, he said, but they had not discussed “whether what [the chiefs] consider an adequate safeguard program coincides with their idea on the subject.” The Senate decisively approved the treaty nonetheless.

This gave Kennedy yet another triumph over a cadre of enemies more relentless than the ones he faced in Moscow. The president and his generals suffered a clash of worldviews, of generations—of ideologies, more or less—and every time they met in battle, JFK’s fresher way of fighting prevailed.


www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/

[echelon]

A BBC Radio 4 programme on the Kennedy assassination.
First broadcast 1st September 2013.

In this special 100th edition of The Reunion recorded in Dallas, Sue MacGregor reunites five people who were intimately connected to the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination: Clint Hill, the former Secret Service agent who frantically climbed up the back of the presidential limousine as the shots rang out; Gayle Newman, who stood with her young family in Dealey Plaza and became one of the closest eyewitnesses; Hugh Aynesworth, then of the Dallas Morning News, who reported on the events in November 1963, Kenneth Salyer, who was part of the medical team at Parkland Hospital, desperately trying to revive the President; and James Leavelle, retired Dallas Homicide Detective, who was famously handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby.

Sadly, in the preamble to this programme it says:

In Dealey Plaza, Kennedy was shot in the head by an assassin's bullet. Less than half an hour after the shooting, 75 million Americans had heard the news. President Kennedy was declared dead at 1pm, Dallas time.  Within three chaotic days, three murders rocked the city of Dallas. After President Kennedy, police officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed by the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was later fatally shot on live television.

... but who knows, the interviewees might say something interesting (I haven't listened to it yet).  Probably they won't.

Actually, I don't know if our friends outside the UK can listen to this programme in any case, but please let me know.  I offer you two links that might work:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039b6w0

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b039b6w0/The_Reunion_The_Kennedy_Assassination/

[echelon]

[I feel as though I am talking to myself]

The JFK anniversary: What if Kennedy had lived?

The New Statesman
By James Blight and Janet Lang
15th August 2013

The two writers hypothesise about what might have happened had Kennedy lived.

www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/jfk-anniversary-what-if-kennedy-had-lived


Would the world have been a better place if John Kennedy had lived?

The Daily Telegraph
By Tim Stanley
8th August 2013

The writer takes offence (in advance) to almost every point raised by Blight and Lang!

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100230215/would-the-world-have-been-a-better-place-if-john-kennedy-had-lived/

[TLR]

Thanks for posting the Dallek article, Echelon. That was a good one. I wonder if Dallek and historians like him privately suspect something different about JFK's death, but fear it would not be "good for the country" to talk about it.

[TLR]

I'm reading Joseph McBride's new book Into the Nightmare. He was 16 when JFK was killed, came from a political family of activist Democrats, and was a big Kennedy fan (he actually met him a few times).

He describes how the entire country sat in front of televisions for 4 days being assured about the "orderly transfer of power," the "stability of the American system" during the non-stop news coverage with no commercials or other TV shows. He feels the public, and many people overseas, were lulled into a passive state of acceptance by the media, with people like Cronkite reassuring them that everything was OK, nothing would change, this random act of madness could not upset the American system.   

[echelon]

Investigative journalist Dr. Jerome Corsi tells NewsmaxTV that Oswald didn't act alone in assassinating President Kennedy.  Corsi says the CIA was involved in the killing that Corsi describes as a triumph of the "new world order".

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ-gC4p_lUE

[echelon]

[Text deleted - the system keeps chopping off the latter part of the post, and I haven't time to re-edit and repost it right now.

BTW I encounter this same problem on two different computer platforms.]

[Cutty]

^ Computer platforms? Such as Mac or Windows?

Did you see my reply to you, echelon, in another thread about trying alternate browsers? Helluva thing, most members aren't having the problem. We have seen updates to browsers cause some temporary incompatibility in the past and actually had a member unable to sign on from his computer yet he could go over to his sister's house and get in.

[echelon]

JFK vs. the Military
by Robert Dallek

The Atlantic
August 2013

From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased - or understandably frightened - to know that Kennedy distrusted America's military establishment almost as much as they did.

[...]

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/

Jeff Morley discusses Dallek's article over at JFK Facts:

Dallek would probably say there is no evidence to connect the Northwoods schemes to the events in Dallas. But the fact that the Northwoods documents were hidden from JFK investigators and the public for 35 years and were then uncovered by an independent civilian review panel looking for JFK assassination records is surely worth mentioning. Maybe Dallek will elaborate in his book.

Others see a media conspiracy to protect the national security state. I think Dallek()s all-too-typical lack of curiosity is more the product of a liberal culture where the efficacy and integrity of the federal government is idealized and [where] being perceived as a JFK conspiracy theorist imposes serious professional costs.

Outside of the the ivory tower and the newsrooms, where believing JFK was killed by his enemies does not have negative material consequences, I find people are much more open-minded about the causes of JFK()s assassination (hyphen) and often just as well informed.

One definition of denial is (quote) a state of mind marked by a refusal or an inability to recognize and deal with a serious personal problem (unquote). The reality of the JFK assassination story isn()t Dallek()s personal problem. But it is a serious national political problem that isn()t going away, even if professional historians shy from talking about it. Indeed we can already see that the JFK questions are returning in a media tsunami that will crest on November 22, 2013.

Dallek()s illuminating account of JFK()s struggles with the national security barons of his own government also illuminates the state of mind called denial.

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/dallek-denial-and-jfk-assassination-story/

[Some apostrophes, double apostrophes and hyphens removed.  The system appears to cut the text at the point they appear.  Other hyphens and apostrophes appear OK.  Weird!]

[echelon]

A BBC Radio 4 programme on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
First broadcast 15th September 2013.

On the evening of 22 October 1962 President John F Kennedy announced to a shocked American nation that Soviet missile sites had been discovered in Cuba. While much of the western world held its breath, terrified by the prospect of imminent nuclear war, what was happening in the USSR and Cuba? Until now little has been known about what was happening inside Khrushchev's Kremlin and Castro's Havana headquarters. Using documents from the KGB archive and interviews with key Soviet and Cuban insiders who were present as the crisis unfolded, the BBC's former Moscow correspondent Allan Little pieces together the "untold" side of the story.

Hopefully, if you are outside the UK you can still listen to this programme (45 mins).  Please let me know.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039kv61


[Admin, please can we move this thread to the general JFK board.  Thanks.]

[Cutty]

Yes, it plays fine, thank you! 

[echelon]

John F. Kennedy assassination: 50 years of conspiracy in fiction and film
By Colin Kidd

The Guardian
Friday 1 November 2013

The grassy knoll. The book depository. Any further description of the location is superfluous. We know where we are, and when. Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963: the scene of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. History assumes mythic proportions when its very familiarity requires no further explanation or scene-setting; when it provides instead a well-signposted point of departure for artistic creativity. The matter of Dallas has been as resonant in the fiction and film of the past half century as the story of the  Trojan war was in the literature of classical antiquity. Only Hitler and the Nazis rival its influence on the modern imagination.

Yet the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination will not be marked by consensus. Two contrasting versions of these mythic events remain in circulation, as hotly disputed on the web today as they were in radical magazines during the 1960s. Are we commemorating the meaningless assassination of Kennedy by a lone dysfunctional misfit, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired on the presidential motorcade from behind, from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository? Or are we marking a much more sinister incident, the shooting of Kennedy by more than one gunman, including, perhaps, a sniper on the grassy knoll firing at the president from the front? If the latter, was this a conspiracy so successful that the authorities still, for whatever reason, don't - or won't, or can't - acknowledge it?


It's all a world of wackos with febrile imaginations, right?  Move along, sir.  There's nothing to see here.

Sadly (or perhaps not) no mention of two other sweeping works of fiction - Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi, and Case Closed by Gerald Posner!


www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/01/john-f-kennedy-assassination-50-years-conspiracy-books-film/

[echelon]

Who shot JFK? Ask the man who was there
By Nigel Richardson

The Daily Telegraph
Friday 1 November 2013

An interview with Hugh Aynesworth, formerly a reporter with the Dallas Morning News.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10420732/Who-shot-JFK-Ask-the-man-who-was-there.html

It contains so many old canards that I can't bring myself to highlight a single quote.

Oh, go on.

OK, one then.

But [Aynesworth] has always refused to make a killing from the killing. "Who do you think, given my background, would like to 'solve' the assassination more than me? God! All I can say is, there's not one scintilla of evidence to the contrary [that both Oswald and Ruby acted alone]."

"He's a beautifully humble man," chips in [his wife] Paula. "If he was a liar, he'd be so rich."


Hold that thought, lady.


[Edit - had to replace all the single and double quotes to get the full text to post.]