The Constant Flow of JFK Disinformation

[Randy Bednorz]

It has been some time since I've posted here. Most of you who persist on this forum have an earnest interest in this subject. This thread gives me an opportunity to comment briefly on the phenomenon and history of post-assassination literature and propaganda -- misinformation, disinformation, and the political dimension to the research.First, the assassination itself had a geo-political dimension and a national political dimension. The story of Oswald makes it look as though the USSR had sent him back to the US to perform the dreadful act. Consider the environment then. We had a man becoming seriously paranoid -- later clinically diagnosed -- running CIA counter-intelligence, in the person of James Angleton. After the assassination occurred, Angleton went on the rampage with his HONETOL mole-hunt, destroying careers and even lives in CIA, damaging relations with British intelligence and nearly destroying cooperation with the French SDECE.Vietnam persisted, but not just because of the Military-Industrial-Complex or a paranoid and dogmatic view of a Communist Monster Plot (as Angleton insisted.) Young people had some sixth sense that something "wasn't right." Older Americans at that time believed Oswald was a communist, he came from the USSR. Public opinion was split, and no less confused. Put together the story of the assassination and the traumatic shock of the assassination, and you have the elements of a psy-war and propaganda campaign. Public sentiment is still influenced by it today: When Gabbie Gifford was shot in Tucson by Jerod Loughner and Sarah Palin began back-pedaling in reference to suggestions her web-page with a gun-sight drawn on Gifford, a radio talk-show host in Las Vegas pronounced during his show that "A conservative or right-wing adherent couldn't have shot Gifford; Oswald was a communist."Assassination research authors tend to two politically opposite directions. Many of the Lone-nut advocates are also conservative or Republican. Further, any such people who might write about the assassination could be inclined to make it appear that the political opposition was responsible. So we not only have the rumors and facts about GHW Bush, we also have Barr McClellan's "LBJ and Mac Wallace" theory. When Nigel Turner's last update to "Men Who Killed Kennedy" first debuted, it prompted Gerald Ford, Lady Bird Johnson and Jimmy Carter to sue Turner and successfully repress the film. Yet the eclectic and equal presentation of theories by Turner also included the single most important point on the compass: David Atlee Phillips. Repressing the documentary to preserve LBJ's legacy also had the effect of stifling public awareness of the other important information.So both the assassination, the Warren Commission, and fast-forward to research, documentary presentation and the annual November confusion-fest has a political charge to it more powerful than the Hadron Collider.The declassifications under the ARRB had two effects. It enabled more authors and opportunists to cherry-pick information from the documents that would fit a theory -- most often a theory that either Oswald acted alone, or Oswald acted in conjunct with Castro. It also enabled us to discover important things, even if there were single documents discovered out of thousands.The latest fashion spawning big, glossy, well-footnoted assassination books like those coming from Waldron -- is the Mafia tail wagging the CIA dog theory. While there were a couple other "Mafia confessions" added to Carlos Marcello's deathbed words, there were also revelations by former Mafia affiliates that they were told by CIA in the Cuban projects that they were part of a cover story, to be used if something went wrong.The public has grown jaded, dismissive, indifferent, and simply confused by all the nonsense. I a way, enthusiasts posting furiously on these forums contributes something to it, because it's easy to proliferate various "conspiracy-a-go-go" constructions, and people are eager to find Masters of the Universe who were also "Masterminds" of the assassination. But it is really likely that there was only one Mastermind, and the parts of his plan did not know either exactly what was going to happen in Dealey Plaza that day, and -- or -- they didn't know the identities of the other parts. That is the only way this sort of confusion would persist 53 years later: as a compartmentalized rogue construction by one or maybe two Operation Zapata veterans.The only official equivalents of Judicial Notice pushed by officialdom about the assassination include the Warren Report and the HSCA Report. The ARRB Report seems to be a "hands-off" result simply presenting the summary of documents and work under the 92 Records Collection Act, and it still includes elements of white-wash -- for instance, as pertains to Fonzi's investigation. There were no Juries; there were no Judges except for Earl Warren. But these are the only official pronouncements. Therefore, the psychological result has been a sense that people can just hold their own opinion, believe the Warren Report, Belief Gus Russo's "Live By the Sword" or Seymour Hersh's "Dark Side of Camelot." [Look at the acknowledgements pages in both books. The authors helped each other.]Any Truth is buried in the mass-psychology of individual psychologies. Further, we've lost any anchor to strict logical deduction and evidence-gathering. Some researchers just pick the evidence that suits them. Discussions usually spin out of control with "A-go-go" aspirations to put spot-lights on 2-percenter Masters of the Universe. But those folks are guilty of many other things, and being guilty of the Kennedy assassination is a crap-shoot for them. They didn't have the wherewithal to be Masterminds of a complete Lie and Fiction. They may only benefit from it.It is time to focus on the most likely person who planned the entire thing, and then proceed to find evidence on a person-by-person basis of "persons-of-interest."Oliver Stone had two-and-a-half thirds of the answer correct as a good guess in the 2013 November media-fest, even if he prefaced their names with "maybe."One big argument the Lone-Nutists have is the assassination book publishers as a self-perpetuating industry. Closure will not likely trump profitable perpetuation. Hacks and dummies like Bill O'Reilly continue to spin this argument -- which has some merit only because it describes an impossible situation -- while producing cheap near-plagiarist drivel such as "killing Kennedy," derived from an original cover-up book by Gerald Ford -- "Portrait of an Assassin."The tug of war will go on, and on, and on. There is nobody to put on trial. GHW Bush's brain has probably deteriorated to the level of Augusto Pinochet's before he died, and it is only equally possible that Bush was a low-level asset of the Mastermind assigned to make phone-calls after the assassination. Of course, if you imagine, if you suspect, if rigorous logic tells you -- I invite you to continue pursuing that angle.I despise the entire Bush family. I think America really went into a cesspool when they elected the last cornpone half-wit. Nobody like that should ever have been president. But I entertain a sieve of possibilities concerning his father. Similarly, with Johnson. Johnson was being manipulated just as Bush was being manipulated. He wasn't a Mastermind. It is even likely, that if Mac Wallace was involved, he had been contracted independently without LBJ's knowledge. Yet McClellan's glossy botch of a convincing propaganda piece doesn't even admit that as a possibility, because the goal of it wasn't to determine the Truth once and for all. His goals were infected by a desire to pin it on a Democrat and former President.America and the world are at risk for all this nonsense, because policy, public decisions, public opinion and other important factors are based on the biggest Lie ever told.And it was a Lie concocted by a professional Liar, who had been involved in book-to-movie CIA midwifery during the '50s and early '60s.

[Bob]

It's great to see Randy Bednorz chiming in his opinions again. There is no one in the world that knows about the background, personality and idiosyncrasies of David Atlee Phillips more than Randy does. Randy is most certainly an out-of-the-box thinker. His research on Phillips is definitely a key area in which we can see part of the puzzle regarding the JFK assassination come together.