by Don Fox with Jim Fetzer
For some time and across a broad range of different issues, I have had concerns about Jim DiEugenio, author of Destiny Betrayed, 2nd ed., which explores New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s attempt to prosecute Clay Shaw, and of Reclaiming Parkland, which amazon.com describes as investigating Tom Hanks’s failed attempt to adapt Vincent Bugliosi’s massive book Reclaiming History into a mini-series and as exposing the origins of that book in a mock trial pitting Bugliosi against attorney Gerry Spence.
It is said to include a withering critique of Bugliosi’s inflated book, where DiEugenio examines an early draft of the film “Parkland”, the CIA’s influence in Hollywood today, Hanks’ closeness to Washington, and the actor’s spurious claim of being “an historian”. It also includes the author’s unsuccessful attempt to stop Leonardo DiCaprio from making a film out of Legacy of Secrecy. As one who has also criticized Bugliosi’s tomeand entreated Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio to abandon those blunders (in“Forrest Gump on the Grassy Knoll”), I applaud these efforts. But he has done other things about which I am decidedly less enthusiastic.
(1) During that long thread about Judyth Vary Baker on “The Education Forum”, he discounted her observation that, when Lee had visited the home of a state senator, his daughter had observed a woman who stayed in the car. Jim argued that she had eventually given up her claim, which does not mean that it was not true: that she made it in the first place suggests it was true; that she later abandoned it was undoubtedly due to pressure applied to her. He has to know that earlier testimony is almost invariably more trustworthy than later testimony, yet he went on a binge to attempt to discredit Judyth on methodologically improper grounds. I fault him for that.
(2) When David Talbot and Jefferson Morley visited David Sanchez Morales home town, they made it entirely obvious that they were there looking for evidence that he had been involved in the assassinations of JFK and of RFK. No one was going to come forth and corroborate that proposition under those circumstances, which I take as proof that they were not there in a serious attempt to investigate the issue but rather to deliberately confuse it and make it all but supportable on that basis. Jim came to their defense, which I found incredible, as I have explained in “RFK: Outing the CIA at the Ambassador”. That is when I began to have serious doubts about him.
(3) Jefferson Morley has subsequently sought to portray himself as a leading student of JFK. He has a web site that is very sophisticated and represents a considerable investment in time and money. One of its features is to list the “best” and the “worst” JFK web sites. His list includes my assassinationscience.com as among the worst and John McAdams’ web site among the best! If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would not have believed it. When someone challenged him about these points, he justified himself on the ground that I deny the Zapruder film is authentic, which is absurd. We have proven that the film is a recreation on dozens of grounds. See, for example, “The JFK War: The Challenging Case of Robert Groden“, for a nice compact summary of the proof.
(4) On The Deep Politics Forum, I offered dozens and dozens of posts supporting Phillip Nelson and others in their claim that LBJ played a pivotal role in the assassination, which is evident from the books and testimony of Madeleine Duncan Brown, TEXAS IN THE MORNING, Billy Sol Estes, A TEXAS LEGEND, Barr McClellan, BLOOD, MONEY & POWER, E. Howard Hunt (“Last Confessions” in ROLLING STONE), Phil Nelson, LBJ: THE MASTERMIND OF JFK’S ASSASSINATION, and Jack Ruby (who observed that this would never have happened had someone else been vice president). It is also substantiated by Nigel Turner in Part 9 of “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” and there are probably a half-dozen of new books that are about to appear that offer further evidence, yet he unleashed Seamus Coogan to attack me and Phil on that forum. It was nasty and disgraceful.
(5) Peter Janney’s book, MARY’S MOSAIC, is one of the most courageous and brilliant I have ever read about the death of JFK and its ramifications. Peter knew Mary Meyer as a boy, sat on her lap, and was devastated when he learned she had been killed. During the course of his research on her death, he discovered that his own father, Wistar, who was an official of the CIA, had been involved in both her death and that of JFK. That he could pursue this with such determination and dedication is one of the most admirable accomplishments I have ever witnessed. The book is especially important because, in his painstaking reconstruction of her death, he reveals a text-book perfect illustration of how this is done by the agency. I regard attitudes toward this book as a test of research integrity, as I explain in “Mary’s Mosaic: A litmus test of JFK research integrity”. Jim flunks.
Indeed, on all of these issues, DiEugenio is on the wrong side. I have accordingly gradually become convinced that he is not promoting JFK research so much as he is undermining it and that, in his role as co-host with Len Osanic, he has been tarnishing the reputation of Black Op Radio for objective and dispassionate discussion of the issues. DiEugenio is not about that at all. He appears to steer research away from the truth, alas, not to reveal it. I was therefore struck when Don Fox sent me a note about Michael Collins Piper, who makes the case for Israeli involvement in the death of JFK:
I just downloaded Michael Collins Piper’s Final Judgment. Piper mentions Mr. DiEugenio a few times. Here is one passage:Although James DiEugenio’s Destiny Betrayed, is a fine, fact-filled examination of Jim Garrison’s investigation of Clay Shaw, DiEugenio (who has publicly scoffed at Final Judgment) has been careful not to explore the multiple Mossad links of the Permindex corporation on whose board Shaw served.DiEugenio’s book was published by the Sheridan Square Press whose founders received financing from the Stern family of New Orleans who were also contributors to the Mossad intelligence arm, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Close friends of Clay Shaw, the Sterns were owners of the WDSU media empire which played a central role in Shaw’s “sheep-dipping” of Lee Oswald as a “pro-Castro agitator” prior to the JFK assassination. Although we now know Garrison recognized Mossad involvement in the JFK affair, he (perhaps wisely) voiced his suspicions only in an unpublished novel—a fact many choose to ignore.DiEugenio’s publisher received financing from the Stern family who also contributed to the ADL and they were close friends of Clay Shaw!! That explains a lot doesn’t it? It seems like if you really dig into 9/11 or JFK you’re going to run into the ADL.
I am hardly the first to take exception to DiEugenio, who has been raked over the coals by Gus Russo, the author of Die by the Sword (1998), which suggests the Lee Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City to offer his services to Castro by taking out JFK. But since the man the CIA photographed there looks nothing like Oswald and J. Edgar Hoover even put out a memorandum to his Agents-in-Charge that someone was impersonating Lee in Mexico City–which, in my opinion, is sufficient by itself to establish the existence of a conspiracy in the assassination–it’s not much of a stretch to argue that, if his views on DiEugenio are as well-founded as his work on JFK, then they should not be taken seriously.
In DiEugenio’s defense, he has advanced good reasons to believe that the CIA was deeply involved in the assassination of JFK, which is undoubtedly correct. That he fingers Allen Dulles as having played the pivotal role that I and others, such as Phil Nelson–and now Roger Stone, The Man who Killed Kennedy: The Case against LBJ(2013), which I recommend–attribute to LBJ can be taken as falling within the ballpark of differences in opinion and evaluation of the evidence, which is defensible. He may be right or he may be wrong, but that difference–at least on first consideration–does not count against him. But Don believes that DiEugenio has offered up Allen Dulles, who was undoubtedly involved, as a cover for LBJ and for Israel.
DiEugenio appeared recently on “Coast to Coast with George Noory” about the new edition of Destiny Betrayed, which he describes as not simply “updated” but having been 90% rewritten, which “for all intents and purposes” is another book:
While I don’t care for his style, everyone should have the opportunity to judge for themselves. I note that Don’s critique of DiEugenio’s role in not discussing the role of Israel in relation to the death of JFK might also be applied to me. While I have interviewed Michael Collins Piper more than once (see, for example, my interview of 10 August 2012)
I have certainly not focused on that aspect in the belief that this was an “all American” affair. But I am willing to consider new evidence and alternative hypotheses, such as those Don Fox presents here, where if I have been remiss in not exploring this dimension of the assassination adequately, I would like to make amends. I therefore offer this article as a prolegomenon to further investigation.
DiEugenio and CTKA: Obfuscating LBJ and Israel’s roles in the Assassination of JFK
by Don Fox
Jim DiEugenio has spent decades researching the JFK assassination. He has written two books on the subject Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case andReclaiming Parkland: Tom Hanks, Vincent Bugliosi, and the JFK Assassination in the New Hollywood. He previously published Probe magazine and now runs the CTKA.net (Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination) website and appears regularly on Len Osanic’s Black Op Radio.
DiEugenio never mentions Israel or the Mossad as having a motive to kill Kennedy. Israeli Prime David Ben-Gurion clashed with JFK over Israel’s nuclear program. Kennedy was determined to prevent Israel from becoming a Nuclear Weapon State and Ben-Gurion was determined that Israel would. Ben-Gurion viewed atomic weapons as vital to the survival of Israel.
DiEugenio and CTKA downplay the role of Lyndon Johnson and instead promote Allen Dulles as being the pivotal player in the assassination. The motive often cited is the Vietnam War. Indeed US policy changed abruptly after Kennedy’s death and the Vietnam War went into high gear behind the scenes even before Kennedy’s body was buried.
CTKA often cite a quote from Johnson that he wondered if any bullets were aimed at him in Dealy Plaza as proof that he wasn’t the mastermind of the JFK plot. DiEugenio also fails to mention LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” It turns out that LBJ had been a Zionist sympathizer since he was a little boy. Any serious discussion of Johnson needs to include this vital information about his background.
Lyndon Johnson: Our First Jewish President?
Morris Smith of 5 Towns Jewish News posted an article called Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? Per Smith:
Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ’s actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust – actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of “Righteous Gentile” is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan, whose centennial year is being commemorated this year. Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced this week that it will honor Johnson.Historians have revealed that Johnson, while serving as a young congressman in 1938 and 1939, arranged for visas to be supplied to Jews in Warsaw, and oversaw the apparently illegal immigration of hundreds of Jews through the port of Galveston, Texas . . . .Research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America. According to Gomolak, Aunt Jessie had nurtured LBJ’s commitment to befriending Jews for 50 years. As young boy, Lyndon watched his politically active grandfather “Big Sam” and father “Little Sam” seek clemency for Leo Frank, the Jewish victim of a blood libel in Atlanta. Frank was lynched by a mob in 1915, and the Ku Klux Klan in Texas threatened to kill the Johnsons. The Johnsons later told friends that Lyndon’s family hid in their cellar while his father and uncles stood guard with shotguns on their porch in case of KKK attacks. Johnson’s speech writer later stated, “Johnson often cited Leo Frank’s lynching as the source of his opposition to both anti-Semitism and isolationism.”According to historian James M. Smallwood, Congressman Johnson used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle “hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American countries. Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration. Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more.”. . . . Soon after taking office in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson told an Israeli diplomat, “You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one.” Just one month after succeeding Kennedy, LBJ attended the December 1963 dedication of the Agudas Achim Synagogue in Austin. Novy opened the ceremony by saying to Johnson, “We can’t thank him enough for all those Jews he got out of Germany during the days of Hitler.” Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak: “Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, ‘I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. He helped me get out.’” Lady Bird elaborated, “Jews had been woven into the warp and woof of all [Lyndon’s] years.”. . . . According to Jewish law, if a person’s mother is Jewish, then that person is automatically Jewish, regardless of the father’s ethnicity or religion. The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish. There is little doubt that he was Jewish.
During WWII Johnson shipped arms to “freedom fighters in Palestine” and later in the Senate he blocked the Eisenhower administrations attempts to impose sanctions on Israel after the 1956 Sinai campaign.
Lyndon certainly had a track record of doing anything he possibly could to help Jews before he became Vice President and later President. As we shall see this pattern continued once he was in the Oval Office.
The USS Liberty Incident
On June 8, 1967, under Johnson’s orders, Israeli planes bombed the American spy ship USS Liberty off of the coast of Egypt. 34 of the 294 crewman aboard were killed in the attack. If not for some ingenuity and dumb luck the ship would have been sunk and the attack would have been blamed on Russia or Egypt. It appears that the attack on the Liberty was going to be used to justify the nuclear bombing of Cairo which may have led to World War III.
From Judy Morris’ article The USS Liberty, Israel & President Johnson’s Order to Destroy the USS Liberty:
The real story is that President Johnson, who was being battered in the polls over the Vietnam War and facing a general election loss and even losing the DNC primary, ordered the Israelis to bomb the USS Liberty to create a casus belli to secure a Gulf of Tonkin style resolution to explode the world into war because in America everybody loves an outraged and indignant president who will use the full force of the military at the slightest provocation, even a government planned false flag attack.The USS Liberty, however, encompasses far more than a murderous psychopathic American president resorting to hideously evil deeds to get re-elected. In addition to ordering the total destruction of the USS Liberty and sending 294 Americans to a watery grave in the Mediterranean Sea, LBJ also ordered the nuclear bombing of Cairo, an event specifically designed to create a nuclear war by blaming the entire USS Liberty affair on Russia or Egypt. More horrifying, it’s documented that US planes were on emergency standby orders as pilots waited on the runways in their planes armed with nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombing of Cairo was called off only 3 minutes before the nuclear bomb drops.As fate would have it, LBJ’s plan blew up in his face and the world got a reprieve from a nuclear US induced holocaust.
Clearly Lyndon would stop at nothing (not even nuclear war) to ensure Israeli domination of the Middle East. If he had no qualms about nuking an innocent city certainly organizing a plot to assassinate JFK and ascend to the Presidency would not be a big stretch for LBJ.
JFK’s Encounter with the Israeli Lobby
JFK got on the bad side of the Zionists long before he was elected to the presidency. In 1957 during his first Senate term he spoke of the need for Algeria to gain its independence. That speech did not sit well in certain quarters. From Michael Collins Piper’s book Final Judgment:
Israel, of course, saw the emergence of another independent Arab republic as a threat to its security and anyone favoring Algerian independence was, thus, advocating a policy deemed threatening to Israel’s survival.Some of Kennedy’s critics said that the speech was a political move and that he chose the topic of Algerian independence as the subject of his first major foreign policy address because there was neither a “French” vote nor an “Algerian” vote to contend with in his home state of Massachusetts or in the nation as a whole.While the latter observation is correct, of course, the fact is that there was one particularly powerful American voting bloc (and source of financial contributions) that did take note of Kennedy’s support for Algerian Arab independence: the powerful American lobby for Israel.As we shall see, in the end, it may have been JFK’s initiative on the Algerian question that, in fact, played a major part in shaping the entirety of the conspiracy that ended his life in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.This gesture by the young senator also angered many French nationalists who wanted to retain French colonial control of Algeria. Many of these nationalists later banded together in the so-called Secret Army Organization—the Israel-backed OAS—and fought against French President Charles DeGaulle who ultimately granted Algerian independence.
We can see a distinct pattern here: Johnson doing everything in his power to help the Zionist cause and Kennedy standing up to the Zionists and acting in the best interests of the US as well as African and Middle Eastern countries. Certainly the Algerian situation irked the Zionists but that paled in comparison to Kennedy thwarting the Zionist’s desire to produce nuclear weapons.
Confronting Ben-Gurion Over Dimona
Dear Mr. Prime Minister:I welcome your letter of May 12 and am giving it careful study.Meanwhile, I have received from Ambassador Barbour a report of his conversation with you on May 14 regarding the arrangements for visiting the Dimona reactor. I should like to add some personal comments on that subject.I am sure you will agree that there is no more urgent business for the whole world than the control of nuclear weapons. We both recognized this when we talked together two years ago, and I emphasized it again when I met with Mrs. Meir just after Christmas. The dangers in the proliferation of national nuclear weapons systems are so obvious that I am sure I need not repeat them here.It is because of our preoccupation with this problem that my Government has sought to arrange with you for periodic visits to Dimona. When we spoke together in May 1961 you said that we might make whatever use we wished of the information resulting from the first visit of American scientists to Dimona and that you would agree to further visits by neutrals as well. I had assumed from Mrs. Meir’s comment that there would be no problem between us on this.We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel. I cannot imagine that the Arabs would refrain from turning to the Soviet Union for assistance if Israel were to develop a nuclear weapons capability–with all the consequences this would hold. But the problem is much larger than its impact on the Middle East. Development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel would almost certainly lead other larger countries that have so far refrained from such development, to feel that they must follow suit.As I made clear in my press conference of May 8, we have a deep commitment to the security of Israel. In addition this country supports Israel in a wide variety of other ways which are well known to both of us. [4-1/2 lines of source text not declassified]I can well appreciate your concern for developments in the UAR. But I see no present or imminent nuclear threat to Israel from there. I am assured that our intelligence on this question is good and that the Egyptians do not presently have any installation comparable to Dimona, nor any facilities potentially capable of nuclear weapons production. But, of course, if you have information that would support a contrary conclusion, I should like to receive it from you through Ambassador Barbour. We have the capacity to check it.I trust this message will convey the sense of urgency and the perspective in which I view your Government’s early assent to the proposal first put to you by Ambassador Barbour on April 2.Sincerely,John F. Kennedy
Ben-Gurion eventually resigned from office over tensions with Kennedy regarding the Dimona reactor. Kennedy was determined to keep Israel from becoming a Nuclear Weapon State and had he lived it’s likely that Israel would have had to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Vanunu: Israel Behind JFK Assassination
However, Kennedy did not make it out of Dallas alive. Israeli dissident Mordechai Vanunu stated in a 2004 interview that Israel was indeed behind the JFK assassination:
Comments by freed nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu that Israel was behind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy failed to bring smiles to government officials SundayOne would expect that such claims would portray Vanunu as a man with a credibility problem, but as far as the defense establishment is concern, the former nuclear technician still has secrets to reveal and a declared goal of ending Israel’s nuclear program. He shouldn’t be talking to the media and is actually barred from meeting with foreigners.Nevertheless, the London-based al-Hayat published Sunday an interview is claims it had with Vanunu. According to the interview which appeared in its Arabic supplement Al-Wassat, Vanunu said that according to “near-certain indications”, Kennedy was assassinated due to pressure he exerted on then head of government, David Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona’s nuclear reactor.”
Israeli involvement in JFK’s assassination appears to be the dark secret that forces behind the assassination 50 years down the line still desperately trying to cover up.
Closing Thoughts
Many people in the JFK research community have remarked that JFK was the last real American President. After Kennedy, a steady stream of mediocre men whose loyalties certainly appeared to lie elsewhere (Israel) have occupied the Oval Office. Certainly Lyndon Johnson’s loyalty was greater to Israel than the US. Johnson’s lust for power and ruthlessness are well known.
However, there appears to be a method to the madness. Johnson’s actions primarily benefited the Zionists. He showed great compassion and selflessness in getting Jews out of Europe before WWII. The men aboard the USS Liberty saw the other side of Johnson – one willing to kill his own countrymen in order to justify military action on behalf of Israel. There can be no disputing Johnson’s central role in the JFK assassination as Phil Nelson and others have pointed out. Closer examination into Johnson’s motives show that he was most likely acting in the interests of Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and his quest to build nuclear weapons. Certainly the Israeli nuclear program flourished under Johnson.
Why does an otherwise meticulous researcher like DiEugenio avoid the topic of Israel’s involvement in the JFK assassination? Perhaps Michael Collins Piper is on to something.
Why is there not more discussion of the Mossad’s role in the JFK assassination in the research community? Perhaps this is a case where most Americans are blinded by our national ego; the thought being that some tiny country in the Middle East has no ability to set our national agenda or assassinate our Presidents. The reality is that Israel does indeed appear to have the power to influence US elections and if necessary assassinate our duly elected President at high noon in the streets of Dallas.
If anyone doubts the ability of Israel to play King-maker look at the steady stream of 2016 Presidential hopefuls visiting Israel. Ted Cruz has already made two trips to Israel. Rand Paul was there in January 2013. Rand started back pedaling on his rhetoric about ending foreign aid to Israel in short order. Rick Perry was in Israel in October 2013traveling with Houston businessman and former U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Chairman Fred S. Zeidman (who is also a large Republican fund raiser).
Donald Fox has studied the JFK assassination since 1992 and 9/11 since 2005. See his blog at http://donaldfox.wordpress.com.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth. [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor, Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]
References
Smith, M. (2013, April 13). Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? An Update!! Retrieved from: http://5tjt.com/our-first-jewish-president-lyndon-johnson-an-update/
Morris, J. (2013, January 13). Economicpolicyjournal.com: The USS Liberty, Israel & President Johnson’s order to destroy the USS Liberty. Retrieved from:http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/01/the-uss-liberty-israel-president.html
Collins Piper, M. (2007). Final Judgment (6th ed., p. 93). America First Books.
Kennedy Letter to Ben-Gurion Regarding Visit to Dimona | Jewish Virtual Library. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-srael/FRUS5_18_63.html
O’Sullivan, A. (2004, July 25). Vanunu: Israel Behind JFK Assassination. Retrieved from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181295/posts
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