Howard Willens, a former senior staff attorney for the Warren Commission, has a new book coming out that insists the first investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was the best and most accurate.
The book is called “History Will Prove Us Right.” Read about it here on (on Amazon.com).
Willens’s confident title faintly echoes Fidel Castro’s famous words as he was put on trial in Cuba in 1953 for rebelling against a pro-American dictatorship: “History will absolve us,” he declared.
Willens thinks that history will absolve the much-abused legacy of the Warren Commission, which denied that Kennedy was killed by his enemies and insisted one man alone and unaided was responsible.
Willens is a distinguished man, but reasonable people disagree. Boston psychiatrist Martin Schotz wrote a whole book arguing the government’s JFK cover-up called: “History will not absolve us.”
And there you have the JFK impasse in a nutshell. Mr. Willens says, in effect, “you’re nuts if you don’t believe the official story.” Dr. Schotz says, “You’re nuts if you do.”
You decide who’s right.
Buy Willens’s book on Amazon.com.
(I’ll check to see if we can get an excerpt.)
Here’s a YouTube link to my 2010 COPA Presentation regarding the DRAFT of NSAM 273, signed by McGeorge Bundy on November 21st, 1963…the day BEFORE the assassination:
http://youtu.be/xiorpQsXJzI
JFK had recently signed NSAM 263, which referenced the ONLY portion of the McNamara/Taylor Report that the president had approved. That section called for the withdrawal of 1,000 US troops from Vietnam by Christmas of that year and the withdrawal of all remaining US PERSONNEL by the end of 1965. However, on the day before JFK was killed, his Special Assistant for National Security, McGeorge Bundy, drafted and signed a document (NSAM 273) that began the reversal of JFK’s withdrawal policy. LBJ signed the final version the day after JFK’s funeral, November 26th. The war mongers wasted no time at all–began the escalation documentation BEFORE Kennedy was even dead–hoping that history would implicate JFK in the escalation of the only war America has ever lost. — Not on my watch.
Also see my articles on both NSAM 263 and NSAM 273 for more detail:
http://jfklancer.com/NSAM263.html
http://jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html
Photon: “JFK’s two closest advisors would lie to the Warren Commission and thereby allow his murderer(s) to escape justice?”
Well, as a matter of fact, yes, JFK’s very close aide & appointments secretary Kenny O’Donnell perjured himself to the Warren Commission and lied about where he heard shots come from.
It is all about caving to peer pressure.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was your reaction as to the source of the shots, if you had one?
Mr. O’DONNELL. My reaction in part is reconstruction—is that they came from the right rear. That would be my best judgment.
FROM MAN OF THE HOUSE, by Tip O’Neill, Random House: 1987. page 178:
TIP O’NEILL:
I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission’s report on the President’s death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O’Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination.
I was surprised to hear O’Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence.
“That’s not what you told the Warren Commission,” I said.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I told the FBI what I had heard but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.” “I can’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth.”
“Tip, you have to understand. The family—everybody wanted this thing behind them.”
Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s.
Dave Powers, sitting next to O’Donnell, also heard shots from the front: http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/powers1.htm
I wonder what Lyndon Johnson’s approval rating was in the spring of 1964? Google “LBJ & Public Opinion Polls.” It was over 70% through most of 1964.
JSA,
I preempted your statement with a qualifying one. I’m suggesting that a number of these individuals, locked in that specific time in history, took quite seriously their oaths within these organizations. This is not Alex Jones speaking. I deplore his approach. I am speaking from first hand knowledge. And I did not suggest that decisions were made in those settings. I do however suggest that the rule of secrecy originates from certain pressures applied by those secret societies. Beyond that, I agree wholeheartedly that industry, military and corporate, was behind the assassination either by tacit approval and acceptance or through active planning. It is the keeping of the secret that interests me.
Leslie,
Points taken. However, I would emphasize that, for such a high level domestic operation involving what I would term ‘ultra secret’ (as opposed to top secret status), if you were one of the planners, you would want specific individuals recruited on a ‘need to know’ basis, VERY compartmentalized, to keep secrets truly secret, and to protect individual participants in case they got hauled before an investigative body, i.e. they could justifiably say that they “didn’t know”. I like the turn key premise. That sounds about right.
JSA, yes, there would have been a ‘need to know’ level as well as a ‘don’t compromise their vaulted position of power’ level. The secrecy is what bound them together, and I believe that behind that secrecy lay an ideology.
No discussion of the Warren Commission is worthwhile unless it includes John Jay McCloy. This truly is old territory and yet again, it takes this site back to square one and the endless loop. I hope we can move on.
Clint Murchison, Sr. was an inner circle LBJ supporter and the leader of the Texas oil men in Dallas.
“That summer, McCloy relaxed more than he had for many years. He hunted whitewings with Clint Murchison on the Texas oil man’s Mexico farm.” [Kai Bird, “The Chairman,” p. 542]
LBJ said (after RFK was murdered) that RFK told him to put Allen Dulles & John J. McCloy on the Warren Commission.
Clint Murchison, Sr. would be a much more likely candidate for giving that advice. Murchison was the leader of the business insider establishment in Texas; and McCloy was the “Chairman of the Board” of the establishment nationwide.
Robert,
Re: Martin Schotz
In the essay (speech) to which you link, Schotz attributes the assassination to “military intelligence.”
Understandable and forgivable.
Military Intelligence is (was) a branch of the U.S. Army.
It was distinct from ONI and CIA. Though there was overlap in Viet Nam.
M.I., in my informed opinion, had no direct role in the JFK assassination.
Jonathan,
Do you discount the suggestion that Jack Crichton of the 488th(?) Reserve Military Intel in Texas had any involvement? I know this is old ground, but I think it is significant. In addition, the uber-secret Pond organization was made up of Army Intelligence.
Leslie,
I’m unaware of Crichton.
I must find that interview. Tks for the heads up.
McCloy: President of the Ford Foundation with all the implications you can read into it including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara; Yale classmate and best friend of Brown Brothers Harriman’s Robert Lovett; former Chairman of Chase Bank and perpetual board member; Board of Directors of United Fruit and Westinghouse, high profile member of the Grolier Club along with Walter Pforzheimer, CIA historian whose Watergate apartment included a walk-in vault for his documents. McCloy was single most significant player in the reconstruction of post WWII Germany. I think of him as the “Michael Clayton” of the day with the exception that he was brazenly public concerning his influence.
Gerry,
Interestingly enough, at least from my research, the direct link between Bush Sr. and this particular group of individuals is Brown Brothers Harriman thru James Baker, the Lovett family of course, and thru Prescott Bush and Yale. I don’t know that Sr. actually engaged with McCloy and Lovett directly.
Incidentally, Prescott was on the board of American Security & Trust in DC where I believe Felix Morley was director emeritus in the 1950’s. I am certainly open to correction on that fact.
Leslie,
In reading the W.C. executive session transcripts and parts of the W.C. testimonies, I was struck by something about McCloy. It appeared to me that McCloy, unlike Dulles, Ford, and Warren, had an open mind and was willing to ask questions.
I’ve never had any doubt, however, he could read the handwriting on the wall.
Another interesting pattern to follow is which witnesses he questioned and the tenor of those interviews.
I’m aware that McCloy portrayed an unbiased view of the investigation, but I also believe that he was a seasoned actor given the environs he inhabited. That’s reading between the lines, but how else can one analyze the commission given its lack of transparency. Case in point: the allegation that Oswald held FBI credentials.
Leslie,
McCloy interviews Robert Frazier, the senior FBI technical expert on guns.
Mr. McCloy. When you examined the rifle the first time, you said that it showed signs of some corrosion and wear?
Mr. Frazier. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCloy.
Was it what you would call pitted, were the lands in good shape?
Mr. Frazier. No, sir; the lands and the grooves were worn, the corners were worn, and the interior of the surface was roughened from corrosion or wear.
Mr. McCloy. Was there metal fouling in the barrel?
Mr. Frazier.
Lesie, and others, focus on this testimony.
J.J. McCloy interrogating the op FBI firearm expert Robert Frazier.
Do you read this as McCloy having concerns with whether or not the rifle could have been fired as accurately as necessary to kill Kennedy and/or that perhaps it had not been fired at all?
Do you think this line of questioning indicated that McCloy did not believe that Oswald shot Kennedy with that rifle?
Leslie,
McCloy was was seeking the truth about the rifle from the FBI’s top firearm’s expert.
Frazier answered honestly.
McCloy thanked him for his answer.
Jonathan,
I did a quick read of the entire Frazier testimony. While initially McCloy pursued the possibility of discrepancies regarding the rifle, the remainder of the questioning seems to have assumed that the rifle was indeed the one that caused Kennedy’s death. That seems odd to me. Why not insist on more clarification about the condition of the rifle before moving on?
Given Robert Morrow’s indication that McCloy went bird hunting with Murchison, I understand now why McCloy was involved in the questioning of Frazier. He clearly had a keen interest in guns.
McCloy was also the one who insisted that the Warren Commission be given the power of subpeana; that makes me think McCloy was not involved in the planning of the JFK assassination. I think McCloy was merely a cover up guy.
Allen Dulles is a strong candidate for participation.
I disagree. I believe that McCloy was as entrenched as anyone. He may have been provided plausible deniability, but he would have known about the assassination at the very least. If you look beyond the obvious, into the shadows, the silhouette is there. Study what was going on in South America and precisely where Cuba stood in that dynamic; study Ireland and the UK and the future of the EU and American interests; then follow events after the assassination.
Gerry, I agree, point well made. This was a turnkey operation.
If I could add: A turnkey operation known to a certain number of individuals. Others held only that portion of the operation that pertained to them. McCloy would not have taken the risk of sitting in on the actually planning, but he would have given ‘the nod.’
Warren insisted the Commission not receive and hold “classified documents.” Warren was a criminal.
Of a very high, dare I say, Order.
Warren was a politician. Graduate of U.C. Berkeley Law School. Governor of California. Republican. Confirmed Caryl Chessman’s death for alleged rape.
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Eisenhower, for political reasons. Became an activist Justice. Used the 14th Amendment to rewrite Constitutional law.
This may reverberate among veteran researchers, and will most likely attract much ridicule and scorn, but Warren was also a 33rd degree Mason and former Grand Master of California. Interestingly enough, these grown men did not view their membership in secret societies with such ridicule and scorn.
Leslie,
These organizations (Masonic Lodge, Ivy League Supper Clubs, Fraternities, etc.) are social networking organizations, and there is some secrecy involved, usually ritualistic and bonding in nature. That said, I put about as much stock in someone being a member of Skull & Bones or the Hasty Pudding Club, or the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo—as being a member of the Chamber of Commerce or YMCA. In other words, I don’t think big deals go down in these places. Friendships and career links get started perhaps? Sure. But the power deals where the Bay of Pigs operation or Alpha 66 get planned? I don’t think so. In fact, I’d wager that all secrecy aside in the goings on of these clubs, there’s not much of real substance. It’s the Alex Joneses who make speculation of this kind, and in my opinion they are overreaching. If I were planning a big coup or major operation, I sure as hell wouldn’t use my fraternal organization. I’d go with the professionals in an agency or in an ad hoc assembly of professionals, a la James Angleton or Tracy Barnes. The Fraternal Order of the Water Buffalo is just too bush league, and unprofessional.
One more thing I forgot to add: Brown & Root, the oil corporate leaders—-these are NOT bush league, and I wouldn’t rule them out as being places where deals either went down or at least these people (the oilmen and other power brokers) got let’s say, invited to the table for major operations. Even the mafia I think was used very carefully, as E. Howard Hunt said, they were kept in the dark except what they needed to know to do in a specific sense or part of a job. But Brown & Root especially I think WAS a power center of major importance. LBJ courted these boys early on in his career, of course.
“Wasn’t it McCloy who once stated “The Constitution is nothing but a scrap of paper to me” ?- Probably
George W. Bush said the same thing to some congressmen complaining about the Patriot Act. They were so enraged they told Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue. GWB said the Constitution was “Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper.”
http://rense.com/general69/paper.htm
Interesting that George W. Bush showed respect for the Constitution twice during his swearing-in ceremonies, while calling it a “goddamn piece of paper”.
It does grow tiring Leslie. Well said. .
Paul, I’m not sure what grows tiring or what is well said?
Anything that Vincent Salandria and Martin Schotz wrote on the JFK assassination is some of the highest quality commentary out there. They both do a really good job of deconstructing the left’s surrender to a right wing coup and also the American public’s mass denial to something that is a “false mystery.”
1) False Mystery: Essays on the Assassination of JFK by Vincent Salandria
2) Correspondence with Vincent Salandria by Michael Morrissey
3) History Will Not Absolve Us by E. Martin Schotz
4) Praise From a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report by John Kelin
5) Google “Vincent Salandria False Mystery Speech.”
6) Google “Vincent Salandria Spartacus” for his bio
7) Google “The Waters of Knowledge versus the Waters of Uncertainty: Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy” by E. Martin Schotz
Just ordered Schotz’s book from Amazon. Robert Morrow provides an excellent review of the book at the Amazon site. Other good reviews as well. “…very interesting” writes Pierre Salinger.
“History Will Not Absolve Us” by E. Martin Schotz is now, thank God, available on the internet: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/
Don’t cancel that book order because it is a great book to hold in one’s hand …
Thanks, I’ll take your advice, although it cost me $40 used.
Doesn’t that tell you something?
Let me take a stab—that it’s out of print?
Here’s a link where you can read the essays:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/contents.html
So a Child Psychiatrist with absolutely no background in forensics is a expert on assassination,conspiracies,the CIA and the inner thoughts of JFK’s closest advisors? I give kudos to anybody who was a Carlton math major (assuming Northfield), but he seems to have forgotten rational thought. JFK’s two closest advisors would lie to the Warren Commission and thereby allow his murderer(s) to escape justice? McGeorge Bundy would participate in a plan to kill JFK? Cheney allowing the planes to crash into the WTC? I suppose Dick forgot the plan when he ordered the the Air Force to shoot down the plane that eventually crashed in Penn.
Well, it sure looks like he has that psychiatry paranoia thing down pat. On the other hand, how good a Psychiatrist could he be if he has so much time on his hands that he could become ” an expert” on the JFK assassination?
Salandria drives the point home in a 1998 COPA speech.
Bundy, on the afternoon of November 22, calls the plane carrying cabinet members over the Pacific and tells them Oswald did it and there’s no conspiracy.
Salandria’s take: McGeorge Bundy was speaking for the killers.
Exactly document what Bundy said,when he said it and to whom he spoke.
FWIW, I believe Bundy had a larger overall role, to which he subscribed readily: to get this country involved in Viet Nam.
Bundy was remarkable. Number one in his class at Yale. Worked for Richard Bissell on the Marshall Plan. With only a bachelor’s degree, became the Dean of Arts & Sciences at Harvard. Transforms Harvard into a merit-based university.
Bundy was the sort of man JFK wanted as an adviser. Too bad JFK wasn’t a great judge of character. Bundy, according to Halberstam, was perhaps the most intelligent person alive at the time. Unfortunately, he used his ability to get this country involved in a terrible war.
You left out that McGeorge Bundy also had perfect College board entrance examination scores.
I used to think that Bundy was a part of the JFK assassination; I now think that he immediately figured out who in US intelligence murdered JFK and that he acceded to the coup instantaneously. So I would call Bundy an immediate accessory after the fact to the murder of JFK.
As for Martin Schotz, I highly recommend his essay “The Waters of Knowledge versus The Waters of Uncertainty: Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy:”
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/27th_Issue/schotz.html
Thanks much for the link to Schotz’s speech; just finished reading it.
I like his thesis; viz., the Warren Report is so obviously a pack of lies, we shouldn’t debate it — we should indict the obvious criminals like Arlen Specter (speech was given well before Specter’s death). His reference to Orwell’s “crimestop” way of not thinking about anything Big Brother would disapprove is right on the mark.
Gerry,
Bundy later became President of the Ford Foundation and was a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Special Studies Panel. (Colby & Dennett)
Willens’s perspective:
Willens was a liaison officer to the FBI and CIA. His job was to investigate whether the USSR or Cuba had a hand in the assassination. I suspect he got the straight dope on these matters from the two agencies. So he’s perhaps just writing from his own experience and extrapolating to the rest of the Commission’s activities.
Warren Commission counsel David Belin in 1988 wrote in his book “Final Disclosure” that CIA had engaged in “deceit, obstructionism, and cover-up” regarding assassination plots against Castro. Allen Dulles served on the Warren Commission and had supervised the CIA-Mafia plots, yet did not inform his fellow commissioners of their existence.