<Rob Reiner, courtesy South Park>
The latest episode of Rob Reiner's new podcast, "Who Killed JFK?" just came out. It's entitled, 'Strange Bedfellows".
Although there are still more episodes to come, this episode was a let-down. So far, Reiner has merely repeated old CIA-did-it observations. Among the old, worn-out conspiracy theories that Reiner raises are these:
The 60-year-old suspicions that former CIA deputy director Charles Cabell motivated his brother, Dallas Mayor, Earle Cabell, to do the CIA's bidding.
The 50-year-old suspicions about former CIA agent William Harvey and his hatred of JFK.
The 50-year-old suspicions about Mafia bosses Johnny Roselli and Carlos Marcello and their work with the CIA to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The 50-year-old suspicions about Antonio Veciana, the Cuban exile leader of Alpha 66, a super-aggressive Cuba-raiding group who also worked with the CIA to try to assassinate Fidel Castro
The 50-year-old suspicions about David Atlee Phillips (alias Maurice Bishop) a CIA Chief of Operations who financed Alpha 66
The 15-year-old suspicions about E. Howard Hunt, the CIA agent who admitted to being a "bag man" for the plot to kill JFK
I'll make an easy prediction -- Reiner will refry the old CIA-plus-Mafia conspiracy theories that started in the 1970's shortly after the failed Jim Garrison trial of Clay Shaw.
I don't know Rob Reiner, but I suppose he's a patriotic American and a liberal. If he continues to bash the CIA, however, it's clear to me that Reiner doesn't see how it undermines the CIA and thus the Federal Government -- which is exactly what the US radical right today is hoping for.
Since the Dallas-radical-right-did-it conspiracy theories are so 21st century, I will predict (without having heard all the episodes yet) that Reiner will once again give the Dallas radical right a pass, which encourages the radical right yet again.
One could argue that the pass that the Dallas radical right received in 1964 had a direct, positive impact on the US radical right today. But even liberal writers keep giving them passes.
Now -- it's quite correct to cite the people that Reiner cites above -- but usually (and in this last episode) these people are drawn in a tight circle for a CIA-plus-Mafia-did-it conspiracy theory. Yet there's another way to include them all -- namely, by making the Dallas radical right the center of the cyclone.
Here's one way to do that.
1. Dallas Mayor, Earle Cabell, was a member of the John Birch Society (JBS) in Dallas, with close ties to oil mogul H.L. Hunt, also a member of the JBS.
2. William Harvey was a drunken cheerleader.
3. Carlos Marcello was directly connected with racist NOLA activist, Guy Banister in his own obsession to assassinate Fidel Castro. Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) was directly connected with Banister, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.
4. Antonio Veciana personally saw Lee Harvey Oswald at a meeting with David Atless Phillips, his CIA financier.
5. David Atlee Phillips wrote a novel (The Night Watch, 1978) portraying himself as the sponsor of LHO in a plot to to assassinate Fidel Castro. This included the Fake FPCC in New Orleans -- a Guy Banister toy. In that book Phillips expressed shame that "some other group hijacked Oswald" to assassinate JFK.
6. E. Howard Hunt admitted in Mark Lane's 1991 "Plausible Denial" trial, that he had a minor role in a caper with Marita Lorenz and Frank Sturgis, where Marita testified that LHO was a part of that caper.
Reiner likes to call Allen Dulles "The Godfather of the CIA" (mere Hollywood hype) and likes to quote JFK after firing Dulles for the Bay of Pigs, saying he wanted to "shatter the CIA into thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." Based on these factors, CIA-did-it theorists insist that Dulles led the charge against JFK.
Yet that's a hasty, on-the-nose motive. Actually, JFK hired another CIA Director, John McCone, and they got along quite well. JFK actually increased CIA funding under McCone. So, "the CIA" was not after JFK. (And Dulles was no longer inside the CIA).
Still, on his deathbed, CIA agent Howard Hunt confessed to his son Saint John that he was involved in the JFK assassination but that he was a low-level "bagman" in it.
Howard Hunt was a low-level CIA agent. He had no pull. And he was tight with Frank Sturgis (a rightist soldier of fortune and not a CIA agent) in this plot. Hunt's involvement with Frank Sturgis in some aspect of the JFK assassination does not automatically implicate CIA Headquarters.
It more closely fits Guy Banister and David Ferrie who were also tight with Carlos Bringuier, Frank Sturgis, Loran Hall, Gerry Patrick Hemming, and so forth, who were also soldiers of fortune and not CIA agents.
TO SUM UP
To sum up our CT briefly: Guy Banister got lots of money from David Atlee Phillips to assassinate Fidel Castro. Carlos Marcello also gave lots of money to Guy Banister for the same reason. Guy Banister had long planned to infiltrate the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) but he needed a double-agent. He lucked out (it's a long story) and got LHO.
LHO was happy to play FPCC officer and to fake an FPCC branch in New Orleans. He got the help of three close pals of Guy Banister, namely, Bill Stuckey, Ed Butler, and Carlos Bringuier. So, LHO memorized the FPCC official literature, and faked a legitimate radio interview with Banister's pals.
After that fake radio interview, that fake FPCC branch simply vanished.
I say LHO was committed to this "soldier of fortune" adventure to assassinate Fidel Castro. He and Carlos faked a fight on Canal Street, and the police picked them up to cool them off. While in jail, LHO himself called the FBI to come and officially register the event!
So Oswald was also in the newspapers boasting of his office in the FPCC. He had no such office, but he would use these newspaper clippings to form a "resume" to take to the Mexico City Cuba Consulate. This is what Marina Oswald testified (even as she repeated her certainty that LHO planned solely and only to go to Cuba -- not to Russia).
But LHO failed in his task to get the "instant visa to Havana" due to every FPCC secretary. The consuls weren't impressed with a "newspaper clipping resume." LHO had zero official papers. So, they laughed him out.
A failure, he returned to Dallas to be closer to his wife who was very near the childbirth of their second child. But a soldier of fortune often has no money or insurance. So, Marina Oswald depended on Ruth Paine to get her through her anxious pregnancy, pulling strings at Parkland Hospital and what not.
LHO was still connected to Guy Banister through the radical right in Dallas. We will never know all LHO's actual accomplices in Dallas, because the Warren Commission (WC) ensured that such a list would be the most tightly held secret of all.
Still, we can easily guess that Loran Hall and Larry Howard were often in Dallas, along with Gerry Patrick Hemming, perhaps even Carlos Bringuier, and Ed Butler. We have photographic evidence that Joseph Milteer was there.
Just four weeks before the JFK Assassination, members of the JBS had brutally attacked UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. The JBS had a slogan back in the 1960s: "never let a communist finish a speech in your town."
Larrie Schmidt ten years ago told me on the phone that the JBS had booby-trapped the Dallas Memorial Auditorium on a "US Day" campaign the day before Adlai's "UN Day" visit in the same Auditorium.
This website has named many of the JBS members who were involved with Dallas society in 1963. In my opinion, JFK died at the hands of the radical right in Dallas - New Orleans, too, but mostly Dallas.
The further that Rob Reiner drifts away from the right-wing reality, the further away he'll be from naming actual participants. There's my view.
More later,
--Paul
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