Still Simmering After 60 Years: Who Killed JFK and Why?
Documentaries, Books, and Films for Your Conspiratorial Pleasure
Soon it will be November 22, which, in addition to being that day before drunk uncle day, is also the 60th anniversary of President John F Kennedy being assassinated.
Although the consensus that Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger has remained sort of intact (the second shooter theory had its day), the part about why he did it hasn’t fared well.
Was Oswald really a misfit who killed the president to prove his worth? Was he an assassin hired by right-wing millionaires (or the CIA, or the mafia)? Was he an undercover communist on a mission ordered by Fidel Castro in retaliation for US attempts on his life? We’ll never know for sure, and none of those theories change the fact that JFK is gone.
There was a time when I was involved with anti-Vietnam war activists (including a few ex-spooks) who’d taken upon themselves to investigate the US intelligence apparatus. We were trying to operate according to the I.F. Stone model, scouring the public record looking for clues to integrate into a larger analysis of exposing the mechanisms of US imperialism
Our work got noticed in DC circles, and before long author Norman Mailer was hosting a fundraising cocktail party for us. The FBI informant in attendance noted that our group, including myself, quietly separated ourselves from the main crowd to dump the Portuguese Rosé’ being served at the party into the bushes as a sign of opposition to the neo-fascist dictator then in power in Lisbon.
The informant report was later read into the congressional record by Orange County right winger Rep. Larry McDonald. And we learned a valuable lesson --not that there were informants afoot– but that they were unreliable; I wasn’t at the event for reasons lost in the ozone.
Being as we were Spying on the Spies, the conspiracy crazies found us, looking for validation of whatever strain of history they’d largely invented. We agreed with them that there was more to the assassination story than met the eye, but quickly learned to distance ourselves from the individuals professing their “truth.” They were a squabbling bunch, quick to call those with different theories as some flavor of deep state agents.
One of the people I got to know back in those days was veteran Jeff Stein, who’d run undercover Vietnamese CIA/Army spies. I can still remember him sitting with a draft beer at Ellen’s Irish Pub back in the days when lunchtime imbibing was standard operating procedure.
Stein’s gone on to become one of the respected names in reporting on the spy business, and has a Substack newsletter that includes contributions from experts/ex-agents across the political spectrum. I find it trustworthy; he doesn’t allow readers to suffer through the paranoid gibberish on the edges of the spy world.
Anyhow, Jeff’s latest issue of SpyTalk looks back at the work of Gus Russo, author of Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, and subsequent film Rendezvous With Death., (Broadcast on German television but never shown in the U.S.)
Russo obtained what purports to be a recording of Maria Luisa Calderon, then a Cuban intelligence agent stationed in the Mexico City embassy, speaking with unknown callers shortly after the Kennedy assassination. Calderon was apparently familiar with Lee Harvey Oswald’s background.
A declassified CIA report says Oswald had contact with both the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City about seven weeks prior to the assassination. He was reportedly trying to get visas to travel to Cuba while waiting for approval for he and his Russian born wife to return to the Soviet Union.
Russo’s angle in the book was that Cuban intelligence (G2) was involved with the assassination; positing that an angry Fidel Castro let his intelligence agents manipulate Oswald into killing Kennedy. It was to be revenge for the various assassination attempts aimed at the Cuban leader.
Stein concludes:
Who to believe? What to believe? There’s lots of competing events this month pegged on the 60th anniversary peg. You can trip over to an ongoing two-day symposium at Duquesne University, where a platoon of assassination devotees are revisiting JFK’s missing brain, bullet theories, grassy knoll shooters, CIA complicity and the like. Or you can check out a presentation by Gus Russo and others about Oswald and the Cubans, Jack Ruby, J.D. Tippit and related stuff via an online event sponsored by the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
To me, it’s time Russo got his due. Brothers in Arms came out the week Obama was elected in 2008 and was buried, despite rave advance reviews. Rendezvous with Death never made it to American TV, mostly for complicated business reasons.
He deserves a break. So does the truth.
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Don’t agree with Russo’s premise? Here are a list of films with assorted points of view, courtesy of AARP:
JFK: One Day in America (2023) - National Geographic
JFK (1991) - Prime Video/Oliver Stone
Executive Action (1973) - Prime Video/Historical Drama
JFK Assassination: The Definitive Guide (2013) - History Channel
Cold Case JFK (2013) - PBS/Nova Investigative Team
Lee Harvey Oswald: 48 Hours to Live (2013) - Docudrama
Parkland (2013)- Starz
Killing Kennedy (2013) - Made for TV Movie
JFK Assassination: The Roger Craig Story (2016) - YouTube/Short Documentary
Jackie (2016) - Fiction/Prime Video
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (2021) - Paramount+/Oliver Stone
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Friday’s Featured Factoids
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California reduces payments for rooftop solar power — for second time in a year - Via CalMatters
The new solar payments come at the same time that California is trying to stop using fossil fuels to produce energy, with a state goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. By then, the state projects that more than half of California’s power will come from large-scale and rooftop solar.
The regulatory overhaul was endorsed by the three investor-owned utilities affected by the rules — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Company.
The commission said it altered the rates because paying solar panel owners near-retail prices allows these mostly wealthy property owners to avoid paying a fair share of maintaining the grid, while saddling everyone else with higher electric bills, including low-income customers.
PS–Maybe it’s time we fired SDG&E
‘Power San Diego’ Begins Campaign to Replace SDG&E With Non-Profit for Ballot Measure in Nov. 2024 - Press Release via OB Rag
The Power San Diego Campaign today published its initiative to replace SDGE in the City with a not-for-profit, publicly-owned electric utility. Signature gathering to qualify the initiative for the City’s November 2024 ballot will begin in December.
“This is a campaign for those tired of paying the nation’s highest electric rates, for those tired of paying to provide more than $1 million of profits every day pocketed by SDGE,” said Bill Powers, chairman of the ballot campaign. “It’s a campaign to cut utility bills and tap the enormous rooftop solar potential in our community. The Power San Diego campaign will bring a proven, not-for-profit model to San Diego, a model already providing cheaper electricity to millions across our country.”
California has an array of non-profit electric utilities, including in Sacramento, Los Angeles and smaller cities. “The public utilities around our state are different but they share one characteristic,” said Dorrie Bruggemann, the Power San Diego campaign manager. “They all charge less – in some cases hundreds of dollars less each month– than SDGE.”
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California’s first lesbian Senate leader could make history again if she runs for governor Via Associated Press.
Atkins, now the president pro tempore of the state Senate, has filled in as governor a few more times since then, most recently in July when she signed three bills into law and quipped that she was thrilled to once again step into the governor’s shoes, “ although I have better shoes. ”
Now, the 61-year-old lawmaker is turning her attention once again to the governor’s office — only this time, she’s exploring a much longer stay.
“I’m very interested in looking at that possibility” of running for governor, Atkins told The Associated Press in an interview, saying publicly for the first time what many have assumed since she announced she would step down as the Senate’s top leader next year. “I am looking at it seriously.”
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Journalist Disputes Congressman's Account Of Violence At Gaza Cease-Fire Protest Via Huffpost
Their goal “was for people inside the building to come out and see our peaceful vigil and hear our songs and requests for a ceasefire,” IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group, said in a statement. “We had a team prepared to speak with congress people on their way out, while the rest of us intended to continue singing and praying.” IfNotNow had organized the protest with Jewish Voices for Peace Action and the Democratic Socialists of America.
However, videos show U.S. Capitol Police officers forcefully removing protesters from the building’s entrance.
When Semafor reporter Dave Weigel, who was outside the DNC covering and recording video of the protest, got home that night, he was surprised to see a social media post from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) claiming that “pro-terrorist, anti-#Israel,” “pro-terrorist” protesters had pepper-sprayed police officers and tried to break into the DNC.
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I'm sorry I wasn't there when they dumped the MATEUS. I would have gladly taken it off of their hands.