Pat Buchanan on Subversion by NGOs

Pat Buchanan has another most interesting article posted on vdare.  Non-Governmental Organizations have rightly drawn the suspicion of various nations.  In the US, millionaire George Soros has funded numerous left-wing groups, as have once respectable foundations (see the book by Horowitz on his expose of the Ford Foundation and others with names implying they are above controversy).  Some NGOs do improve conditions; some are just political action groups to mobilize unofficial militias.  Buchanan recounts reasons to be skeptical of the NGOs.----Hugh Murray

NGOs As Agents of Subversion: Not Only In Israel, But Egypt And The Caucasus As Well

By Patrick J. Buchanan on March 23, 2015, 6:08 pm

See, earlier, Are Freedom House And The National Democratic Institute Really “Our Innocents Abroad”?

Though “Bibi” Netanyahu won re-election last week, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will still look into whether the State Department financed a clandestine effort to defeat him.

Reportedly, State funneled $350,000 to an American NGO called OneVoice, which has an Israeli subsidiary, Victory 15, that collaborated with U.S. operatives to bring Bibi down.

If we are now secretly pumping cash into the free elections of friendly countries, to dump leaders President Obama dislikes, Americans have a right to know why we are using Cold War tacticsagainst democracies.

After World War II, my late colleague on CNN’s “Crossfire,” Tom Braden, delivered CIA cash to democratic parties in Europe imperiled by communist parties financed from Moscow.

But that was done to combat Stalinism when Western survival was at stake in a Cold War that ended in 1991.

Hopefully, after looking into OneVoice and V15, the Senate will expand its investigation into a larger question: Is the U.S. using NGOs to subvert regimes around the world? And, if so, who decides which regimes may be subverted?

What gives these questions urgency is the current crisis that has Moscow moving missiles toward Europe and sending submarines and bombers to probe NATO defenses.

America contends that Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and backing for pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine is the cause of the gathering storm in Russian-NATO relations.

Yet Putin’s actions in Ukraine were not taken until the overthrow of a democratically elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev, in a coup d’etat in which, Moscow contends, an American hand was clearly visible.

Not only was John McCain in Kiev’s Maidan Square egging on the crowds that drove the regime from power, so, too, was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

In an intercepted phone call with our ambassador in Kiev, Nuland identified the man we preferred when President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. “Yats,” she called him. And when Yanukovych fled after the Maidan massacre, sure enough, Arseniy Yatsenyuk was in power.

Nuland also revealed that the U.S. had spent $5 billion since 1991 to bring about the reorientation of Ukraine toward the West.

Now, bringing Ukraine into the EU and NATO may appear to Nuland & Co. a great leap forward for freedom and progress.

But to Russia it looks like the subversion of a Slavic nation with which she has had intimate ties for centuries, to bring Ukraine into an economic union and military alliance directed against Moscow.

And if NATO stumbles into a military clash with Russia, the roots of that conflict will be traceable to the coup in Kiev that Russians believe was the dirty work of the Americans.

If the U.S. had a role in that coup, the American people should know it and the Senate should find out whether Nuland & Co. used NGOs to reignite a Cold War that Ronald Reagan brought to an end.

And if we are now using NGOs as fronts for secret operations to dump over regimes, we are putting all NGOs abroad under suspicion and at risk.

Not in our lifetimes has America been more distrusted and disliked. And among the reasons is that we are seen as constantly carpingat governments that do not measure up to our standards of democracy, and endlessly interfering in the internal affairs of nations that do not threaten us.

In this new era, U.S. foreign policy elites have boasted of the “color-coded” revolutions they helped to foment in Belgrade, Kiev, Tbilisi. In 2003, we helped to overthrow the Georgian regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in a “Rose Revolution” that brought to power Mikheil Saakashvili. And Saakashvili nearly dragged us into a confrontation with Russia in 2008, when he invaded South Ossetiaand killed Russian peacekeepers.

What vital interest of ours was there in that little nation in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin, to justify so great a risk?

Nor is it Moscow alone that is angered over U.S. interference in its internal affairs and those of its neighbor nations.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt has expelled members of U.S. NGOs. Beijing believes U.S. NGOs were behind the Occupy-Wall-Street-style street blockages in Hong Kong.

If true, these U.S. actions raise a fundamental question:

What is the preeminent goal of U.S. foreign policy?

Is it to protect the vital interests and national security of the Republic? Or do we believe with George W. Bush that, “The survival of liberty” in America “depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”

If it is the latter, then our mission is utopian–and unending.

For if we believe our liberty is insecure until the whole world is democratic, then we cannot rest until we witness the overthrow of the existing regimes in Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Belarus, most of the Arab and African nations, as well as Venezuela and Cuba.

And if that is our goal, our Republic will die trying to achieve it.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.

EMPEROR OBAMA

                               By HUGH MURRAY

     In early November 2014 the Republicans won a decisive victory in the mid-term Congressional elections.  Their majority in the House of Representatives was the largest since Herbert Hoover’s smashing victory in 1928, and one seat larger than the famous mid-term victory of the GOP in 1946.  Yet, Pres. Obama quickly demonstrated that he would not yield to the changed political atmosphere.  Obama, who on numerous previous occasions had declared that he did not have the power to initiate a unilateral amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, in late 2014, proceeded to do just that.  Previously, he argued he lacked the power to grant such amnesty, even adding, he was not an emperor.  But by late 2014, he was unilaterally granting amnesty to millions of illegals.  In 2013 he concluded as President he had no such power, he was not an emperor.  In 2014 Obama did it anyway.  President Obama?

     Congressional Republicans condemned Obama for thus violating the Constitution and then sputtered.  They even refused to fund the Homeland Security Agency for more than a month, and when that month elapsed, only for another week, and then, a fully funded the HSA even with funds to handle the amnestied illegals.  So the GOP Congress appropriated the money to fund Obama’s “unconstitutional” amnesty.

     In November 2014, I thought of two historical analogies – aware that history does not repeat itself directly using the forms and templates of previous eras.  But the two analogies seemed helpful in trying to analyze today’s events.  Analogy # 1)  In 1946 the GOP won both Houses of Congress for the first time in nearly 2 decades.  President Truman, the Democrat who succeeded Pres. Franklin Roosevelt upon his death in spring 1945, did not yield to the newly dominant Republican Congress.  Truman fought the Congress (and even the courts) pushing the Democratic Party agenda.  When Congress refused to pass some of his proposed legislation, he denounced it as “the do-nothing 80^th Congress.”  When Congress sought to investigate alleged Communists in his administration, Truman denounced the hearings for producing nothing but “red herrings.”  Truman planned to seek re-election in 1948.  In that year the GOP national convention nominated New York Gov. Thomas Dewey as his opponent and ratified a rather moderate Republican platform.  Truman then called Congress back into a special session, asking it to pass some of the “moderate” proposals listed in its platform, like civil rights legislation.  The Republican legislature refused to pass such legislation, and Truman again attacked it as the “do-nothing 80^th Congress.”  Gov. Dewey was assured victory by division within the Democratic Party, so his campaign objective was to avoid controversy and limit himself to platitudes.  Truman faced defeat because of the major defections from the Roosevelt coalition: on the right, the pro-segregationist, States’ Rights Democratic Party, popular in several states of the South and led by Govs. Thurmond of South Carolina and  Wright of Mississippi; and on the left, FDR’s former Vice President Henry Wallace, and Dem. Sen. from Idaho Glen Taylor, both running on a platform of cooperation with the USSR, which won the endorsements from many unions and the American Communist Party.  To the shock of the pollsters, and to the editors of the Chicago Tribune (which ran the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman”), Truman led the popular vote and won a majority in the Electoral College.  In the popular vote, both Wallace and Thurmond received a mere 2.4% each; Dewey 45.1%; while Truman garnered 49.6%.  The Democrats also regained both Houses of Congress.  Bottom line – Truman’s refusal to cooperate with the hostile Republican Congress gave him issues on which he could run and defeat both the GOP and his Democratic Party defectors in 1948.

     Analogy #2 – In the election of 1864 there was weariness with war.  Pres. Lincoln’s Administration had cracked down on civil liberties, even placing on trial elected Democratic legislators who openly called for peace with the Confederacy.  The American Civil War had become so unpopular in New York City that riots against the draft quickly turned into riots against those who might gain from the war, so even an orphanage for Blacks was burned down to show hostility to Lincoln’s war effort.  Who would win the Presidential prize in 1864?  Lincoln had won in 1860, but with less than 40% of the popular vote.  60% of the voters then had voted for either 2 Democrats in a divided party, or the Constitutional Union Party.  I repeat, in 1860 Lincoln won while NOT receiving a majority of the vote; indeed, 60% of the voters then had voted against him.  Who would win in 1864?

     The Democrats chose as their leader a popular Union general, George McClellan, who favored continuation of the war, and George Pendleton of Ohio, who favored cessation of the war.  The Party Platform was anti-war, and McClellan declined to endorse it.  In spring of 1864 a group of radical Republicans gathered in Ohio to nominate a firmer supporter of abolition of slavery than Lincoln; they chose John Fremont of California (he had led the Republican ticket in 1856) and John Cochrane of New York to lead their new party ticket.  Lincoln’s faction, now trying to expand its appeal to war Democrats, called itself the National Union Party, dropped Maine Republican VP Hamlin, and nominated Lincoln of Illinois, and war Democrat (and former slave-holder) Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.  By September, the Fremont ticket, (finding it more important to defeat the anti-war Democrats) withdrew in favor of Lincoln.  Also, in the fall, the Union armies scored major victories over the Confederates, including that of Atlanta.  In November McClellan and the Democrats lost to the National Union ticket of Lincoln and Johnson.  Lincoln not only won a majority of the popular vote, 55%, in the Electoral College he overwhelmed McClellan 212 to 21.

     In Lincoln’s second Inaugural address, 4 March 1865, he called for malice toward none, and charity for all, and on 11 April in a speech Lincoln proposed voting rights for some of the freed men.  On 15 April Lincoln was assassinated by John W. Booth, who had heard both of Lincoln’s recent addresses.  Imagine the revolutionary aspects of Lincoln’s modest proposal – from the Supreme Court’s decision of 1857 in Dred Scott that Blacks had no rights that whites had to respect, to some 180,000 Black troops in the Union army during the war, to the possibility of some of them voting.  To the assassination conspirators, this was too much change too soon.  Now Lincoln was dead and Andrew Johnson, war Democrat, was President.  What would be the future of the nation?  Of the rebel states, now that the Civil War was concluding?  And the role of the Freedmen?

     As the Confederacy collapsed, should the rebellious states be readmitted to the Union?  Although in the 1864 election both Louisiana and Tennessee (where Johnson had been military governor) had sent votes to be counted in the Electoral College for the National Union ticket,  Congress chose not to count their votes in the total.  Would illiterate Blacks be permitted to vote?  In the North, many states did not permit Blacks to vote.  What about the confiscation of large plantations because their owners had been found guilty of treason?  Some thought those lands should be given to the Freedmen, the basis for the hoped-for 40 acres and a mule.  Soon there developed a tug-of-war on these and related issues between President Johnson and the Republicans in Congress.  Even before the mid-term elections of 1866, in New Orleans a meeting of Blacks and sympathetic whites to press for Black voting rights was disrupted – with many killed - by a mob in which the city’s police chief partook – and he was a former Confederate veteran.  In the South, should those who fought for the Union now be slaughtered by those who had fought for the Confederates?  A similar mob attacked the pro-Black, pro-Republican organization in Memphis.  News of these massacres galvanized support for a more thorough-going, radical reconstruction for the South.  In the North, Radical Republicans made heavy gains.  In the South, many old Confederates were re-elected.  The Radicals refused to allow the pro-Confederates to be seated.  President Johnson meanwhile was granting amnesty to plantation owners, who could then regain their citizenship, voting rights, and property.

     The question was not merely who would control the South politically; it was which party would control the nation.  In the past, slaves had only been counted as 3/5 of a person for the census, and in allocating seats in the House of Representatives.  With the end of slavery, Blacks would count the same as whites in the census.  But if Blacks were not permitted to vote in the South, then the pro-rebel Democrats would return to the national Congress with more power than they had before the war!  If most whites were Democrats in the South, then it became imperative for the survival of the GOP to strive for Black voting rights in the South.

     This is not the place to recount all of Reconstruction history.  Johnson impeded the Republicans on most issues.  He prevented land redistribution.  He and Congress had opposite aims, opposite visions for the Reconstruction of the South, and of the nation.  The result – Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives, but not found guilty by one vote in the Senate.  He remained President but had no chance of being nominated in 1868 by the Republicans, and the Democrats rejected his candidacy also.

     So, Scenario #2, will the gulf between Pres. Obama and the Republican Congress result in impeachment proceedings against Obama and the diminishing of his powers during his remaining days as President?  Or even his removal as President?

     I had originally intended to write this article with the 2 templates, Truman fights and defeats the 80^th Congress, and the Radical Republican Congress fights and defeats Andrew Johnson through impeachment and restricting his power.

     But since November 2014 politics have taken a surprisingly confrontational aura.  In his years in office, Obama may not have been the first to use government to persecute his enemies, but he has expanded this approach, which is only becoming better known now.  These quantitative increases in the use of government to harm those on Obama’s enemies list, may be reaching a point of a qualitative change in the nature of the American government.  The power of President Obama seems to be increasing beyond that of any President.

     One may argue that the Northern states were subjected to a kind of dictatorship under President Lincoln.  The capital itself, when he arrived to become president, was surrounded by slavery, in Virginia across the Potomac River, in the state of Maryland, which was a slave state, and even in the District itself.  In 1862 Congress enacted the compensated emancipation act so slavery in the nation’s capital would end.  But there was such pro-Confederate sympathy in Maryland that Union troops were victims of rock-throwing rebs as they marched through the state to defend the nation’s capital.  As the war progressed, Lincoln ignored courts, imprisoned opponents, and restricted many forms of civil liberties.  At one point in the war, Grant gave Jews in a large area as large as a state (part of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee around Memphis) 24 hours to get out of the territory under his command.  Lincoln immediately countermanded Grant’s order.  It was war, civil war, and Lincoln had almost dictatorial powers.  Furthermore, Lincoln, as President, unilaterally issued an order that would result in perhaps the largest confiscation of “private property” in American history when he issued – as a war measure – the Emancipation Proclamation.  Although originally quite limited in scope, it would expand with Northern victories, to terminate slavery in the United States.  (I do not maintain that all dictatorial actions are wrong.)  Even with Lincoln’s dictatorial efforts, nevertheless, elections continued, and they were free enough so that Lincoln assumed he might be defeated for re-election in 1864.

     Democratic President Woodrow Wilson ignored civil rights and civil liberties during WWI.  The “Hun” was across the ocean, but any pro-German, or anti-war voices were quickly silenced, including that of the leader of the Socialist Party, Eugene Debs, who had received some 6% of the national vote for president in 1912.  When Debs ran again, in 1920, he ran from a prison cell, and had a poster displaying his face behind bars.

     Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president during the Great Depression, and his administration greatly expanded the role of the federal government.  Some of his measures were aimed at curtailing competition, and one, the National Industrial Recovery Act, was modeled to some extent on the corporate approach developed by Mussolini and his Fascists in Italy.  The American Supreme Court struck down that law.  Meanwhile, to raise farm prices, the US Government required the slaughter of pigs and destruction of grains.  FDR used the IRS to bully his opponents, and by the later 1930s, used the FBI to monitor and then incarcerate Nazi elements.  With cooperation of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the pro-Axis Father Coughlin’s radio voice was silenced, and his National Union for Social Justice (what a great name for the Obama followers!) suppressed.  After the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, there were demands to round up all Japanese, even those born in the US and American citizens.  Liberal Republican Earl Warren favored the round up, as did most of FDR’s Administration.  The liberal American Civil Liberties Union was silent.  Only FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the policy of sending the Japs to concentration camps, but he followed the orders of his superiors.  Happily, some in FDR’s Administration did not tell their superiors everything, for they had uncovered the transmission of numerous coded wires from America to the USSR.  Eventually, some would be decrypted, and Communist spy networks revealed.  When an advisor, Adolf Berle, told FDR that Alger Hiss and others were Soviet spies, the President told Berle to go f*** yourself. (Ann Coulter, Treason, p. 18)  Many important figures in the FDR Administration were working with Soviet intelligence.  Had FDR known about the American interceptions of these spies’ wires, FDR might have shut down the project so as to demonstrate friendship with our then Soviet ally (and the Soviet espionage could then continue unobserved).  The Federal Government expanded enormously under FDR, from rationing for gasoline and sugar, to Social Security.  Although he was elected 4 times as President, he was only a president, not a dictator.   Some of the growth of government was due to the fact the US was engaged in a 2-ocean war against major opponents.

     Obama’s Administration, on one level, is also a war presidency – war residue of the Bush eras in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.  However, have the policies of Barack Hussein Obama, pro-Muslim policies, been successful?  His first Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton, had as one of her major advisors a woman with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Huma Abedin was also the wife of a New York elected official, Anthony Wiener, who made headlines when he sent naked photos of himself from his mobile phone to young women.  Some think that the American government worked with Muslim groups like the Brotherhood, and with Non-Government Organizations, some funded by left-wing millionaire George Soros, to promote change in the Middle East.  The wintry planting bore fruit with the Arab Spring.  Beginning in Tunisia, and spreading to Syria, Libya, and Egypt.  Obama and the American liberal media cheered these events, even though there were ominous signs of things to come.  Even during the celebrations leading to the overthrow of America’s old ally in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the attractive, blond CBS reporter, Lara Logan, had her clothes ripped from her body and she was sexually assaulted among the mass of revelers.  Elections brought to power the Muslim Brotherhood.  Jews fled Egypt.  Christians, some 10% of the Egyptian population, became targets under the new “democratic” government of Mohamed Morsi.  Churches were burnt, Christian faithful were beaten, some killed by the new Muslim fanaticism that reigned.  Some of the new Muslim leaders even proposed destroying the pyramids, as they were reminders of a pagan, pre-Prophet past.  When the Egyptian army, tired of such persecutions, ousted Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, and installed the military leader Abdel al-Sisi, Obama responded by cutting off some of the American aid to Egypt.  Obama preferred the Muslim Brotherhood in power!  Obama and Sec. Hillary Clinton apparently were involved in the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Khadafy, another part of the Arab Spring.  But when Muslim extremists began an attack on the American Ambassador in Benghazi, Hillary and Obama did nothing to save him or the few Americans who rushed to his defense.  And when the murders became news in the US, Obama and Hillary lied to the American people, to the UN, and even in a paid ad on Pakistani television, blaming a Coptic Christian form Egypt, then living in California, who had made a film satirizing Mohammad.  The Obama policies in the Middle East have resulted in disaster, most recently with the growth of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has spread to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, and even central Africa.

     The Obama Administration ignores Congress (except to attack it for not doing what the President wants), denigrates Israel, and prefers an entente with the Islamic Republic of Iran – whose goal is the destruction of the “great Satans,” Israel and the United States.  The Obama Adm. seems incapable of destroying ISIS and its new Caliphate.  The Obama Adm. even refuses to denounce the terrorist enemies as Islamic.

     Obama began his Presidency with a pronouncement that his would be the most transparent administration in American history.  It has been the opposite.  Obama pretended he was unaware that the IRS was harassing and persecuting conservatives until he saw it in the media.  We are supposed to believe that his appointees were doing this on their own.  Then the IRS lost emails when Congress was investigating the unfair actions by the bureau.  Then the IRS found at least some of the emails.  And the center of the controversy at IRS, Lois Lerner, was then granted a bonus of over $100,000.  Atty. Gen. Eric Holder’s Justice Department began its first days by dropping charges of voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party (it was not trying to intimidate Democratic voters).  One of the members of the NBPP who engaged in the intimidation was seen on video on other occasion calling for the killing of white men, white women, and white babies.  (But according to the Leftist ideology dominant in the DoJ, Blacks, by definition, cannot be racist!)  Holder’s DoJ consistently refused to enforce the law equally against Blacks and whites, always tipping the scales of “justice” in favor of Blacks.  In a more recent example, Holder and Obama helped make the shooting of a violent thug, who had just bullied a clerk and stolen from a convenience store in Ferguson, Missouri, into an international example of racism.  They promoted hatred of the “racist” police.  Eventually, even the DoJ report could find no reason to condemn the white cop who shot the 300-pound unarmed but dangerous Michael Brown.  Instead, the DoJ condemned the police dept. of Ferguson because Blacks were arrested at a higher rate than their percentage of the population.  But that is true in practically every town and city in the US (and possible in most cities throughout the world).  The reason is not necessarily racism; the reason is Blacks commit more crimes.  So by Holder’s yardstick, the DoJ could investigate any police dept. in the nation, deem it “racist,” and have a federal takeover of all local police organizations.  The road to a national police, a very political national police force is being laid by Holder and Obama.

     After the elections of November 2014, Obama announced his Presidential amnesty of perhaps 5 million illegal aliens.  In years prior, when he was asked to do so, he replied that he did not have the power to do it; “I am not an emperor.”  Apparently Obama has reconsidered – especially the latter statement.

     I have already posted on this site about Obama’s treason.  His Administration knew there would be an influx of thousand of teens from Central America, via Mexico, but instead of preventing the invasion, Obama’s Administration colluded with the invaders, even advertising months before the big thrust for escorts to guide the youthful invaders.

     The phrase “imperial Presidency” has circulated for years, but often it referred to the global reach of America’s power – led by the President.  Under Obama, while America’s military might shrinks on the world stage, the President becomes ever more imperial.  He ignores the laws.  He unilaterally changes Obamacare.  He has his Administration target enemies of harassment, even when they comply with the law.  He uses bureaucrats and regulations to ignore, extend, or violate laws as written – so long as it is in accord with Obama’s policies.  Now, he wants to use regulators, not to reinvent the internet, but to prepare for restrictions of content.  He seeks to circumvent the Constitutional rights of gun owners by pressuring ammunition manufacturers to halt production.  And then, with liberal Republicans, there were attempts to restrict purchases of sodas, and more, to prevent school children from enjoying a tasty lunch, etc.

     When quantitative change reaches a certain point, the result is qualitative change – ice becomes water – water becomes steam.

     Truman fought the Republican 80^th Congress, denounced it in 1948, and won re-election of the Republican Thomas Dewey.

     Andrew Johnson defied the Radical Republican Congress after the Civil War and roused such hostility over the future of the South, the freedmen, and the nation, that he was impeached and powers restricted.

     Obama seems to be following a 3^rd path – denounce the Republican Congress, ignore the law, ignore the Constitution, increase the American population with millions of illegal invaders, who will receive education, Obamacare, affirmative action preferences for placement in university, jobs, promotions, etc.  They will also receive fast track for drivers’ licenses, citizenship, and the possibility to vote as soon as possible (another reason Democrats try to overturn any voter ID laws).  True, the Constitution now prevents anyone from running for President for a 3^rd term.  But what if the people really want him to run again?  Especially, the millions of “new” Americans amnestied by Obama.  And Obama is not that old.  And the Constitution is too old, too out of date with the new America.  The “new” Americans will certainly want to show their gratitude to Obama.  Moreover, Obama already snidely implied that Hillary has an old car smell.  Still, if the opposition remains too strong to allow Obama to run for a 3^rd term, then what about Michelle as our first woman President?  From Emperor to Empress? 

AS TOLD TO NERO

J F K : ASSASSINATION REHEARSAL (N. Y.: Algora Publishing, 2014),

by NICK M. NERO, Introduction by Dr. James H. Fetzer

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            When President Kennedy assessed the disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion, he observed, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”(p. 36)  However, the assassination of Kennedy was so successful that now over 50 people have claimed to have been among the shooters.(86)  Reading Nero’s short volume on the JFK Assassination Rehearsal, JT. a reviewer on amazon wrote scathingly : “The titular topic ‘JFK Assassination Rehearsal’ is barely mentioned in a sentence. No kidding. One sentence!”  So, then, what is the book about?  In the Foreword, David Luhrssen concludes, “What separates Nero from many earlier commentators are the details…for an overarching narrative connecting many of the startling events of the 1960s.  He proposes a unified field theory…”(2)  And the field theory is based on the 5-days of revelations by Nero’s Uncle Ben Fazzino shortly before his death.

            Fazzino had been a young fighter whose upset win over a major contender upset the mob, and friends quickly encouraged Ben to join the marines and get out of town.  In the marines, Fazzino fought nobly and courageously, especially in the gruesome battles to take Okinawa from the Japanese.  After the war, holding a legitimate business, Fazzino was also involved with the CIA, and knew men like Frank Sturgis [Fiorini].  Indeed, Fazzino was a bag man for the agency, and brought funds to the families of the Watergate burglars when they were serving time in prison.   Nero’s book weaves general questions about the official history of the Kennedy assassination and other events with lesser known theories in his “unified field theory.”

            Yet, astonishingly, in his short chapter on the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Nero omits all mention of what the murderer said upon his arrest – “I can explain it – I did it for my country.”  I recall the bewilderment of one of those nearby who heard Sirhan Sirhan utter those words, “How could he say that?  How could he believe it?  How could he do it?”  The answer is rather simple: Sirhan was not an American citizen.  This was not his country.  He was officially a Jordanian, but really a Palestinian opposed to Israel and Kennedy’s pro-Israeli pronouncements in the 1968 Presidential campaign.  I recall teaching with an Arab in 1969.  He remarked that if Sirhan were ever released from prison, he would be hailed as a hero in the Middle East.  Of course, this does not exclude the possibility of a conspiracy to kill Bobby Kennedy, - the woman in the polka dot dress, etc. may have been involved with Sirhan.  But Sirhan’s killing may have had nothing to do with a conspiracy.  Unlike Oswald who proclaimed he was a patsy, Sirhan openly declared his motive a political and nationalistic.  If his weapon did not kill Kennedy, his shooting may have simply caused such panic in the closed area that someone trying to protect the Senator shot him by mistake.  I found this chapter most unconvincing.

            I have never before read the allegation that Mary Jo Kopechne had been shot in the head and placed in the car of a drugged Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick to destroy his Presidential chances.  Anything is possible, but there must have been easier, simpler ways to eliminate Teddy as a Presidential contender.  This chapter is not convincing either.

            Some of the allegations in Nero’s book are more probable – that George H. W. Bush was involved with the CIA years before he acknowledged such connections (42); that JFK was preparing another invasion of Cuba for December 1963 (46); that he was also planning a pull out from Vietnam (99-102); that along with New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw, leaders of the Permindex Corp. included Wernher v. Braun, Joe Bonanno, and H. L. Hunt (54); that JFK’s personal doctor placed the back wound of the President to be some 4 inches below the shoulder (making it impossible for the bullet to exit through his throat as the magic bullet)(102).  Nero also alleges that LBJ had his sister killed (52), but Nero is wrong in portraying JFK’s proposed civil rights legislation as stronger than that which passed under LBJ (98); and he is wrong is discussing the origins of the wire taps on Martin Luther King.  Nero essentially says the Kennedys did so to yield to blackmail from J. Edgar Hoover.(60)  However, the phone taps that brought King to the attention of the FBI were those on the phone of Stanley Levison, whom the agency suspected of being a secret member of the CPUSA, and one of its undercover financiers.  When the FBI overheard him speaking with King, the agency naturally wanted more information on King, too.

            I question Nero’s interpretation of the election of 1912 (80).  To what extent did FDR, and other left-wing Progressives in the US State Department, seek to arm Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Communists in North Korea (and work to undermine Chiang Kai-Shek in China) at the end of WWII?(172)

            Nero is excellent at raising questions regarding the photographic evidence.  There is a still picture taken at the time of the shooting in Dallas and a young man, who looks remarkably like Lee Oswald, is standing on the steps of the Texas State Book Depository, not firing on the 6^th floor.(134)  He reminds readers that the stills from the Zapruder film, when originally published in Life, included captions indicating that Kennedy had been shot from the front.(134)  Moreover, the Zapruder film was not seen by the general American public until shown on Geraldo Rivera’s television program on 6 March 1975. (108)   [A copy was shown at the trial of Clay Shaw by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1969.]  Nero asks if the Zapruder film has been tampered with?  Nero contends many eyewitnesses in Dallas saw the President’s limo come to a halt, but the film does not show that.  On the other hand, the film has the driver turning his head faster than humanly possible.(133)  He implies tampering with the film resulted in missing frames.(93, 194)

            Nero’s discussion of the “plumbers” and the Watergate break-in is quite amusing.(176)  However, if that crew was so incompetent at Watergate, how could they have been so efficient in Dallas?

            For a short book, Nero provides a quick refresher course on why most Americans still reject the official history of the Kennedy Assassination.  But Nero includes too much that is speculative and unlikely.

            On the trivial side, there are errors: “that numbers has” for “number” (19); “In August 1969, Eisenhower” should have been “1959” (34); “broke into the Watergate offices of the Republican National Committee” should read “Democratic” (92); “Sherman and Cooper” should read Senators Richard Russell and Sherman Cooper (106 #1); “a few day before’ should be “days” (175); “Bill Moyer” should be “Moyers” (188).

            Despite my objections, this book is short and raises legitimate issues.  It is a type of “as told to” story, and should be read with appropriate caution.  Yet, with all the inside information, there is nothing on the rehearsal or more importantly, little on who shot from what place and how it was all accomplished. 

BUCHANAN ON PARANOIA ABOUT PUTIN

Pat Buchanan again disagrees with many of the elite American foreign policy experts, in both Democratic and Republican Parties.  Buchanan's analysis is certainly worth a read.---Hugh Murray

Putin Paranoia–The Soviet Union Is NOT Coming Back From The Dead

By Patrick J. Buchanan on February 16, 2015, 8:31 pm

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold.

For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians.

The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe.

Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender or wiped out, causing a regime crisis in Kiev. U.S. weapons could have begun flowing in, setting the stage for a collision between Russia and the United States.

One understands Russia’s vital interest in retaining its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and keeping Ukraine out of NATO. And one sees the vital interest of Ukraine in not losing the Donbas.

But what is America’s vital interest here?

Merkel says a great principle is at stake, that in post-Cold War Europe, borders are not to be changed by force.

That is idealistic, but is it realistic?

At the Cold War’s end, Yugoslavia split into seven nations, the USSR into 15. Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, even Slovenia briefly, had to fight to break free. So, too, did the statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in breaking from Georgia, and Transnistria from Moldova.

Inside Russia there are still minorities such as the Chechens who wish to break free. And in many of the new nations like Ukraine, there are ethnic Russians who want to go home.

Indeed, a spirit of secessionism pervades the continent of Europe.

But while London permitted the Scottish secessionists a vote, Madrid refuses to concede that right to the Basques or Catalans. And some of these ethnic minorities may one day fight to break free, as the Irish did a century ago.

Yet of all of the secessionist movements from the Atlantic to the Urals, none imperils a vital interest of the United States. None is really our business. And none justifies a war with Russia.

Indeed, what is it about this generation of Americans that makes us such compulsive meddlers in the affairs of nations we could not find on a map? Consider if you will our particular affliction: Putin paranoia.

Forty years ago, this writer was in Moscow with Richard Nixon on his last summit with Leonid Brezhnev. It was not a contentious affair, though the USSR was then the command center of an immense empire that stretched from Berlin to the Bering Sea.

And when we are warned that Putin wishes to restore that USSR of 1974, and to reassemble that Soviet Empire of yesterday, have we really considered what that would require of him?

To restore the USSR, Putin would have to recapture Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, an area the size of the United States.

To resurrect the Soviet Empire, Putin would have to invade and occupy Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and then overrun Germany to the Elbe River.

How far along is Putin in re-establishing the empire of the czars and commissars? He has reannexed Crimea, which is roughly the size of Vermont, and which the Romanovs acquired in the 18th century.

Yet almost daily we hear the din from Capitol Hill, “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”

That there is bad blood between America and Putin is undeniable. And, indeed, Putin has his quarrels with us as well.

In his eyes, we took advantage of the dissolution of the USSR to move NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. We used our color-coded revolutions to dump over pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

Yet beyond our mutual distrust, or even contempt, is there not common ground between us?

As the century unfolds, two clear and present dangers threaten U.S. strategic interests: the rising power of a covetous China and the spread of Islamic terrorism.

In dealing with both, Russia is a natural ally. China sees Siberia and the Russian Far East, with its shrinking population, as a storehouse of the resources Beijing needs.

And against the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and al-Qaida, Russia, which suffered in Beslan and Moscow what New York, London, Madrid, Paris and Copenhagen have suffered, is on our side.

During the Cold War, Russia was in thrall to an ideology hostile to all we believed in. She had rulers who commanded a world empire.

Yet we had presidents who could do business with Moscow.

If we could negotiate with neo-Stalinists issues as grave as the the Berlin Wall, and ballistic missiles in Cuba, why cannot we sit down with Vladimir Putin and discuss less earthshaking matters, such as whose flag should fly over Luhansk and Donetsk?

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his books State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.

A FERRIE TALE?

DAVID FERRIE: MAFIA PILOT, PARTICIPANT IN ANTI-CASTRO

BIO-WEAPON PLOT, FRIEND OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND

KEY TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION

by Judyth Vary Baker

Foreword by Jesse Ventura

review by Hugh Murray

            Why read a 500-page biography of David Ferrie? Was he involved in a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy?  He clearly made statements in the early 1960s expressing his hatred of the President who he believed betrayed the anti-Communist cause by failing to provide air and other support to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba in spring 1961;  Kennedy betrayed the cause again when he closed the missile crisis of 1962 with compromise rather than crushing Castro; and finally, the Kennedy Administration raided and closed training camps in 1963 where men were preparing for another invasion of the island.  So did Ferrie join a conspiracy?

            The author, Judyth Vary Baker, claims to have been a friend of Ferrie, beginning in spring 1963.  She also claims to have been Lee Oswald’s secret lover beginning in April 1963 when they met in New Orleans.  Moreover, she claims that she, along with Oswald, Ferrie, and Dr. Mary Sherman were all engaged in secret research to hasten the growth of cancer in mice, then in monkeys, and finally in humans – to be used as a bio-weapon that could be used to kill Fidel Castro.  Her view is that Oswald and Ferrie only pretended to be Kennedy haters.  She also maintains they were both pro-integration (in a city where integration was often conflated with communism).  Both Ferrie and Oswald liked JFK, but they had to pretend to despise him to learn about the mechanisms of those who really hated the President.  After all, Oswald had pretended to be a Soviet sympathizer, a “defector,” who had lived in Minsk and married a Soviet woman there.  In New Orleans, Oswald had pretended to be pro-Communist, distributing leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee that he created, an organization with no members, and whose office was in that of Guy Banister, who was vehemently anti-Communist and who had greeted George Lincoln Rockwell when he arrived in New Orleans to picket the pro-Israeli film “Exodus” with Rockwell’s Nazi followers.

            Yet, Baker is honest enough to include material in her book that contradicts her position (for example, her exposition of the sightings of David Ferrie at the Winnipeg airport in Canada).  Indeed, there is an air of honesty about this book – she does include a number of disputes between her and more establishment academics, including citations, so one can always refer to their works and websites to assess their arguments.  On a personal note, she quotes me fairly (and I still fume about the way one “historian,” not Joan Mellen, interviewed me for hours by phone about civil rights in New Orleans, but when I indicated I now opposed the politically correct crowd, she deleted all mention of me.)  Judyth Baker provides a breadth of fresh air sometimes needed to stir the dust of accepted academic accretions.

            My view of Baker’s book is influenced by my personal history.  Born in New Orleans, I attended public schools when Oswald was also a pupil.  By high school, I had joined the Unitarian Church and had become an integrationist.  In September 1956 I enrolled at Tulane University on a scholarship; in 1958 I sat-in some classes at Dillard U. (an historically Black university) and befriended some students on the Black campus.  By 1958-59, there were small interracial Bible study groups between Dillard and the Tulane Wesley (Methodist) organizations, which I also attended.  By 1959 the ICIC was formed, the Intercollegiate Conference for Interracial Cooperation, which met at Loyola U. of the South and included members from Xavier U. (the Black Catholic college), Dillard, and Tulane.

            In February 1960 national television news showed the early lunch-counter sit-ins of the modern era in North Carolina.  Television favorably portrayed the movement as it spread to various areas of the South.  In the spring a white Tulanian, Lanny Goldfinch, told me there would be a meeting on Dillard’s campus to organize a sit-in in New Orleans.  This would be important symbolically for New Orleans was still, as it had been for over a century, the largest city in the South (ahead of Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami).  In the student cafeteria of Dillard, a mass meeting was underway when I arrived.  It appeared as if most of the student body was in attendance, and they were excited and determined to act, enthusiastically applauding the speakers who called for action.  Of course, everyone was aware, that to sit-in, to violate the laws of segregation, would probably result in arrest and possible physical harm.  Then the very popular Dean of Chapel, Dean Gandy rose to the rostrum.  All awaited his words.  “We want to act.  We have to act.  We have to do something to oppose segregation.”  Massive applause.  But we don’t want to just imitate others.  Sit-ins have been occurring for weeks, for months now.  They are good, but they are old hat.  We should do something new.  Something that is unique to Dillard.  More applause.  And then he announced that they should have a march for civil rights on campus and on the sidewalks in front of campus that would be seen by all on the major thoroughfare, Gentilly Blvd.  I had gone to the meeting intending to volunteer for a sit-in, but saw no purpose in joining a Dillard U. march on its campus.  I left both disappointed, and relieved, at the same time.

            Soon after, Lanny told me there was a boycott of stores in the Dryades St. area, a neighborhood that had a large Black clientele.  He was going to volunteer as a picketer, and I decided to do so also.  Because our Tulane class schedules differed, we went to picket on different days.  At that time in New Orleans, only two picketers were legally allowed in front of a store, and when my co-picketer, a Black man realized he was to picket with me, he became quite nervous.  He said his shoes hurt, and left me holding 2 picket signs.  I was suddenly harassed by two young whites with a can of black paint and a brush seeking to paint me black.  Then a new, second picketer arrived, a large Black longshoreman, and the kids quickly ran away.  The picketing was organized by the Consumers’ League, a Black organization.  Some of its members would soon be involved in the organization of NO CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, which hoped to train for and organize many of the new, non-violent protests against segregation, like the sit-ins.  CORE was preparing a 3-week training institute to be held in August 1960 in Miami, and I desperately wanted to go.  I was living with my parents, who were unenthusiastic.  They argued, I would be the only white, or the only white from New Orleans, it would be dangerous, etc.  I argued that it would be a national gathering, people from all over the nation, perhaps thousands, Blacks and whites.  So, who else was going from New Orleans?  Any other whites?  I was so happy when I discovered that a Loyola student, Oliver St. Pe would indeed be going.  I would not be the only white, and used this to finally win approval of my parents.

            I was truly shocked upon our arrival in Miami to find that there were only about 50 participants, eight from New Orleans.  We stayed in a Black Motel, the Prince ?George?, and held training sessions during the day in the motel’s cocktail lounge.  One day, we had a talk by Jackie Robinson, who had been the first Black to integrate major league baseball at the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Another day, our teacher was Martin Luther King, who had led the successful bus boycott movement in Montgomery, Alabama.  Other days, it was learning about Gandhi, non-violence, and acting as protestors or as hostile segregationists.  One day we tested an eatery inside Shell’s City supermarket.  We generally sat in mixed groups at numerous tables.  The police were called and arrested all our attendees who were seated at integrated tables.  Or almost.  I was seated at a table with a young Black woman, Ruth Dispenza; we were not arrested because Ruth was light-skinned, and the officials assumed we were a white couple.  Oliver was among those arrested.

            When we returned to New Orleans, rumors floated that we were planning a sit-in for the Crescent City.  The Dean of Tulane sent some students to speak with me and a few others, warning us of university policy: if arrested we would be expelled from the university until proven not guilty.  Moreover, because we were consciously violating the state’s segregation laws, we would certainly be found guilty on the local and state levels.  So we might not be found innocent until our case had been appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which might take several years, assuming the high court would consider our case and rule in our favor.  Even if it so ruled, we could not expect to re-enroll at Tulane until after years of litigation.

            Ruth Dispenza would be the spokesperson for the sit-in, the first in New Orleans, held at the large Woolworths at the corner of Canal and North Rampart Streets (I stress this because the politically correct often cite the 2^nd sit-in, which occurred a week later at McCrory’s, as the first.)  We arrived in the morning around 9 or 10 am and sat for several hours; the then New Orleans District Attorney, Richard Dowling came into the lunch counter area and literally read us the law on segregation.  When we refused to leave, we were arrested.

            That night we were released on bail, and because we had been shifted between different jails, we had not eaten since before our protest.  We were hungry.  Archie Allen (a Black student at Dillard, and one of the 7 arrested at Woolworth’s), Carlos Zervigon (a fellow Tulane student, member of CORE, whose parents were of Mexican and Cuban heritage) and I went to Whitey’s on near St, Charles Ave. to get a late bite.  Whitey’s was a Black restaurant.  We took seats at a small, round table, and the waiter approached us and announced, “I can serve you (to Archie), but I can’t serve you two.”  For a moment, we sat in disbelief.  Then he revised, “Well, I can serve you two, but not you (to me).”  Archie and I had just been released from jail for trying to integrate the white counter at Woolworths; we had no desire to be arrested twice in the same day, now at a Black restaurant.  I was so stunned; I do not now recall how we finally ate that night.

            I could not return home, as this would endanger my parents.  Even with my absence, my parents had troubles with threats following each telephone ring throughout that night.  My father would soon borrow a pistol and bullets to protect the home.  Meanwhile, I was staying with different friends each night after the arrest.

            Tulane backed down, changing its policy regarding student arrests.  Our sit-in was now judged by the board of the university to be a political rather than a criminal offense, so neither Bill Harrell (a white grad student in sociology) nor I was expelled.  Tulane was then a segregated institution, but the board was beginning its shift away from supporting the laws of segregation.  And not being expelled was of crucial importance to me because now I could retain my part-time job working weekends at the Tulane U. library and thus maintain a small income.

            But where would I live?  Oliver, the Loyola student in CORE, had been arrested in Miami, and so was not a notorious as I was.  He was still living with his parents in a suburb an hour away from Loyola.  We decided to look for an apartment together and found one near Touro Infirmary, where I had been born.  Oliver was two years older than I, but only a senior in sociology at Loyola.  He had a slightly annoying habit when speaking to you – he rarely looked you in the eye, his gaze was off-center.  Only after rooming with him did I discover the cause: Oliver was legally blind.  To read, he would insert the old-fashioned, hard contact lenses and then put on extremely thick eyeglasses (Normally, he wore none, so people were unaware of his disability.).  Even with the props, he probably could not see an entire word.  The government sent him recordings of books, and he would arrange to have people read  his text books to him, for which they were paid.  I suddenly acquired a supplemental job reading sociology texts to him.

            Oliver was a year or two behind because he had dropped out of school when he was younger.  He was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent and permanent drop-out.  But his life took a different course when he joined the Civil Air Patrol and was influenced, - for the better - by David Ferrie.  Oliver was Roman Catholic and got on well with Rudy Lombard, the NO CORE Coordinator who studied at Xavier U. in NO (a Black Catholic college).  Oliver supported President Kennedy.  He taught catechism at a nearby Catholic church, and was a staunch heterosexual.  He was skeptical of socialism and was not at all pro-Communist.  A slightly older woman also read to him, and when I met her, I was surprised to hear her stories of the Soviet Union.  She must have worked for the American government, and I think she had met Oliver at the VA Hospital, where he went occasionally.  I was shocked when she told that women who came from the countryside to the big cities of Moscow and Leningrad in the big train stations, were so unfamiliar with modern devises, that when they went to the rest rooms, often did their business on the floor.

            Other than CORE meetings, Oliver and I tended to maintain separate social lives.  I worked in the library from Friday night through late Sunday, we were too poor for luxuries like a telephone, so I met only one or two of his old friends.  He would speak of one, David Ferrie, who had helped change his life.  He also spoke of Father Fichter at Loyola and a few others, but Ferrie seemed to have been the catalyst in changing him.  On several occasions Larry Anderson, a CAP chum came by the flat to pick up Oliver to go somewhere.  I remember after we had roomed together about six months, Oliver spoke of how his old mentor, Ferrie, was going to have a party one weekend.  He looked forward to it, as he had not seen David for awhile.  When I next saw Oliver, I asked, “How was the big party?”  Oliver seemed disappointed, “Oh, David was playing soldier.”  I did not understand, and he added many were dressed in military-type fatigues.  That would have been in spring 1961.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

            At the end of May 1961 our lease on the apartment ended, Oliver graduated from Loyola with his BA, but after a year, I still did not receive my MA from Tulane in history.  Oliver and I now saw each other rarely, and soon he would be working with the International Voluntary Service in Laos, a new country since the French withdrawal from Indo-China following their defeat at Dien Bien Phu.  Oliver must have been in Laos for some time because I recall reading in one of the local newspapers a tiny article in November 1963 reporting that David Ferrie had been arrested or questioned in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.  How many David Ferries could there be?  It must have been the man who had helped Oliver.  I clipped the item and sent it to Oliver in Laos.  The article was only a few sentences, but must have revealed more than that Ferrie had been questioned, because in the days following the assassination, many New Orleanians were questioned.  Indeed, I too was questioned by the FBI on Tuesday 26 November.

            After rooming with Oliver for the school year 1960-61, I had lost enthusiasm for grad school.  I moved back in with my parents (who very kindly took me back), and got my first full-time job – teaching at a high school.  I must concede my liberal notions of letting the students express themselves proved impractical.  I was teaching outside my field, but my real problem was that I failed to establish and maintain discipline.  It was the only time I failed as a teacher.  Other issues arose too.  I was a pacifist, and one reason I was so drawn to the civil rights movement was its emphasis on non-violent protest and the attempt to change society for the better through non-violence.  But there were already chinks in my non-violent armor.  Beginning with the day of my arrest, 9 September 1960, my parents began to receive threatening telephone calls.  My dad borrowed a weapon and bullets to protect the place.  The threats subsided in November 1960 as court-ordered integration of two schools in New Orleans swerved the spotlight from CORE sit-ins to trying to keep the schools open, protecting the few Black students and the white family that defied the boycott (the white family that broke the boycott soon had to flee to the North).  As the schools took the heat, threats to my parents ceased.  When my dad returned the pistol to his co-worker, the man remarked, “Why did you borrow so many bullets?  Only one would have done the job!”  I was not popular in NO at that time.  Oliver and I were then sharing a flat, and we received no threatening calls because we had no phone.  Oliver brought me his Ruger (like the German Luger), and he wanted me to learn how to use it.  I was a pacifist, but how could I ask a legally blind guy to defend us if we came under attack.  So I let him teach me how to use the Ruger.   Reality was ruining my faith in non-violence.

            So, after I decided not to pursue my MA, probably in the summer of 1961, I volunteered for the navy.  I recall only one test – I was naked and had to walk down a long dark, narrow hall until I could read what was on a screen at the other end.  I must have traversed 2/3s of the hall before I could recognize a large letter E.  I was surprised at how poor my eyesight seemed to be.  Yet, that proved not to be the problem.  The hitch was the sit-in – I had been convicted of a felony, and felons could be drafted but were not allowed to volunteer for service, I was informed.

            After teaching for about half the school year, I received my draft notice, probably in early 1962.  I quit the teaching job and waited to be inducted.  I went to the old Customs House on Canal St. near the Mississippi River, and a large number of us took seats and awaited our fate.  I was nervous, as I suspect was true of most.  There seemed to be no loud chatter, but one person stood and moved about addressing the young Blacks scattered among those seated.  He was urging them not to go in, not to be inducted , that America was racist, and they should follow the example of the Black Muslims and reject the draft.  The officer must have ordered him to stop, but he continued preaching and urging others to join him.  Then the officers ordered all the rest of us to move to an adjacent, large room.  The Black Muslim was barred from entering this room.

            We were handed forms to fill out.  Most completed them quickly.  I stumbled.  I had no trouble checking the box to indicate that I was not now nor had ever been a member of the Communist Part, the KuKluxKlan, etc.  But then there was a list of front groups, and the question was quite broad; had we ever even socialized with these groups.  Oh oh.  At the Miami CORE conclave we did more than hear lectures by Robinson and King.  Half our group had been arrested at the Shell’s City sit-in in August 1960, and we also went to the beach to integrate the sands.  CORE organizers had arranged that the picnic tables beside ours would be occupied by a friendly white group, the Jewish Culture Club in Miami.  There group was about as large as ours, but whereas most in our group were in their 20s, members of the JCC  were in their 60s and 70s.  I spoke to one about the famous 1948 election, in which Harry Truman won to the astonishment of the pollsters, the nation, and especially the Chicago Tribune.  The old gent on the bench told me he had voted for Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party that year.  They were on the Left, and they were for integration.

            The JCC also had a club house, and they allowed us to stage a dance on their premises.  I danced the one-step with Pat and Priscilla Stephens, Black twins who had been active in CORE in Tallahassee.  Also, for the first time I tried the new dance, the twist, with Ruth Dispenza, among others.  Those dancing were almost all young, from our group.  Members of the JCC sat around the periphery of the dance floor at small tables and nibbled, chatted, and generally watched us.  It was relaxing to have a place where we could dance in a large hall.  Pictures were taken of our fun gathering.  That was important.

            Seated at the Customs House I pondered how to fill out the form.  Should I mention the dance at the JCC?  It seemed so inconsequential.  But the penalties for lying were enormous (though I no longer remember the specifics).  Should I lie and not mention this event?  Then I remembered, pictures had been taken, so I mentioned it.

            Another question on the form concerned any previous arrests.  Not only had pictures been taken of the sit-in, we had been shown on national television nightly news programs, though we could not see these because we were still in jail at the time.  I mentioned the previous arrest.

            The officer collected the forms and then called me up.  “JCC?  But you aren’t even Jewish.”  I tried to explain.  Then he mentioned the arrest.  I told him I had been informed that I could not volunteer, but I could be drafted.  He told me I would first have to speak with the FBI agent, but I would have to wait as he was at that moment interviewing the Black Nationalist in the other room.  I returned to my seat.  We were all give a fried chicken lunch in a box like KFC, and told we would be going to Ft. Chafee in Arkansas for basic training.

            The FBI agent got to me and I told him of the arrest at the lunch counter.  He said that conviction was a felony, and he would have to speak with the NO District Attorney to ask if he would drop the charges before I could be drafted.  Meanwhile, I was told to keep the chicken lunch, go home, and await the decision.  I am unsure if the DA at that time was still Richard Dowling, or a newly elected Jim Garrison.  The charges were NOT dropped, but my draft classification remained 1-A.  This made it difficult to get a new job because employers were reluctant to hire someone who could be called up at any moment.  I found a low-pay job at another library to have some money while waiting.

            I could not wait forever.  In September 1962 I returned to Tulane to try to earn my MA.  I now changed my thesis topic – I would write about the Scottsboro rape cases of the 1930s in Alabama and the role of the Communist Party.  Nine young Blacks were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama, and defended by Communists.  Nothing controversial there!

            In October the world experienced “The Missile Crisis.”  This is featured in Baker’s book, as Pres. Kennedy’s failure to invade Castro’s Cuba would further incense anti-Castro elements in New Orleans and Miami.  Soon after the crisis, I wrote an article for the Tulane leftist alternative to the official university Hullaballoo.  The alternative was mimeographed and was published sporadically.   My article in The Reed was titled, “The Munich of the 60s,” in which I condemned Khrushchev for yielding to the demands of Kennedy to withdraw the missiles from Cuba.  The analogy was Khrushchev to Chamberlain, and Kennedy to a German leader.  To say that my article was unpopular is an understatement.  I walked into one classroom and copies of the Reed were not simply torn in half, or into quarter, or into…down to the size of a fingernail.  Interestingly, my article would be attacked early the next year in Political Affairs, a journal of the CPUSA.  Herbert Aptheker placed the Reed article along with various Trotskyist and Ultra Left analyses that failed to understand Khrushchev’s wisdom in compromise and in getting Kennedy to pledge not to invade Cuba.

            At that time, I was pro-Castro (not now).  I personally knew several members of the staff of The Reed, most especially my thesis advisor Prof. Robert Reinders, who had studied at Notre Dame and was a liberal Roman Catholic.  I was also acquainted with Bob Hoffman and others.  But I was also working hard to research and write my MA thesis, so I may have been less social than usual.  Vereen Alexander would allege that she had met Oswald at a party at Bob Hoffman’s and other Reed people in 1963.  She later changed her story thinking she was mistaken.  I was so busy, I could not even recall Vereen Alexander.

            Although I had attended Beauregard Jr. High and then Easton Sr. High in New Orleans about the same time as Oswald, I never met him.  And again, although I was pro-Castro in New Orleans in 1963 and indeed picked up one of Oswald’s FPCC leaflets that had been laid on a small table in the foyer of Tulane U. Library, there was no one in the entrance area with whom to inquire about the flyers to discuss the organization.  I took one of the leaflets and brought it to another grad student who had been active in FPCC in another city.  I had assumed he had produced the flyer.  But Harold Alderman knew nothing about it.  We wondered if we should write to the post office box on the leaflet, but we were cautious as it might be a trap (we didn’t write, and it was).  I was unable to complete my thesis for the May graduation, and had to keep working on it during the summer of 1963.  Finally, in August I received my MA.  My thesis, 270 pages, generally defended the Communist approach to defending the Blacks accused of rape, using both top-notch attorneys in court while simultaneously mobilizing mass support for the cause outside the courts.  Several chapters of my thesis were subsequently published in academic journals.  But defending the CP did not make me popular with the establishment historians at Tulane.  I was informed that the chair of the department did not want me to continue for a doctorate.  I now had to find a job.

            A new, private school had opened in NO, and I was offered a post teaching 5^th grade at a higher salary than I had earned in the public schools.  The school opened in a building formerly owned by the Dept. of Agriculture, and was in the process of being renovated.  I think it was k-12, or possibly 1-12.  Three of us taught 5^th grade, another young guy, and an older woman who had taught in public school for many years.  I quite enjoyed the teaching.  I was larger than my pupils, which helps with discipline.  Some were quite smart and around 10 years old; a few had had troubles in school and were up to 14, but they were caught up in the spirit of the younger pupils.  That spirit was most important – when I asked a question, all who knew the answer raised their hands and wanted to be called upon.  Often, when they are a few years older, the dreadful peer spirit warns all not answer, and condemns those who do.  I enjoyed teaching them, and I think they were learning and enjoyed me teach them.  It was fun.

            I could begin to relax after the pressure of Tulane, and occasionally played tennis after school with colleagues or old friends.  I was still residing with my parents after a very “poor” year.  In early October 1963, after school, after tennis, I returned home late one afternoon.  My mother greeted me at the front door, “Hmmph, why are you so late?  I thought they had rounded you up too?”  I had no idea what she was referring to, but rushed to the TV, as the news was about to come on.  The Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee (LUAC) along with DA Jim Garrison had staged raids on local Communists, using axes to break down their doors.  The offices of SCEF (the Southern Conference Education Fund), an integrationist organization were raided and files confiscated.  Its director, who was elderly and crippled, was arrested.  Also, attorneys Ben Smith and Bruce Walzer, who shared a law firm, were arrested in the raid.  Both lawyers defended dissidents.  During the raid of Walzer’s home, as the axes smashed in the front door, his wife hovered in fear with her baby.  She had been born in Germany, half-Jewish, and had survived by being taken in by a Roman Catholic organization.  The axe action terrorized her.  The raid on the home of Ben Smith was probably just as frightening, and his wife filed for divorce soon after.

            The Chair of the LUAC lived a few houses down the street from my parent’s home; his wife was my mother’s Avon lady.  This raid occurred 3 October 1963.  Later, I would wonder why they had not raided the home of a defector to the USSR, a self-professed Marxist who had expounded his radical views on WDSU radio, and a man who had been arrested for distributing FPCC leaflets?  (In Me & Lee, Baker provides information on why there was a delay in raiding the SCEF, Smith and Walzer, but why did the LUAC display no interest in Oswald?   

                Back to work.  One day around lunchtime, Mrs. Flagg, the older 5^th grade teacher whose class was directly across the hall from mine, came to my door, and asked me to come to her class for a few minutes.  Telling my class I would be right back, I left them for hers.  Because of the many renovations, we still had no cafeteria, so kids ate lunch in the class rooms, and her class was having free time during their lunch, so there was much talk, an occasional shout, etc.  Mrs. Flagg led me to the seat of a pupil who had brought a rather new invention to class, a small, transistor radio.  He was listening as Mrs. Flagg and I craned our necks over the youngster, trying to hear the news above the din of the class at play.  After a few minutes, I heard the main point, and had to return to my unattended class.

            I entered and closed the door behind me, and they quickly quieted down.  “I just heard on the radio that Pres. Kennedy was shot in Dallas.”  They cheered and applauded!  I was shocked by their response.  Then I noticed that one girl had placed her head on her table and was silently crying.  The others were elated.  Suddenly, the normal lessons seemed trite.  These kids, whom I normally liked, had angered me.  I began with an impromptu history lesson.  “You think that if Kennedy dies, that will mean the end of integration, that segregation will be saved.  Well, others had similar views.  At the end of the Civil War, some believed that the South would be restored, that slavery would continue, if only Lincoln could be eliminated.  John Wilkes Booth did kill Lincoln.  But that did not bring about the restoration of the Confederacy.  Nor did it bring back slavery.  Instead, it made the North even more determined to destroy slavery and the power of the South.  And if Kennedy dies, it will make the North of today even more determined to destroy segregation, more determined to force integration upon the South.”  I may have elaborated here or there, but the point of my lecture was clear, even to 10-year-olds.  Of course, all of us assumed that Kennedy had been shot by a segregationist.  The school dismissed classes early that Friday.

            I was  home when I received a phone call from Shelly Zervigon, wife of Carlos my old buddy in CORE.  “Did you hear the news?” she asked.  “Of course, Kennedy is dead.”  “Did you hear the guy who did it was a Communist, from New Orleans?”  I could hardly believe her words.  A shock wave followed by one of fear.  If they were rounding up Communists in New Orleans in October for being integrationists, what will they do now?  I knew the history of what had happened in Paris in 1938, when a young Jew entered the German Embassy there and shot and killed the Ambassador.  In retaliation, a few days later in Germany, many synagogues were burnt, many Jewish shop windows broken (so it was called Kristall Nacht because of the broken glass), thousands of Jews were rounded up, some sent to camps, and Jewish funds in banks confiscated.  It was the beginning of the end for Jews in Germany.  And that was for the murder of an ambassador.  What would happen with the murder of a President?  When would there be the next round-up of “Communists in New Orleans?  How much time would I have?  I decided to go out that Friday night and get drunk, as it might be my last chance to do so.

            I went out to the Blue Note, a bar on Rampart St., and perhaps some others.  I ran into a few liberals and asked the same question, who the hell is Lee Oswald?  No one seemed to have known him.

            Back to work.  At the end of November 1963 the school gave us checks as usual, but this time many bounced.  After some negotiations with the school administrators, by mid-month many teachers, myself included, filed a law-suit against the school, which made the newspapers.  Soon other creditors were also filing suits.  Some pupils suddenly dropped out, most teachers decided not to continue teaching until paid for past work, and the school was in a downward spiral.  To protect the school from the Commie agitator teachers, the school hired someone responsible to protect the institution, Guy Banister.  I was told by a teacher who remained that Banister would roam the halls with his pistol in his belt.  By the end of January 1964, that school had closed.

            I was suddenly unemployed, again.  About this time, my uncle was visiting my parents when I was there.  Uncle Jim liked to tease me.  Politically, we were opposites.  After he found out I had been arrested in the first sit-in, he had sent a small sum to George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party to restore honor to the family.  I did not see him often, but his usual greeting to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This would rile me up and a few minutes later I would leave to visit friends.  When Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy lost a baby while they were in the White House, Uncle Jim explained to me what had happened, “They killed it because it was Black.”  I would roll my eyes and leave.  Sometimes he would say, “Oh, that Bobby.  They gonna get that Bobby!”  Attorney General Robert Kennedy was often sending representatives of the Justice Dept. to the South to try to promote integration.  “Oh, that Bobby,” he said many times in the early 1960s.  It was probably in January 1964 when I next saw Uncle Jim.  “What did I tell you, huh?  What did I tell you?  Didn’t I tell you they were gonna get him?”  It took me a few moments to figure out what he was referring to.  Then I realized in a horrified flash.  This time I responded – “But you said they were going to get Bobby.”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  After a year of listening to him talking about getting Bobby, I finally asked him, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  He quickly responded, “The mob out in the Parish.”  To translate: “Out in the Parish” meant in Jefferson Parish, the county adjacent to New Orleans, and the leading mob official would be Carlos Marcello.  No one was talking about Marcello in connection with the Kennedy assassination in January 1964.  I rolled my eyes and chalked another one up to my crazy uncle, like the Kennedy’s killing their child because it was Black.  Furthermore, what would my uncle know?  He had not finished elementary school, and I had an MA from Tulane.  I was too arrogant to understand.  Now I regret that I did not listen to him more and question him further.  I might have learned a lot from him.

             According to researchers Alan Rogers and Larry Haapanen, Oswald said that if he and Marina had a boy, they would name him David.  Oliver and his wife had two boys, and according to researcher Bruce Baird, Oliver’s widow revealed that one son was indeed named David for David Ferrie.  And that would have been in the 1960s, after some of the scandals regarding Ferrie.  If David Ferrie could so influence the boys and young men of his CAP that they would consider naming their sons after him, even following the scandals, then Ferrie was an extremely impressive man.  Baker writes. Ferrie was “a man who taught countless people how to fly, who influenced dozens to become priests or to serve their country in the Armed Services, and whose acts of charity, patriotism and courage were overshadowed by his sexual misbehavior, is buried in near isolation.”(p432)  Did his sexual misbehavior “overshadow” all the rest?  Here I disagree with Baker.  But that is subordinate to the big questions – did Ferrie encourage Lee Harvey Oswald to join the marines when he was an underage teen?  Might his stories, along with TV programs like Herb Philbrick’s “I Led Three Lives,” have encouraged the young marine to explore less travelled paths, like defecting to the USSR?

            When Oswald returned to the US with American Embassy help, was he on the payroll of the FBI or other agencies?  Baker claims she was working with Ferrie, Oswald, and Dr. Mary Sherman on a bio-weapon to hasten growth of cancer so enemies like Fidel could be killed and their deaths attributed to natural causes.  Leading this project was the internationally famous Dr. Alton Ochsner, whose hospital moved to Jefferson Parish not far from the Beverly Country Club (Marcello’s gambling outlet).  Even if one totally rejects Baker’s contention that she was Oswald’s lover, and her assertions about the bio-weapon, are there still reasons to connect David Ferrie, Oswald, and alleged conspirators to kill Castro and or Kennedy?

            There were experiments that today we might deem unwarranted, inhumane, and worse.  Baker mentions a contract with the US Govt. and prominent Tulane U. Professor Robert Heath.(75)  Baker also writes that at times Ferrie was listed on the faculty of Tulane for a 2-hour credit course workshop in 1960.(102)  She has Ferrie looking for volunteers for some of the Tulane experiments among his CAP group, and on the other side, Ferrie rescuing some teens who had been victims of experiments at some of the Louisiana mental facilities trying to make the teens into heterosexuals.

            But there are more areas where the reader may not rely on Baker’s personal testimony.  Ferrie did work for attorney G. Wray Gill, a major lawyer for Marcello.  According to Marcello’s granddaughter Tricia, Ferrie had flown Marcello to Florida from his exile in Central America.(117)  Ferrie was also involved in the anti-Castro movement in New Orleans and was probably training some of the CIA sponsored elements for another invasion of Cuba.  Also involved in these activities was former FBI agent, former Acting Superintendent of the New Orleans Police, Guy Banister.  Banister also had an anti-Castro organization listed in his offices.  He was known to hire young people to infiltrate the Left on NO campuses.  Oswald distributed pro-Castro FPCC leaflets in NO in the summer of 1963, some of which had the address of the same building as Banister’s offices.  There was no FPCC located there, but if anyone had replied by mail to the flyer’s address, that letter would have wound up in the hands of Banister.  Furthermore, several witnesses asserted they had seen Oswald in Banister’s offices.

            After spending such time and effort to build his FPCC, Oswald suddenly dropped it.  Baker writes: “Until I spoke up in 1999, nobody had a logical explanation for Lee’s suddenly ‘giving up’ on the FPCC.  As soon as the prisoner died – …[a human guinea pig in the cancer research to create a bio-weapon] – Lee would have to travel immediately.  It was important that a sudden departure would not be noticed by the media.”(294)

            Baker also presents an explanation for Ferrie’s concern about the allegation that Oswald had Ferrie’s library card when arrested in Dallas.  Ferrie was disturbed enough by the charge that he went searching for that card in the apartment formerly rented to the Oswalds in NO.  Baker asserts, it was not a card from the public library that Ferrie was worried about, but a card from the Tulane Medical School that was used when they were engaged in cancer research for the bio-weapon.  When Ferrie telephoned Baker in Florida shortly after the assassination, Baker assured him that she had the card.  Ferrie told her to destroy it immediately.  Once assured that this possible connection of Oswald to Ferrie was removed, Ferrie then denied even knowing Oswald when interviewed by the FBI on 27 November 1963.(363-71)

            Baker’s books (this and her earlier Me & Lee) also provide an explanation for the events in Clinton, Louisiana and other towns north of New Orleans.  Various witnesses identified Oswald waiting in a long line to register to vote in summer 1963, a lone white amid a CORE voter registration drive.  Having emerged from a large, black auto, it occupants also aroused attention, and various people from opposite sides of the political spectrum identified Oswald, Ferrie, and Clay Shaw.  The role of the Louisiana mental hospitals in Mandeville and Jackson to provide patients for human experimentation also played a role, according to Baker.(290)  Baker may not provide the only possible explanation to these strange sightings, but hers seems to be the best explanation so far.

            Even where she was not a participant in events with Oswald, Baker provides provocative analysis, as in the case of journalist George Lardner, the last man to interview David Ferrie before his death.  Indeed, Ferrie’s time of death was revised to conform to Lardner’s claims of visiting Ferrie’s apartment that late night.  Baker provides reasons to question Lardner’s account.(430, 477)

            Baker portrays Oswald and Ferrie as pro-integration, pro-civil rights, pro-Kennedy, anti-Communists.  She believes that Oswald and Ferrie were working to assassinate Castro, but dealing with vehement Right-wingers who by 1963 had turned against the ‘pro-Communist’ Kennedy, and they were joined by others who hated the President like Mafia Carlos Marcello.  While Oswald and Ferrie pretended to be opponents of Kennedy, their objective was to infiltrate and halt any operation against the President.  She finds it significant that a plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago in autumn 1963 was foiled after the plot was disclosed to authorities by a “Lee.”(263, 319)  She thinks Oswald was in Dallas to spike another plot.  She implies that the note Oswald left with the FBI office on 12 November 1963 in Dallas was meant to expose and prevent such a new plot.  That note, of course, was destroyed upon orders of J. Edgar Hoover.  Its contents, as revealed by FBI Agent Hostie concerned Oswald threatening the FBI if it did not lay off of his wife Marina.(320)  Baker rejects Hostie’s version of the note that he himself destroyed.

            Baker includes material showing how the NO Dist. Atty. Garrison crew was willing to bribe a witness to join the anti-Clay Shaw team,(382, 430) but she concedes that both sides were using bribes during the Garrison investigation, which led to the later publicity about Ferrie and the trial of Clay Shaw.

            On the other side, perhaps Ferrie was not so innocent.  Instead of telling Baker the truth about how he was seeking to save Kennedy while lying to others when he announced that “Kennedy should be shot,” perhaps Ferrie’s speech about killing the President enunciated his real views, and instead he was lying to Baker.  In this book, Baker is honest enough to include reports of a witness at a Winnipeg airport who overheard Ferried complaining about using that ‘moron’ Oswald, and how clearly, Ferrie was involved in the murderous plot.(374, 445, 447, 450)  She also includes a supposed confession by Ferrie to a bishop of one of the tiny, splinter Catholic churches.(440)

            Not all of Ferrie’s life may be interesting to Kennedy assassination researchers.  But Ferrie was a man who influenced many, and probably saved many lives from cruel experimentation in mental institutions.  Yet, according to Baker herself, he too was willing to indulge in human experimentation to hasten a cancer causing bio-weapon.  Ferrie was a whiz of o pilot who flew to help overthrow Castro and aid rebels.

            There were problems with the execution of this book, such as repetition of text and footnotes.(45, 91, 478 & 184, 282, 283 #8 #11)  There were footnote errors (118, 129)(279, 281, #28, #20)  On the other hand, as one with poor eyesight, it was easier to read footnotes that were not shrunken to the conventional small size.

            Yet, referring to the book’s cover, Baker does show that David Ferrie was a Maria pilot, that he participated in Anti-Castro activities, that he knew Lee Oswald, and was deemed by many to be a key to the John Kennedy assassination.  She maintains that she, Oswald, and Ferrie were involved with Dr. Mary Sherman in research on a bio-weapon, under the direction of world-famous and anti-Communist Dr. Alton Ochsner.  There is little doubt that the weird looking Ferrie, who was a top-notch pilot, knew various languages, experimented with mice, hypnosis, taught military training, and debated theology, was a man who greatly influenced teens in his Civil Air Patrol units.  How much and in what manner did he influence Oswald?

            Baker provides conflicting evidence that Ferrie was pro-Kennedy and anti-Kennedy.  He was known and worked indirectly for Mafia leader Marcello and former NO police chief Guy Banister.  Some, in addition to Baker, saw him with Clay Shaw.  Did all this result in a plot that culminated in Dallas on November 22, 1963?