LBJ Told Mistress: `CIA Eliminated JFK'

Although the Warren Commission Report blamed the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 on Lee Oswald, U.S. President Johnson apparently told his mistress, Madeline Brown, that the CIA was responsible for the elimination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. In his 1992 book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell wrote the following:

“As I was completing the manuscript of this book, it was suggested that I get in touch with Madeline Brown. Between 1948 and 1969, Brown maintains that she was a mistress of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ’s handwriting on numerous letters to Brown has been verified by analysts, and today it is generally accepted that her son Steven, who died of cancer in 1990, was a son of the former president.

“Brown, today [in 1992] 67, came from a wealthy Dallas family, the Duncans, which made its money in real estate and ranching…She decided to go public with what Johnson once imparted to her about the Kennedy assassination…

“Before the assassination, according to Brown, `Lyndon Johnson told me that the Kennedys would never embarrass him again. It was not a threat, but a promise.’ Then, as 1963 passed into history, they were together at a New Year’s Eve party. ` I said, Lyndon, I’ve got to have my mind put at east,’ Brown remembers. `People are saying you are responsible for the assassination, and I’ve got to know.’ Well, he had a terrible temper tantrum, as he often did. Then he told me: IT WAS THE OIL PEOPLE AND THE CIA.’”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Next: LBJ’s Hoover Connection

Mass Media Coverage of JFK Assassination Probe-Related Deaths

Although some of the U.S. Establishment’s mass media reporters tried in the early 1990s to pin the sole blame for JFK’s assassination on “The Mafia,” most mainstream media reporters were not too eager then to do much investigative reporting in relation to the strange death of Sam Giancana in 1975. According to The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster—1848-1983 by John Davis:

“Staff members of the Senate Committee on Intelligence arrived in Chicago on July 19, 1975, to arrange for Giancana to appear before the committee in Washington five days later. He was to testify about his role in the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots. That same evening, around 10 p.m., Giancana was in the basement den of his Chicago home cooking sausage, escarole, and beans when the person who he was with shot him seven times…Giancana’s daughter, Antoinette, was sure her father had been killed by `the same people responsible for killing the Kennedys,’ who, she believed, was the CIA.”

Another person involved in the JFK Assassination Case whose strange death the U.S. Establishment ‘s mass media doesn’t like to talk about too much was one of Lee Oswald’s closest acquaintances in Dallas—Geroge de Mohrenschildt. According to The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster, prior to his mysterious death in 1977, de Mohrenschildt wrote an unpublished book manuscript about Lee Oswald and the JFK Assassination, entitled I Am A Patsy! I Am A Patsy, which contained the following passage:

“He was a patsy, a patsy not involved in any revenge arising out of JFK’s biggest and costliest mistake—the Bay of Pigs…The assassination was a devilishly clever act of revenge caused by the Bay of Pigs disaster.”

Coincidentally, de Mohrenschildt’s “apparent suicide occurred on the very day a member of the House Select Committee on Assassination was going to question him about the Kennedy murder,” according to The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster. In the same book, John Davis also raised the question “Did de Mohrenschildt really commit suicide?" And Davis then concluded that “the evidence that he did was purely circumstantial.”

(Downtown 4/1/92)

Next: LBJ Told Mistress: `CIA Eliminated JFK’

How Did Jack Ruby Enter The Dallas Police Station Basement?

A number of people have claimed that prior to his silencing of Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby was escorted into the Dallas Police Station basement in Dallas’ City Hall by Dallas Assistant Chief of Police Charles Batchelor, via the elevator. Coincidentally, during the March 31, 1964 testimony of Dallas Police Lt. Jack Revill before Warren Commission Assistant Counsel Leon Hubert Jr. the following exchange took place:

Lt. REVILL: Prior to the shooting…He arrived at city hall at 9:30. This preacher’s name is Ray Rushing…He came to the city hall and went to the third floor, and—by the way, he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby, now…Rode to the third floor…This preacher was one of the people that we located and he related this story to me, that he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby on the morning of Nov. 24…

Mr. HUBERT: In other words, Rushing says that he rode up with Ruby on the morning of the 24th, prior to the shooting?

Lt. REVILL: Yes, sir…

Mr. HUBERT: Did he say whether he had any conversation with him?

Lt. REVILL: He talked about the weather. I asked him.

Mr. HUBERT: Did he say whether he was—whether he saw Ruby there afterwards?

Lt. REVILL: He said he [Ruby] turned to the right and—went up to the third floor and, after arriving on the third floor, he [Ruby] turned to the right and went to the administrative office and talked to Chief Assistant Batchelor.

(Downtown 4/1/92)

Next: Mass Media Coverage of JFK Assassination Probe-Related Deaths

Did LBJ Know JFK Was To Be Eliminated In 1963?

In his book, The Texas Connection, Craig Zirbel asserted that according to former President Johnson’s “girlfriend of over 20 years, Madeline Brown, Lyndon Baines Johnson told her prior to President Kennedy’s assassination that Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas” and LBJ “knew in advance but did nothing.” Zirbel also wrote that “according to Johnson’s motorcade seatmate, Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough (who smelled gunpowder near the grassy knoll), at the exact time of the assassination Johnson had his ear up against a small walkie-talkie held over the back seat listening to the device which was `turned down real low.’”

Coincidentally, in her early 1990s book, JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, Jean Hill also recalled that a Dallas motorcycle cop who escorted President Kennedy’s car on Nov. 22, 1963—J.B. Marshall—told her the following, after President Johnson was inaugurated:

“According to the guys who were escorting his car in the motorcade, our new president is either one jumpy sonofabitch or he knows something he’s not telling about the Kennedy thing…

“They say he started ducking down in the car a good 30 or 40 seconds before the first shots were fired…I’d say that’s just a little peculiar, wouldn’t you?...

“…One of them told McGuire he saw Johnson duck down even before the car turned onto Houston Street…

“…This guy said it sure looked like he was expecting bullets to be flying…”

(Downtown 2/3/93)

Next: How Did Jack Ruby Enter The Dallas Police Station Basement?

City Planning Commission's Amanda Burden, PBS's Charlie Rose & Columbia Expansion

Because family members of New York City Planning Commission Chairperson Amanda Burden used to sit on the board of trustees of Columbia University, it’s not surprising that Amanda Burden recently pushed the New York City Planning Commission to rubber-stamp Columbia University’s latest campus expansion and land-grabbing real estate development scheme in West Harlem, north of West 125th Street. And since Charlie Rose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Rose was apparently involved in an on-and-off personal relationship with Amanda Burden, it’s also not surprising that critics of the Burden family, the New York City Planning Commission and Columbia University’s undemocratic attempt to impose its expansion plan on West Harlem neighborhood residents haven’t been given much airtime on Charlie Rose’s boring PBS evening television talk-show.

A former wife of Duke University School of Law graduate Charlie Rose apparently played a key role in helping the former Bankers Trust corporate manager to move from the unglamorous, intellectually dull world of banking into the more glamorous, intellectually dull world of commercial TV broadcasting in 1972. As Current Biography revealed in its January 1995 issue:

“Through his [then] wife, who was doing research for the CBS television show 60 Minutes, Rose became friendly with people employed in broadcasting…After his [then] wife was hired by the BBC (in the United States), he handled some assignments for the British Broadcasting Service on a freelance basis. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter on WPIX-TV…In 1974, [LBJ’s former press secretary Bill] Moyers telephoned Rose, after Rose’s wife spoke to Moyers about him at a social gathering…Within weeks he began working as the managing editor of the PBS series Bill Moyers’ International Report…"

Channel 13/ WNET-TV’s decision to allow Rose to monopolize its late night TV talk-show time-slot in September 1991 was apparently unilaterally made by former Westinghouse Group W Television Inc. President Bill Baker—after Rose, “acting on a friend’s suggestion,” approached Baker “with a proposal for a new interview show,” according to the January 1995 issue of Current Biography.

(Downtown 2/15/95)

Charlie Rose has been hosting his PBS-syndicated late evening TV talk-show that originated from the “non-commercial” studios of Channel 13/WNET in Midtown Manhattan since the early 1990s. Yet before 1991, Rose was more into commercial TV than public television. Between 1984 and the early 1990s, for instance, Rose worked for the commercially-oriented CBS News organization in Washington, D.C. as the host-interviewer of its CBS News Night Watch program. During the 1970s, Rose also worked in the world of U.S. Establishment commercial TV at Channel 11-WPIX-TV in Manhattan and for NBC News.

(Downtown 8/18/93)

Historically, Charlie Rose’s late-night PBS talk show was subsidized by a foundation whose surplus wealth was derived from its New York City real estate industry investments. In 1994, the Astor Foundation gave a $150,000 grant to Channel 13/WNET “toward production costs for `The Charlie Rose Show'”; and in 1995 an additional $75,000 grant was dished out by the Astor Foundation to Channel 13/WNET to sponsor Charlie Rose’s TV show. An article that appeared in Downtown’s Feb. 17, 1993 issue, “Newsweek Magazine’s CIA Connection,” made the following reference to Vincent Astor and the Astor Foundation:

“Vincent Astor became…Newsweek’s chairman of the board and its principal stockholder between 1937 and his death in 1959…Astor inherited a fortune…which included $63 million worth of real estate, such as the Waldorf-Astoria, the Hotel Astor, the St. Regis, Astor Place and office and apartment buildings in Manhattan. During the 1920s, Astor sold about half of the family’s real estate holdings in New York City for $40 million…By the time he died the estate which he left the Vincent Astor Foundation had an estimated value of $123 million…Astor also built oil drilling barges for off-shore oil ventures in the Southwest, was a director of American Express, Western Union, Chase National Bank and railroad companies…and was the largest shareholder and a director of the United States Line shipping company.”

In the pre-CIA era of U.S. history, Astor also apparently acted as a spy for Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. As The Astors 1973-1992 by Derek Wilson recalled:

“Roosevelt…set up his own secret intelligence unit headed by Washington journalist John Carter…He dispatched…fact-finding missions…commanded by Vincent Astor. The…cruises of [Astor’s yacht] Nourmahal provided a perfect cover for espionage.”

(Downtown 2/5/97)

In the 21st-century, a corporation that has been the target of a “Stop Killer Coke” global boycott because of its anti-labor policies and environmentally destructive policies, Coca-Cola, has apparently also been involved in helping to fund Charlie Rose’s mainstream media work.

Next: Did LBJ Know JFK Was To Be Eliminated In 1963?

CIA Manipulated Somali Elections In 1967

Many years before former CIA Director Bush I ordered his troops into Somalia in late 1992, the CIA also expressed a special interest in the internal politics of Somalia. According to a 1979 book which Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karl Van Meter and Louis Wolf edited, titled Dirty Work 2: The CIA In Africa, “CIA agents played a significant role in manipulating the outcome of the 1967 elections in Somalia” and “The rise to power of Prime Minister Muhammed Egal was said to have been `facilitated by’ thousands of dollars in covert support to Egal and other pro-Western elements of the ruling Somali Youth League party prior to the 1967 presidential elections…”

Who Ordered Press Photographers Away From JFK’s Car?

Although “the press car was loaded with photographers and journalists and was supposed to follow directly behind the car carrying the President’s bodyguards, which followed the Presidential limousine,” according to The Texas Connection by Craig Zirbel, on November 22, 1963 in Dallas “shortly before the start of the motorcade” the press car “was deliberately bumped to a rear position for no stated reason.” The same book also noted that “this resulting strange line-up change prevented professional journalists and photographers from witnessing and photographing the slaying” of President Kennedy.

(Downtown 2/3/93)

Next: City Planning Commission’s Amanda Burden, PBS’s Charlie Rose & Columbia Expansion

Human Rights Violations In Turkey Historically

Although the Turkish Establishment that has apparently been bombing Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq in recent weeks is a long-time ally of the U.S. Establishment, its human rights record in Turkey historically apparently hasn’t been too good. The London-based human rights organization, Article 19, reported, for instance, in the May 1991 issue of its Censorship News that the following human rights violations occurred in Turkey in January of 1991:

“1/7/91—Cumburtyet reported that the governor of Ankara had banned a meeting of the Ankara Chamber of Medicine on the subject of the health risks of war.

1/13/91—Cumburtyet reported that a 22-year-old woman, Yadigar Coskun, was killed when police opened fire on a 50,000-strong anti-war rally in Istanbul, addressed by Erdal Inonu, leader of the Social Democratic People’s Party. Thirteen people were injured as police tried to break up the rally.

1/19/91—Two successive issues of an Istanbul magazine, Yent Ulhe, were seized for printing the slogan `No to War.’

1/23/91—Gunes reported that police prevented 30 actors and artists from placing an anti-war placard in front of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul and subsequently destroyed the placard.

1/25/91—Macid Kaplan was shot dead and Aziz Coban and Kazin Karaca were wounded when police opened fire on an anti-war march in Tatran.

1/25/91—74 people were detained and held for three days in Batman, southeast Turkey, when thousands of anti-war demonstrators were dispersed by police. The following day, two people were wounded and 40 others were detained during a pro-Iraq demonstration in the same town.

1/28/91—11 people were detained, including Ercan Kanar, president of the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association, after 100 members of the organization were dispersed for protesting against the banning of a peace rally…”

In 1992, the human rights situation in Turkey got even worse, according to Article 19. In an introduction to its September 1992 Censorship News, entitled “Turkey: Censorship By The Bullet—Shocking Statistics and Official Silence,” the London-based human rights organization noted that “the most serious form of censorship—murder—is being practiced with frightening regularity in Turkey: eight journalists have been assassinated in 1992 for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

Although the U.S. Establishment’s Big Media in the early 1990s rarely mentioned human rights violations that occurred in Turkey, Article 19 also described the following 1992 human rights violations in Turkey:

“On 2/25/92 Huseyin Akyol, publisher of Yent Ulke, and 10 other journalists were injured in an attack by Turkish soldiers and special police team members in Diyarbakir when returning from the funeral of murdered journalist Gengiz Altun;

“Yent Ulke photographers Yakya Orban and Naif Yasar were beaten by Turkish police during their arrests for taking pictures at authorized demonstrations in March 1992.

“It is estimated that between 1/1/92 and 6/30/92, at least 57 journalists were detained once or more by the Turkish police.

“Irfan Ucar of Gundem, arrested on 5/6/92 at the office of his lawyer, reported that he was tortured during his week in detention.

“Since its launch in June 1992, with a particular focus on investigating human rights abuses by security forces in southeast Turkey, the daily Oxgur Gundem has seen the assassination of three of its correspondents and others have been briefly detained.

“In the first six months of 1992, Turkish police, acting on court orders, confiscated at least 41 issues of newspapers and magazines.

Ismail Pelbivan, editor-in-chief of the satirical journal, Girgir, was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment on June 10, 1992 for having `insulted President Turgu Ozal.’”

(Downtown 2/17/93)

Next: CIA Manipulated Somali Elections In 1967