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JFK's Assassination * Bowman * Skolnicks * CIA/FBI Attacks Harbury
20 July 2002 - Part 2
In the last FlybyNews, (July 9) we used a quote purportedly by John F. Kennedy. Since we have not been able to find a clear resource on its authenticity, we removed it. However, it did get me reading various Kennedy conspiracy ideas, and it is obvious who is benefitting from the current reign of terror against human rights and civil liberties. There is no surprise that the government does not want to revamp the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies for homeland security. It would expose to much for the liking of those betraying the US Constitution, democracy, human rights, and freedom. Item 4 is a report by Vincent J. Salandria, Attorney, on JFK's assassination and his "systematic thinking on why President Kennedy was killed."
Item 5 is part of a report on a strategy session with Robert Bowman, which occurred this last July 6th with 15 members of the Nuclear Peace Action Group. Dr. Bowman, as a rocket scientist, directed the top-secret U.S. missile defense programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. A retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Col. Bowman flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, then helped the Pentagon brass stop Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense madness. Item 6 is a link for Skolnicks Report. In recent reporting, Skolnicks covers recent political assassinations at LA's airport. Item 7 is a report from Jennifer Harbury, a renowned human rights attorney whose efforts exposed the role of the CIA in the torture and murder of her husband in 1992, at the hands of the Guatemalan military. She has recently received threats from the FBI/CIA. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!
"THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM is the political equivalent of a stock market bubble - hope, hubris and hyperbole parading as fact. We have learned nothing since September 11: we are more belligerent, jingoistic, imperialistic, and anti-Muslim than we were before. We have thus accentuated the very conditions that led to that disaster and are now fully invested in our own myopia. The price of this error could be enormous. The alternative is to dramatically change our policies and our way of speaking of them. There is no possibility of our politicians doing this willingly; hope lies in a broad, non-partisan, pro-democratic, pro-decency, pro-constitutional coalition of conscience. Those who profess to provide moral leadership and who enjoy access to the media could still accomplish this if they chose. But time is running out. "
Sam Smith
Editor of "The Progressive Review"
"Undernews" Email: news@prorev.com
Please take actions for the best strategy you can think of to make the big change! A recommended one is happening this Wednesday, 7:00pm -- Flyby News is showing the Kucinich videos at Sirius Community in Shutesbury, MA. For directions or for more information on this sustainable-directed community, visit their web site:
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For more on the Congressman Dennis Kucinich Videos, see:
http://www.flybynews.com/cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1025805829,84082,
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4) Behind Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: A Model of Explanation
The following is excerpted, and posted, in its entirety at http://www.tomdavisbooks.com/library/salandria1.html
Part One
by Vincent J. Salandria, Attorney
Philadelphia, Pa.
"While the researchers have preoccupied themselves with how the assassination was accomplished, there has been almost no systematic thinking on why President Kennedy was killed."
(Based on an address at the conference of the New England Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 23, 1971.)
For almost eight years the American people have failed to address themselves to the crucial issue of why President John F. Kennedy was killed. Much valuable time has been lost; it is becoming increasingly clear that our delay has cost mankind dearly. I urge that no one drop this question, for to do so is to abandon the serious search for peace internationally and for domestic tranquility.
Government Evidence Cries Conspiracy
New Rulers Timed Diffusion of Evidence
Lone Assassin Myth Suggests Governmental Guilt
A Warning to Opponents
Silence of Kennedys Points to Top-Level Coup
A. Which Group Was Responsible?
1. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI?
2. The Left?
3. The Right?
4. President Johnson and Friends?
5. President Kennedy's Own Estimate of a Possible Military Takeover
Was the American military on its own capable of this degree of sophistication? It does seem rather beyond the intelligence of the American military to have accomplished this crime alone. But it is not inconceivable to imagine the American military as having been involved in a plot to eliminate Kennedy, in order to ensure the continuation of the Cold War. Kennedy himself did not regard a military take-over as implausible. We have an excellent articulation of his feeling on this matter in a discussion with Paul B. Fay, Jr. [1] This colloquy occurred one summer weekend in 1962 on the Honey Fitz, the Kennedy yacht. The President was asked what he thought of the possibility of a military takeover in the United States. The discussion grew out of the book Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey.
President Kennedy said: "It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right."
The conditions outlined by the President were as follows:
1.The country would have to be led by a young President.
2.There would be a Bay of Pigs.
3.Military criticism of the President would follow.
4.Then, if there were another Bay of Pigs, the military would consider overthrowing the elected establishment, and finally,
5."...if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen."
Mr. Fay concluded this episode by describing how the President, "pausing long enough for all of us to assess the significance of his comment ... concluded with an old Navy phrase, 'But it won't happen on my watch.'"
These conditions were approximated during the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy was in fact a young President. There was a Bay of Pigs. The missile crisis which followed resulted not in the bombing of Cuba --- as the military advisors had urged upon the President --- but rather in a detente with Russia. This has followed by a nuclear test ban treaty which "...the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared themselves opposed to under almost any terms." [2]
The American University speech by President Kennedy following his reexamination of the Vietnamese policy, completely fulfilled the conditions set forth by President Kennedy for a take-over to happen on his watch.
Evidence for Military Involvement in the Assassination
There is much evidence to indicate military involvement in the assassination. There was the startling and incriminating action of the then Commander James J. Humes, the head of the Navy Bethesda autopsy team, who took the original autopsy notes --- and then burned them. [3] The autopsy was under the control of an army general who was not trained in medicine. [4] The autopsy was never completed. [5] The findings of the autopsy were contrary to the findings of the non-military physicians at Parkland Hospital. The pathologists were directed not to look at the Kennedy neck wound. [6] The x-rays were never turned over to the Commission by the military. The burning of the notes by Commander Humes did not deter the military from promoting him to Captain.
Military-ClA Interests Coincided
Although at the time of the assassination the interests of the CIA and the military coincided, now evidence of a CIA-military rift abounds. The Boston Globe of July 20, 1971 stated that the Pentagon Papers revealed that "one agency ...comes out ... with a record for calling its shots correctly." So Ellsberg did not do badly by his "ex" employer. The Boston Globe of July 3 offered an item which indicates the "ex"-Pentagon people are hitting back at the "ex"-CIA Ellsberg. "A former Pentagon liaison officer with the Central Intelligence Agency said in London that President Kennedy engendered the hate of the CIA by trying to curb the agency's power. He also said he did not think Lee Harvey Oswald 'by himself killed President Kennedy.'"
"L. Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel and the director of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and 1963, said Kennedy issued two directives in 1961 to limit the CIA's power but the documents never surfaced and were not implemented."
Jack Anderson on April 21 1971 said:
"International espionage is seldom as efficient as the inter-departmental spying that goes on in Washington.
"... the Central Intelligence Agency never makes a move without the Defense Intelligence Agency keeping close surveillance.
"... Government agencies in the best cloak-and-dagger tradition snoop upon one another." [8]
I view the American military's motive for involving itself in the killing of Kennedy as perversely patriotic in nature. But at that period of time there was, as we will demonstrate, a congruence of interests between the American military and the CIA. Kennedy was the enemy of both power groups at the time he was killed.
The Pentagon Papers -- a CIA Jab at Military?
6. Did the CIA Kill President Kennedy?
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: A Model of Explanation
This complete report:
http://www.tomdavisbooks.com/library/salandria1.html
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5) Robert Bowman Strategy Session
The following was excerpted from the GlobeNet list serve (14 Jul 2002)
Subject: Robert Bowman Strategy Session
globenet@yahoogroups.com
On July 6th, 15 members of the Nuclear Peace Action Group met with Dr. Robert Bowman to garner his wisdom and discuss strategy. As a rocket scientist, Dr. Bowman directed the top-secret U.S. missile defense programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. A retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Col. Bowman flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, then helped the Pentagon brass stop Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense madness.
Dr. Bowman's Talk
When Reagan was in office, the Joint Chiefs of Staff called Star Wars "military madness". Although the project was stopped while Reagan was in office, the budget for R&D never went down.
Bush has resurrected it, and as Reagan did, calls it defensive. But in fact missile defense is purely offensive. The terrorist threat to the US has nothing to do with missiles. No terrorist would bother with an ICBM when there are so many cheap, low-tech ways to deliver a nuclear weapon, without the clear return address that an ICBM entails. The DoD prior to Rumsfeld and the CIA both agree on this. The director of the CIA has testified that ICBM's are the least likely delivery system for a nuclear weapon. Small boats, small aircraft, trucks are more accurate and reliable, cheaper, and anonymous.
If missile defense and Star Wars is not about defense, what is it about? These weapons have military uses. Lasers in space don't work; they need to be 200-300 miles from their target. They are useful in TMD, to defend against retaliation from OUR first strike. They are useful on airplanes, or Aegis ships., and a short range, can take out any target. The point is to maintain our overwhelming military superiority. We have no enemies, only small adversaries without nuclear weapons. Why do we need these weapon? It's true that they feed the arms industry, but there's another reason. The AF Vision for 2020 clearly states that these weapons are necessary TO MAINTAIN THE GROWING GAP BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR. The main point is to control countries all around the world.
The Bush family and the Bin Laden family have been financial partners for many years. The CIA investigation of El Qaeda was blocked when #43 took office. When the Taliban refused the oil pipeline, the war in Afghanistan was planned, long before 9-11.
The real terrorism is the nuclear threat. It is due to the US government serving the interests of multinational corporations rather than of the American people.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Q. You really took on the Bushes. They play rough, I understand, airplane crashes and such. Were you scared?
A. It's spiritual warfare, you have to take what comes. I was audited by the IRS 3 times in 2 years, I got some death threats, and there was other harassment. It doesn't matter, the important thing is to recruit members of Congress to a Reform caucus. We should run Green Democrats, as Michael Moore suggests.
Q. What about the approach of revoking corporate charters?
A. We have to concentrate on nuclear issues. Get Congress to put an amendment on the Defense Appropriation Bill saying that nothing will be funded which violates the ABM Treaty.
This information was excerpted. For more on Robert Bowman, see:
http://www.rmbowman.com/ssn/index.htm
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6) Skolnicks Report - Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts
CITIZENS' COMMITTEE TO CLEAN UP THE COURTS.
Editor, HOTLINE NEWS,
a recorded phone message, -- a regular phone call -- (773)731-1100.
Moderator, TV program "BROADSIDES",
Chicago and suburbs -- Monday evening in Chicago, on Channel 21 cable, 9 p.m.
Email: skolnick@ameritech.net
Web site: http://www.skolnicksreport.com/
From the web site, you can link to exposes on
Political Assassinations at LA Airport
The Bilderberg Syndrome
The Chandra Levy Affair
The Overthrow of the American Republic
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7) FBI/CIA attacks Peltier attorney Jennifer Harbury
This just came in from the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
http://www.freepeltier.org
We were very alarmed to receive this report from one of Leonardıs attorneys. Jennifer Harbury. Jennifer is a renowned human rights attorney whose efforts exposed the role of the CIA in the torture and murder of her husband in 1992, at the hands of the Guatemalan military. She has tirelessly devoted herself to human rights work, and was a key legal strategist, organizer and spokesperson in Leonardıs drive for executive clemency during Pres. Clintonıs administration. Her call to action is at the bottom. She will appear at the July 20th forum (Listen Live Sat July 20, 7:30 PM Central Time, at http://www.wbix.org ).
July 10, 2002
Dear Friends,
I am writing today because I would like all of you to be informed about some very disturbing information I received last week. September 11 was certainly one of the most horrifying tragedies we have ever witnessed on our own soil, but I fear it is being badly exploited by certain government officials in order to justify both human rights violations abroad, including torture, as well as extreme repression against our own citizens. Our civil rights are eroding with a speed which I find frightening.
Given the situation, I have not been a bit surprised to find myself a target. Not long after Sept. 11, various government officials, including many of the CIA people exposed in Everardo's case, began to publicly insist that it was all my fault. When asked again and again if the tragedy did not represent the biggest failure of our intelligence system in U.S. history, they replied that I was to blame, that CIA operatives in the field had been afraid to aggressively seek out information from unsavory characters. In fact, the 1995 reforms simply required an operative to inform his superiors before hiring a known human rights abuser, and the CIA itself admits that permission has never been denied. Nevertheless the accusations were made again and again, especially on a lengthy BBC program. I took all this with a grain of salt and figured things would come out in the wash. They did indeed....I know that all of you have seen the lengthy disclosures about exactly how much the CI A and FBI did in fact know, but somehow never acted upon. Similarly, I have not been particularly upset by harassing phone calls or right wing articles which have appeared in remote publications. I was however, very taken aback by the most recent news I received, specifically, that an FBI official told an Amnesty International staffer that they consider me a top suspect in the death threats and assaults against Barbara Bocek. Barbara is the Amnesty worker who has received death threats for a year now and who has been assaulted twice, once in Guatemala and once in Washington state. All threats have made it very clear that she is being targeted for her work for Guatemalan human rights. The FBI has made it very clear that they do not believe her at all. As in the case of Sister Diana Ortiz, there seems to be a government effort to suggest that Barbara somehow, inexplicably, assaulted and threatened herself, not once but twice.
I am sure most of you saw the recent New York Times article. Now, apparently, the story has shifted a bit to suggest that I have carried out the threats, to somehow make my own case stronger. In fact, as a matter of law, the assaults on her, so me ten years after Everardo's abduction, has a legal relevance of zero for my own case. I have, however, been outspoken in my support for her, which is evidently more than enough. I get the message : Shut up about the Guatemalan terrorists here in the US who happen to CIA links, or else suffer the consequences.
Barbara first began receiving threats a year ago when she wrote an op ed piece about the Bishop Gerardi murder trial. When she went to Guatemala with a delegation in June 2001 she was assaulted outside her hotel room and left bound and gagged at the bottom of a stairwell. Her abductors were telling her she would be tortured and killed for her human rights work. Clearly, a warning was being sent to the international human rights community. Foreigners should not feel safe, even members of the highest level ngo's could and would be attacked and perhaps killed whenever the killers so desired. The Guatemalan response was predictable. It didn't happen, or else she did it to herself for whatever reason. The U.S. government response was a throwback to the not so good old days. No real action was taken and slowly but surely we began to hear insinuations that perhaps Barbara indeed was either fabricating the threats or staged the abduction.
While this was going on, my own witness was having grave problems as well. He is living here in the US with his family, and began to receive very frightening death threats against himself and his children. His friends and family back in Guatemala too were having the same problems. Upon the request of an Amnesty staffer , we did go to the FBI offices to give them the details. The response was shocking. The officer read through a few lines of the police report and asked if the assertions were true. He then stated that no threats had been made, only obscenities. When we pointed out the portion of the report specifically describing the threats, he refused to accept them, stating that the witness should have mentioned them earlier in the interview. The witness, however, was never asked. Later, an FBI agent approached the witness at home, stating that he had spoken with local Guatemalans, and none had noticed any military types or death squad members around town. This was rather laughable, and the witness asked that he not be contacted again.
I was particularly incensed by this because it was more of the same from the mid-1990s. In the spring of 1995 just after the disclosures by Sen. Torricelli, the FBI arrived late at night on my doorstep in Texas to let me know that the Guatemalans were hiring a hit man to kill me. The iron security door of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission was torn off its hinges and left in the street. Only the answering machine was taken. A few months later, in January 1996 my lawyer, Jose Pertierra, had his car firebombed at his Washington D.C. home, and the religious community where I was living in D.C. was shot at by someone in a pickup truck with dark glass windows. The FBI agent in charge opened the case under potential international terrorism. We also received a tip from a high level insider, indicating a Guatemalan military person who fought in Vietnam, owned a car repair shop, a luxurious home, and had unexplained income. The FBI agent was very interested but was swiftly transferred off the case. None of us ever received any further communications from the FBI, although some truly foolish statements have come back to me through the grapevine. When I heard about the incipient smear campaign about Barbara, I immediately sent in all of this information as to the same or similar events to corroborate her story. The Guatemalan army clearly has a modus operandi of sending or hiring people here to terrorize human rights activists and witnesses living in this country. And our own government has a practice of looking the other way when the perpetrators happen to be working with the CIA.
Things went from bad to worse. Barbara was attacked again, this time in the United States near her place of work. She was returning home one night and heard a grating sound beneath her car. When she got out to investigate, a car with its headlights off pulled up behind her and she was seized and tied up and told not to return to Guatemala for the investigation as planned, or she would be killed. The men spoke in Spanish. Her eyes were taped, she was gagged, and she was locked into her car where police found her later, semi-conscious. According to the New York Times article which followed, the police found her story questionable. Yet most of their questions could have been easily answered had they spoken with Barbara. But they failed to do so. Barbara was also sent to the FBI to give her story. As soon as she arrived it became clear that she was a suspect and not the victim. Her sister had accompanied her but was not allowed to attend the "interview". Instead, Barbara was given a hostile interrogation of many hours, and then told that she was probably fabricating the whole story. What on earth her motive would be has never been elucidated. Barbara is a quiet and mature woman who has a PhD from Stanford which she is too shy to mention, and who worked for several years in Guatemala. She then chose to return to the U.S. and do public service work for Native Americans in a remote northwestern reservation. This is clearly not a woman seeking attention for herself. This is a modest and courageous woman who has long dedicated herself to working for the human rights of others with little or no recognition for herself.
Now I learn that because I have outspokenly defended her and offered up evidence of the same and similar events when her credibility was questioned, that I too have become a "suspect". Evidently these statements were made some time ago. It is clear to me that I have not only received an insult, but also a direct threat. Silence about these matters, or else. Since I am not too good at silence, I am considering my legal alternatives at this time. But most importantly, I wanted to keep all of us in the network fully informed. I have no doubt that more is coming.
Should you wish to call anyone in Congress in this regard, I would recommend three Members on the Judiciary Committees who have been truly heroic on the issues of human rights : Rep. Conyers, Rep. Frank, and Senator Leahy. If you call them, please remember that they are our friends, and simply call their attention to yet one more example of abuse of power by government officials. They have long been very interested and supportive. The Congressional Switchboard telephone number is 202-224-3121.
Abrazos, Jennifer
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