Chapters Seventeen - Eighteen

excerpted from the book

Final Judgment

The missing link in the JFK assassination conspiracy

by Michael Collins Piper

Wolfe Press, 1995, paperback

p251
THEY DARE NOT SPEAK OUT: THE MEDIA'S SILENCE WHY ISRAEL'S ROLE IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION COULD NOT BE EXPOSED

The influence of Israel and its lobby over the American media would have made it difficult for anyone who even suspected that Israel ( had a hand in the JFK assassination to get the word out. The media promoted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and savaged its critics. And when the media did place the blame it was on Fidel Castro.

The reporting of syndicated columnist Drew Pearson and the sensational Oliver Stone film JFK are classic case studies of how Israeli-linked media sources have manipulated public perception of the murder of President Kennedy.

p251
longtime JFK assassination researcher Jerry Pollicoff

"The Kennedy assassination cover-up has survived so long only because the press, confronted with the choice of believing what it was told or examining the facts independently, chose the former. Unless and until the press repudiates that choice, it is unlikely that we shall ever know the truth."

These are the words of summarizing the attitude of the establishment media toward its coverage of the crime of the century.

The media was content to chum up virtually every theory imaginable up to a point - except one: that Israel was behind the assassination, a theory widely held in the Arab world at least.

... Thus, even the harshest critics of the Warren Commission which ostensibly "investigated"-most would say "covered up"-the assassination conspiracy had no reason to suspect that there might be an Israeli connection to JFK's murder. The final conclusions of the Warren Commission hardly satisfied anybody-except, of course, for the friends of Israel and the CIA in the Establishment media who gave the Report's conclusions wholehearted support.

p251
New York attorney Mark Lane made great headway with his clinical dissection of the Warren report in his best-selling Rush to Judgment. A flurry of other books followed. Lane's second book on the subject of the JFK assassination, A Citizen's Dissent, is most illuminating, however, on the Establishment's reaction - particularly the media - to the furor caused by the publication of Rush to Judgment.

Without question-and this is significant-the media almost unanimously sided with the Warren Report, despite all of the evidence which proved the report a fraud. The media would not tolerate dissent. As far as the media was concerned, the JFK controversy was closed. Period.

GARRISON AND THE CIA-MOSSAD LINK

The media certainly went into a frenzy with its hysterical coverage of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's 1967-1969 inquiry into the JFK murder and his prosecution of Crescent City businessman Clay Shaw.

At the time Garrison began pursuing Shaw, the facts that we now know today about Shaw and his connections with the Lansky-Mossad-CIA -linked Permindex operation based in Rome, were not so obvious.

It wasn't, in fact, until 1975 that former CIA official Victor Marchetti acknowledged publicly that Shaw had ties to the CIA and that the CIA was very much interested in assisting Shaw during the period of his prosecution in New Orleans.

Former CIA Director Richard Helms himself subsequently admitted under oath that Shaw had CIA connections. If Jim Garrison had had that at the time of Shaw's trial, the verdict indeed may have been different.

... Garrison was on the right track. When he launched his I investigation of Shaw, Garrison thought he was doing his patriotic duty. He was trying to prosecute a man he believed was connected to the JFK assassination conspiracy. Garrison was trying to bring our president's killers to justice. However, the New Orleans district attorney was greeted with a. hurricane onslaught by the media - and, in particular, a media outlet with close ties to elements in the pro-Israel lobby.

THE 'STERN GANG'

The evidence indicates, in fact, that the fine hand of pro-Israel propagandists were at work, orchestrating the attack on Garrison. Leading the assault on the district attorney was NBC's New Orleans television (and radio) affiliate, WDSU.

The owner of WDSU was Edgar Stem, of the powerful New Orleans Stern family, major contributors to not only the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Appeal, but also the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. Additionally, a close friend of Clay Shaw was Edgar Stern's wife, Edith Stern, whose support for Shaw in the face of his prosecution was prominently noted in James Kirkwood's account of the Shaw trial, 'American Grotesque'.

... the ADL not only functions as a foreign intelligence operation for Israel, but it also works closely with American intelligence. More importantly - the ADL uses its influence to play a major role in shaping American media news coverage. This was critical to covering up the truth about the JFK assassination.

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... the ADL-linked Stem family-run WDSU media had actually played a primary part in helping promote Lee Harvey Oswald's image as a "pro-Castro" activist both before-and after the assassination of President Kennedy.

It was on August 16, 1963 that Oswald and a colleague appeared outside Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart distributing pro-Castro leaflets. Researcher Dick Russell points out two intriguing facts: "The leafleteers were there for only a few minutes, yet the demonstration was filmed by WDSU-TV, which happened to be on hand--apparently alerted in advance. Jessie R. Core III, the public relations man for the International Trade Mart, also attended the leafleting and alerted the FBI immediately afterward."

So it was that not only did the Stem family's television cameras just happen to be there to capture Oswald, the "pro-Castro" activist, but Permindex board member Clay Shaw's Trade Mart associate took the effort to report the young "communist" to the FBI, thus cementing Oswald's leftist image further.

This, however, was not the end of WDSU's involvement in promoting Oswald's public image as a pro-communist agitator prior to the assassination of President Kennedy.

On August 17 William Stuckey of WDSU Radio arranged for a radio interview with Oswald in which the young man proclaimed his leftist views. Then WDSU turned a copy of the tape over to the FBI.

There's more. On August 19 WDSU's Stuckey again contacted Oswald and arranged for Oswald to appear in a debate with an anti-Castro activist over his radio station. It was at this time that Oswald proclaimed himself a Marxist. The next day WDSU turned a copy of the debate transcript over to the FBI office in New Orleans.

In fact, then, on a second occasion-on August 30-WDSU Radio again made the transcript of the Oswald radio debate available to the FBI. WDSU was very public spirited indeed.

p255
The ADL-connected WDSU television and radio had thus provided "one lone nut"-Lee Harvey Oswald-with more free publicity than any other single leftist in the city of New Orleans could have dreamed about.

But WDSU wasn't finished with Oswald. Immediately after Oswald was arrested in Dallas on November 22, it was-once again-WDSU that played a part in portraying Oswald, now to a national television audience, as a pro-Castro agitator.

According to Warren Hinckle and William Turner: "The NBC Network scored a coup, thanks to its New Orleans affiliate WDSU. Early in the evening it played a tape of Oswald's voice professing admiration for Fidel Castro and declaring, 'I am a Marxist."

An interesting footnote. The young WDSU cameraman who filmed Oswald's demonstration, Johann Rush, emerged some thirty years later-in 1993-as an "expert" whose "enhancement" of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination was hailed as the final proof that Oswald acted alone.

Rush collaborated with author Gerald Pr in the publication of a volume entitled Case Closed which was widely hailed in the Establishment media as the ultimate refutation of JFK assassination conspiracy theorists.

U.S. News & World Report, published by outspoken Israeli enthusiast Mortimer Zuckerman, devoted an extended special issue promoting the book in its cover story

However, the Posner-Rush book is rife with errors, contradictions, misstatements and distortions of fact. The book is quite disingenous in its thesis that while the Warren Commission was wrong on some points-thus sparking criticism-its basic thesis that Oswald acted alone) was correct.

The authors ignore critical evidence of CIA and other intelligence connections to Oswald and Ruby and suggest that virtually all of the many witnesses who were able to provide information which pointed toward a conspiracy were either mentally unstable or outright liars or both.

p260
David Wise. 'The American Police State'

The CIA's contacts with the publishing world were not confined to attempts to suppress books. Through the U.S. Information Agency as a 'cut-out,' the CIA subsidized major publishers to produce books, some of which were then sold in the United States bearing no government imprint to warn the unsuspecting purchaser.

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THE MOSSAD'S TENTACLES

Intelligence historian Richard Deacon, writing in his history of Israel's Mossad, has commented on the pervasive role of the Israeli lobby and the manner in which it has exercised its influence:

"For years the tentacles of the Israeli Secret Service had reached out into all walks of American life, not in any sinister way, as was sometimes alleged by her enemies, but in a quietly persistent manner which embraced making friends and influencing people, establishing opinion lobbies and gathering intelligence.

"This influence extended into the U.S. [House] and the Senate, the Pentagon, the defense and electronic industries, the research laboratories and such Jewish-oriented organizations as the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Defense Committee, Bonds for Israel and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

"Some of these bodies have served as fronts for intelligence-gathering and there are few of the important congressional committees which do not / possess one member or staff-assistant who does not feed the Israeli network relevant material."

THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

It is significant that Deacon has made specific reference to the AntiDefamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. Perhaps above any other organization, it is the ADL which has consistently had a major impact on the America media. And in the case of the media's coverage of the JFK assassination, the Warren Commission investigation, and the subsequent critiques of the commission, the ADL's fine hand is, as we shall see, quite visible.

That the ADL, as a voice for Israel, would have an interest in stifling any suggestion that Israel-and for that matter, Israel's allies at the CIA had a hand in the JFK assassination cannot be disputed.

After all, the ADL has adopted as its mission the defense of Israel and the defamation of its critics-both real and perceived.

THE ADL & AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE

Writing in American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Lee O'Brien provides an informative capsule study of the ADL's method of operation:

"In its early decades, the ADL would approach persons or institutions considered to be anti-Semitic and privately attempt to persuade or reason them into retracting abusive statements and correcting offensive behavior.

"In later years, ADL has turned to more public and aggressive measures, which it classifies as "Educational," "Vigilance Work," and "Legislation." In fact, "Vigilance Work" has become outright surveillance of individuals and groups, the results of which are fed into both the Israeli intelligence-gathering apparatus, via their consulates and embassy, and American domestic intelligence, via the FBI. Top ADL officials have admitted the use of clandestine surveillance techniques."

THE ADL AND THE MEDIA

O'Brien's summary of the ADL's method of operation is quite interesting in that it pinpoints the ADL's influence on the media and on public debate over the role of Israel vis-a-vis American Middle East policy making:

"Today the ADL is much more active than other community relations organizations in the use of its regional offices and constituency for information gathering, and dissemination.

"The central headquarters in New York City provides regional offices with analysis sheets, sample letters to the editor to be placed in local media, biographies of Israeli leaders and anti-Zionist speakers, and directives on how to deal with topical issues.

"The regional offices in turn monitor all Israel-related or Middle East-related activities in their areas, such as the media, campus speakers, and films. By bringing the local events to the attention of the central headquarters, they play a pivotal role in ADL's overall supervision of the national scene."

OPERATING AGAINST ISRAEL'S CRITICS

O'Brien describes one instance which is typical of the ADL's activities in defense of Israel: "One Jewish activist critical of Israeli policies discovered in 1983 that the ADL maintained a file on him going back to 1970; it included information on the subject gathered from local newspapers, talks on campuses, interoffice memos (from the institution where the subject teaches), business meetings, talk on radio and TV, and press and other miscellaneous materials.

"As the file revealed, specific individuals had been assigned to monitor this person's lectures, either by tape recordings and verbatim transcriptions, or by detailed summaries of what the subject spoke about, the context of the lecture, other participants, size of audience, questions from the floor, mood of the audience, and so forth.

"In some cases, these observers successfully penetrated closed meetings in which the subject participated. Subsequently, the ADL prepared and disseminated a short primer on this person, following the 'myth" and "fact' format, and distributed it to their agents for use at future speaking engagements."

This, of course, is but one example (of many) which demonstrates the pervasive influence of Israel's ADL and its clandestine efforts to control public discussion of U.S. Middle East policy on all fronts-particularly in the American media.

p264
At the beginning of 1993, however, the ADL's history of covert-and illegal-domestic spying finally became the topic of widespread public controversy.

A spy scandal erupted in San Francisco, enveloping the ADL, one of its longtime paid informants, and a San Francisco police officer who had been selling classified police intelligence information to the ADL.

A raid by the San Francisco Police Department on the offices of the ADL in both San Francisco and Los Angeles revealed that those offices of the ADL were maintaining surveillance on some 12,000 individual Americans and on the activities of some 950 social and political organizations of all political persuasions.

It was subsequently revealed that the ADL was conducting similar spying operations in other major cities around the country, utilizing a network of paid informants who were charged with the responsibility of infiltrating organizations targeted by the ADL.

Ironically, among the targets of the ADL's spying include organizations that had, over the years, cooperated with the ADL in a number of joint ventures, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union.

p265
THE PEARSON/ANDERSON COVER STORY

On March 3, 1967, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson and his understudy, Jack Anderson, floated a story which suggested that Fidel Castro had been behind the JFK murder. (This column appeared during the time that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was in the earliest stages of his own controversial assassination inquiry.)

Interestingly, Pearson and Anderson even slanted their column to suggest that somehow then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president's younger brother who was elected to the Senate from New York in 1964, had a hand in setting what became the alleged Castro-sponsored assassination plot in motion.

Pearson and Anderson claimed that: "President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb, an unconfirmed report that Sen. Robert Kennedy may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother." The assassination plot alleged was one of those hatched between the CIA and "the Mafia."

According to what can most charitably be described as the fanciful account by Pearson and Anderson, Castro had captured a number of CIA-Mafia hitmen who were gunning for him and then "turned" them; in short, that the anti-Castro hitmen then had a change of heart and returned to the United States and killed Kennedy.

p269
The Pearson-Anderson columns, in effect, "cleared" the CIA involvement in JFK's murder and pointed the finger at Castro.

The Pearson-Anderson columns, likewise, shifted focus away from the Garrison investigation in New Orleans which was focusing on likely CIA involvement and which had stumbled upon the Clay Shaw-Permindex connection bringing the inquiry right onto Israel's doorstep.

That Drew Pearson, in particular, would have an interest in shielding any Israeli involvement as well is beyond doubt

Of Jewish extraction, Pearson was a devoted friend of Israel-from the beginning. In fact, in the period leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel, Pearson functioned as a hitman for the Israeli lobby in the United States, pounding away in his column at those perceived inimical to Israeli interests.

One of Pearson's favorite targets was then-Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. According to Pearson's biographer, "When Forrestal persuaded [President Harry] Truman to take the Arab side against the Jews in Palestine for military reasons, Pearson saw his opportunity. He lathered and shaved Forrestal as a bureaucratic voice for American oil companies with enormous stakes in the Mideast. Walter Winchell and other opinion-makers supported his position."

Pearson's hysterical media attack on Forrestal, some believed, led to the Cabinet secretary's mental instability, resulting in Forrestal's suicide. There are many, though, who believe that Forrestal was in fact murdered precisely because of his powerful opposition to the Israeli lobby.

Pearson himself had cemented his ties with the Israeli lobby and had engaged in behind-the-scenes intrigue with Israel's intelligence and propaganda arm, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith for decades.

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According to Pearson's biographer, "Over the years the ADL had helped Pearson enormously. It had provided information he could not obtain elsewhere, backed his lecture tours, even assisted in the circulation of his weekly newsletter."

Pearson's own former mother-in-law, Washington Times-Herald publisher Cissy Patterson, was less charitable in her description of Pearson. In a fiery editorial attack on Pearson she called him "both undercover agent and mouthpiece for the Anti-Defamation League."

What's more, Pearson had a long-standing arrangement with the ADL in which the ADL paid the expenses of his legmen ... in return for Pearson floating ADL propaganda in his columns.

Pearson, likewise, had acquainted himself over the years with a number of top-level intelligence operatives close to Israel, in particular, Canadian-born British intelligence wizard, Sir William Stephenson.

Stephenson was not only the guiding force behind the assembly of Israel's Mossad, but also the brains behind the Allied intelligence operations during World War II which utilized the resources of Meyer Lansky and his organized crime network. He was also a close associate and mentor of Louis M. Bloomfield, president of the Mossad-backed Permindex entity that was central to the JFK assassination conspiracy.

According to Pearson's biographer, "Stephenson had become acquainted during the war with Pearson as a responsible publicist with the largest serious following in the United States." In at least one instance, Pearson published a story that, according to his biographer, "was spoon-fed to him" by Stephenson.

Pearson's other connections were equally interesting and point further toward his interest in covering for Israel and its allies in the JFK assassination conspiracy-both the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.

According to Pearson's associate, John Henshaw, Pearson was engaged in sharp business practices with his partner, attorney Max M. Kampelman, a key figure in the Israel lobby in Washington and a longtime top-level AntiDefamation League (ADL) director.

Kampelman, the personal attorney for then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Pearson were trying to wrest control of television channel 14 away from a Black-owned station, WOOK, in Washington.

Humphrey was a product of a Minnesota political machine funded, in part, by the notorious Isadore Blumenfeld, a major cog in the Lansky Crime Syndicate.

The connections between Pearson and the Israeli lobby in Washington were even more intimate. Pearson's stepson (and the editor of his "diaries"), Tyler Abell, an attorney, had been employed by the law firm of David Ginsburg, a registered foreign agent for Israel.

Ginsburg, like several other top figures known for their interest in promoting Israel's interests in Washington, were among those close to Hubert Humphrey.

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Drew Pearson's partner and protégé, Jack Anderson, himself had notable ties to not only the Israeli lobby, but also the Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate.

Not only did Anderson once share his offices with at least one registered lobbyist for Israel, who was also close to Lansky's protégé, Carlos Marcello, but he also maintained a close working relationship with

Herman (Hank) Greenspun, a longtime Lansky syndicate associate and arms-smuggler for Israel.

Greenspun was a protégé of Lansky crony Joseph "Doc" Stacher, a New Jersey mobster who was one of the prime American backers of the Jewish underground in Palestine in the late 1940's.

... Greenspun also functioned as a public relations man for Lansky's boyhood friend-later killed at Lansky's direction-Benjamin Siegel.

According to The Washington Observer, "Early in the Palestine War, Hank Greenspun was dispatched by the Jewish underground to Hawaii to buy surplus U.S. Army arms and equipment.

"By bribing security guards at the U.S. Naval Air Station on Oahu, he raided a stockpile of armaments and stole 15 tons of .30- and .50- caliber aircraft machine guns. The contraband machine guns were packed in 58 crates marked 'engine parts' and shipped to Los Angeles, then transshipped to Mexico and on to Israel.

"Greenspun ran the British blockade in a ship delivering arms to Israel. Later he pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Neutrality Act, and was given a 3-year suspended sentence. He was never prosecuted for theft of Federal government property."

... That Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson maintained such intimate ties with all of the prime movers behind the JFK assassination-Israel, the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate-not only casts real doubt about the Castro assassination plot story that the two columnists sensationalized, but it points toward the real motivation behind the release of the tale: to cover for the real conspirators.

The case of Pearson and Anderson exemplifies, above all, the insidious nature of Israel's influence over the American media and provides a clearcut case study of how the media has been manipulated to distort the truth about the JFK assassination conspiracy.

p275
In 1992, when public interest in the JFK assassination conspiracy at a fever pitch as a result of the concurrent release of Mark Lane's bestseller, Plausible Denial, and Oliver Stone's film, JFK, it was Newfield who floated yet another ridiculous JFK assassination conspiracy story - a new angle on the theory that "The Mafia Killed JFK."

"Hoffa had JFK killed" screamed the headline on the front page of the January 14 edition of the sensationalist New York Post.

It was the New York tabloid that "broke" the story that Teamster boss, Jimmy Hoffa had arranged the JFK murder through his Mafia contacts. Not surprisingly, the author of the Post article was Jack Newfield.

The Post, of course, has been one of the media's primary pro-Israel voices-almost to the point of obsession. Any conspiracy that might somehow link Israel-or its allies in the CIA-could not be tolerated.

Almost immediately, the rest of the Establishment media picked up the scandal sheet's "exclusive" and began hyping it. The purpose was to discredit the conspiracy that was finally being exposed to millions of Americans.

... The Washington Post, long a CIA disinformation source, also published the story. As did the staunchly pro-Israel conservative weekly, Human Events which consistently maintained, otherwise, that any conspiracy in the JFK assassination-particularly involving the CIA-was a madman's fantasy.

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Interestingly enough, as yet another dedicated pro-Israel polemicist, Max Lerner, writing in The Washington Times, who also came to the defense of the Hoffa-Mafia cover story. According to Lemer, "The Mafia has always figured among the major possible scenarios for the killing, along with the KGB and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

... That The Washington Times would have an interest in promoting Hoffa-Mafia story is no surprise. After all, the Times itself has close links to the intelligence community and is a strident editorial supporter of Israel.

The Washington Times is funded by the bizarre global conglomerate of Korean cult figure Sun Myung Moon.

Moon himself has been repeatedly linked to the Korean CIA which is, of course, intimately tied with its American counterpart. Additionally, Moon has forged a close working alliance with Israel and its American lobby and has pushed a pro-Israel agenda on the so-called "conservative movement" in the United States.

Moon's editor at The Washington Times-and its guiding force-is Arnaud deBorchgrave, a former top correspondent for the CIA-linked Newsweek (owned by the Washington Post Company) and himself a reputed "former" intelligence operative. What's more, deBorchgrave himself is closely connected by marriage to the Rothschild family. The Rothschilds have been longtime financial backers of the state of Israel.

p279
What about Oliver Stone's JFK? Where does this controversial film fit in the lore of JFK assassination conspiracy theories? What of the media's response to the film?

Writing in the New York Times on December 20, 1991, Stone asked a rather simple question: "When a leader of any country is assassinated, the media normally ask: 'What political forces were opposed-to this leader and would benefit from his assassination?"

The irony, as we shall see, is that although Oliver Stone himself seemed to have asked that very question in a big, big way-through the egis of his controversial film JFK-the fact is that Stone himself has, in a sense, proven, in the end, to have become a major factor in the continuing coverup of the real truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It is ironic indeed that although Stone's film JFK has focused widespread international attention on the JFK assassination conspiracy, there has been quiet speculation that the media's furor might be part of a high-level plan to further cover up the truth about the conspiracy.

Many JFK assassination researchers, Mark Lane in particular, are deeply concerned that Stone's film presents a strange admixture of both fact and fiction. The facts about the assassination conspiracy are sensational enough without fictional details being added, he and others have pointed out. Lane, has summarized it best: "It was good that Stone called the attention of teenagers and others to the unsolved murder. It was bad that he did so by falsifying the record."

p279
Although Stone's film referenced, in passing, the CIA connections of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw of Permindex, the film's primary thrust was that the conspiracy originated in the so-called "military-industrial" complex.

The primary conspirators were presented as high-level military men and their allies among the multi-billion-dollar defense contracting companies.

p281
Life magazine correspondent Richard Billings went to New Orleans and sabotaged Jim Garrison's investigation into the JFK assassination. Billings and his team used Life magazine as a forum to portray Garrison as a tool of "the Mafia." Billings and company presented Garrison as a shill for New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, but, of course, ignored Marcello's secondary positioning to Marcello's sponsor, Meyer Lansky.

Billings himself later served on the staff of the House Assassinations Committee which blamed the JFK murder on "the Mafia," working alongside the committee's director, G. Robert Blakey, who several years previously had been employed as a character witness on behalf of longtime Lansky confidant Morris Dalitz, ostensibly "proving" that Dalitz was not linked with the underworld.

So it was that Time-Life and Warner Communications merged, becoming Time-Warner. And, of course, it was one of Time-Warner's subsidiaries, Warner Brothers, which ultimately became the distribution company for Oliver Stone's JFK-which blamed "the military-industrial complex - not Israel's Mossad, not the Mafia, not even the CIA itself - for he JFK assassination.

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... Although Stone was beyond question, the undeniably talented creative genius responsible for JFK, one must always remember that in the motion picture arena, it is ultimately money-pure and simple-that determines whether or not a film will be made. The all-important task of arranging financing falls into the lap of the film's producer. If one checks the credits for Stone's JFK, one will find the name "Arnon Milchan" listed as "executive producer."

Who is Arnon Milchan? Why is his name relevant in our examination of the facts about Israel's role in the JFK assassination conspiracy and the manner in which Oliver Stone has suppressed that critical factor?

According to liberal journalist Alexander Cockburn, writing in The Nation on May 18, 1992, Milchan, the executive producer of JFK, "was identified in one 1989 Israeli report as 'probably [Israel's] largest arms dealer.' A company he owned was once caught smuggling nuclear weapons fuses to Iraq. As part of a joint Israeli-South African government operation - 'Muldergate' - he acted as launderer to money scheduled to quell liberal publications opposing apartheid."

As a consequence of his status, Milchan, very clearly, is an international wheeler dealer who-if not actually a Mossad officer himself-has certainly worked closely with the Mossad in its global intrigue. It would not be a stretch of the imagination, indeed, to suggest then that it was actually Mossad money, in the end, that helped finance Oliver Stone's interpretation of the JFK assassination conspiracy.

... [Oliver] Stone himself asked this question in the New York Times: "When a leader o any country is assassinated, the media normally ask: 'What political forces were opposed to this leader and would benefit frog his assassination?"

As we have seen one political force that was opposed to John F. Kennedy and would benefit from his assassination was Israel, yet Stone himself evidently prefers not to name that particular force.

Despite all the criticisms we have aimed at Stone-and they are very much deserved-Stone's film has still led the way for new popular perceptions about the obvious fact that it was a conspiracy that ended the life of John F. Kennedy.

Stone failed to nail down the source of that conspiracy. What a shame indeed that Oliver Stone could not have told the entire story of the JFK assassination conspiracy. That story in itself would have been far more chilling than even that which appeared in his film.

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Clearly, the media's coverage-or be it non-coverage - of the JFK assassination was critical to the cover-up of the real origins of the conspiracy that resulted in the president's assassination. That the media played a major part in perpetuating the cover-up is unquestioned and that Israel and its lobby has a major influence in shaping the American media can likewise not be questioned.

Although the media initially supported the Warren Commission's conclusions, public skepticism forced the media to bring forth a wide variety of cover stories and limited portions of the truth. But the Israeli connection has never been considered-until now.

p286
THE ASSASSINATION OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY ISRAEL, IRAN, LANSKY & THE CIA

The murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of the slain president, was vital to the continuing cover-up of the truth about the JFK assassination.

If RFK had made it to the White House he would finally have had the power to bring his brother's killers to justice.

The slaying of Robert F. Kennedy links not only Israel and its allies in the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate, but also SAVAK, the secret police of the Shah of Iran.

On its face, the "official" explanation of the circumstances surrounding the death of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy is as simple as the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In both instances, so the story goes, "one lone nut" was responsible for the crime. There was no conspiracy. .

Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles in 1968 came just after RFK (elected to the Senate from New York in 1964) had won the critical California Democratic presidential primary. This put the younger Kennedy in the lead for his party's presidential nomination and thus potentially in line to move into the White House following the general election.

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What really happened in those few short seconds is still the subject of controversy, although the bottom line was this: shots were fired at Robert F. Kennedy. The presidential hopeful was critically wounded. He died shortly thereafter. The Arab-American assailant was pummeled to the floor, arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison.

The public was somberly told that Sirhan was dissatisfied with Kennedy's strong pro-Israel stand and that this was one of the driving motivations that led him to commit the crime. So it was that an ArabAmerican was held up to the world as the killer of a martyred American president's younger brother, himself a popular public figure.

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As former CIA contract agent, Robert Morrow, has demonstrated in his little-noticed book 'The Senator Must Die' there are connections between the two events [JFK & RFK assassinations] - deeper than one might have imagined.

Simply put, Morrow's thesis is this: that the murder of Robert F. Kennedy was a CIA contract hit, carried out through the CIA's longstanding ally in international intrigue, the SAVAK, the secret police of the Shah of Iran-an intelligence agency created, in part, by Israel's Mossad itself and tied closely to the Mossad.

... According to Morrow's own extensive investigation, during the final weeks of Robert F. Kennedy's ill-fated presidential campaign in 1968, one Khyber Khan, a high-ranking member of the Shah's SAVAK, had infiltrated RFK's California campaign headquarters.

Khan additionally brought in other SAVAK agents to work on the campaign. This infiltration was part of the assassination conspiracy. Khan as in charge of coordinating the hit on RFK.

... As part of Khan's scheme, the decision was made to have the actual assassination carried out by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian-American, and another participant, a Pakistani-American.

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ISRAEL AND IRAN

... the close working relationship between Iran's SAVAK and the Israeli Mossad. Although Iran, a Persian nation, and Israel might be perceived to be hostile to one another, this was not the case at all.

In 1958 Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion proposed to American President Dwight D. Eisenhower a united front against Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. According to Ben-Gurion, "With the purpose of erecting a high dam against the Nasserist-Soviet tidal wave, we have begun tightening our links with several states on the outside perimeter of the Middle East. Our goal is to organize a group of countries, not necessarily an official alliance, that will be able to stand strong against Soviet expansion by proxy through Nasser."

Iran was one of those countries that Ben-Gurion proposed be part of this new alliance. Ben-Gurion had it in mind that ban could be utilized to keep the Arab countries of Iraq and Syria under control.

In fact, Israel had been actively engaged in attempting to interfere in Iran's domestic affairs for some time. According to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, writing in Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S. Israeli Covert Relationship, "Israeli agents had been at work encouraging / friendly forces in Iran since the early days of the state."

... Additionally, note the Cockburns, "Each [country] had something offer that the other needed. In Iran's case it was oil, which it began to ship to Israel in 1954. Israel, for its part, could offer valuable expertise in the fields of intelligence, and domestic security. In the eyes of the Shah, Israel had something even more valuable to bestow on its friends: the pervasive influence of the Jews in the United States and indeed the world over.

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Mansur Rafizadeh, the former SAVAK chief, who later broke with the Shah, also provided us additional light on the close relationship between SAVAK, the CIA and the Mossad. Writing in his memoirs, Rafizadeh reveals that SAVAK was set up at the joint urging of Israel, the United States and Britain.

... That the Shah of Iran was pleased by the murder of John F. Kennedy (and certainly that of Robert Kennedy to be sure) is undoubted. According to former SAVAK chief [Mansur] Rafizadeh "The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 made the Shah jubilant. Kennedy had put pressure on him for social reforms. I learned later.., that the Shah had had a kind of celebration., When he received the news of Kennedy's death, he asked for a drink to celebrate.

"The Shah had despised Kennedy, who constantly advised him to restore human rights to his subjects and insisted that such a course of action was necessary and unavoidable. The Shah viewed that course as a decided threat to his power and so had refused.

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The murder of Robert F. Kennedy by the Shah's SAVAK was a reaffirmation of a long-standing hostility between the Kennedy brothers and the Shah. RFK's murder helped perpetuate the cover-up of the role that SAVAK's allies in the CIA and the Mossad had played in the previous Kennedy assassination. It was again-as in the JFK assassination-a case of mutual interests coming into play.

Final Judgment

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