A Legacy of Horror

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, after hearing his brother had died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Bobby Kennedy phoned CIA headquarters.  According to David Talbot in Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years . . .  

Bobby’s phone call to Langley on the afternoon of Nov. 22 was a stunning outburst.  Getting a ranking official on the phone–whose identity is still unknown–Kennedy confronted him in a voice vibrating with fury and pain. “Did your outfit have anything to do with this horror?” Kennedy erupted.

RFK summoned the CIA director himself, John McCone, to ask him the same question. McCone, who had replaced the legendary Allen Dulles after the old spymaster had walked the plank for the Bay of Pigs, swore that his agency was not involved.

Despite this denial, Bobby Kennedy knew McCone was just a figurehead, he knew what the CIA was capable of, he knew all too well how many coups and assassinations the CIA had been involved in, and continued to suspect that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.    

In The Mother of All Coverups, David Talbot explains that Bobby Kennedy’s supportive public statements about the Warren Report “were obviously freighted with political and emotional, and perhaps even security concerns. But we have no doubt what his private opinion of the report was–as his biographer Evan Thomas wrote, Kennedy ‘regarded the Warren Commission as a public relations exercise to reassure the public.'”

RFK confided to close friends and advisers that as President, he would order a full investigation into his brother’s assassination.  His own death in a hail of assassin’s bullets prevented that, he was silenced, the truth was silenced.

It’s been said that the past is prologue.

It’s been said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Maybe someday, Barack Obama will figure that out, maybe someday he’ll STFU about “looking forward” and enforce the rule of law so America won’t keep getting hit by one rightwing shitstorm after another.        

David Talbot, The Mother of All Coverups . . .

In 1967, the Washington Post quoted White House aide Marvin Watson as saying that President Johnson was “now convinced” Kennedy was the victim of a plot and “that the CIA had something to do with this plot.”  On a White House tape recording, President Nixon is heard telling aides that the Warren Report “was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated.”

It was.  Until the 9/11 Commission Report.

In the aftermath of the Warren Commission Report, the powers-that-be in the political and media establishments praised it.  In the aftermath of the 9/11 Commission Report, the powers-that-be in the political and media establishments praised it.  

Why?  

The Mother of All Coverups . . .

“J. Edgar Hoover ‘lied his eyes out” to the Warren Commission, as panel member Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman, memorably told an aide, pressuring and maneuvering the commission to reach a lone-assassin verdict.

But in private, Hoover told another story. The summer after the assassination, Hoover was relaxing at the Del Charro resort in California, which was owned by his friend, right-wing Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison. Another Texas oil crony of Hoover’s, Billy Byars Sr. was also there. At one point, according to Anthony Summers, the invaluable prober of the dark side of American power, Byars’ teenage son, Billy Jr., got up his nerve to ask Hoover the question, “Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald did it?”

Hoover “stopped and looked at him for quite a long time. Then he said, ‘If I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted.'”

If the American people would have been told that the CIA was involved in President Kennedy’s assassination, there would have been a disruption in Washington all right, no doubt about it.  It would have been very dangerous–to liars like J. Edgar Hoover, to the liars in the CIA and the Pentagon and Congress and the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.

That’s why the political and media establishments publicly praised the Warren Commission.  That’s why the political and media establishments publicly praised the 9/11 Commission.  Real progressives know that, but too many Americans don’t.  Power is all that matters to those Beltway assholes.  Their power. They don’t give a damn about the truth, they don’t give a damn about justice, they don’t give a damn how many people die, maintaining their power is all they care about.    

Pick an outrage.  Any outrage.  The response is always the same.  The political establishment trots out the same standard excuse.  A real investigation of 9/11 would have sucked all the air out of Washington.  Impeaching Bush and Cheney would have sucked all the air out of Washington. Single-payer health care reform would suck all the air out of Washington.  

Air?  What air?

They don’t breathe air in Washington, they breathe deceit and betrayal, they inhale and exhale it, they buy and sell it and call it governing.  Epicenters of deceit and betrayal pervade Washington, but the epicenter of all epicenters is the fucking CIA.      

How many horrors has the CIA been involved in?  How many horrors has the CIA been responsible for?   . . .

Iran 1953–the CIA overthrows Mohammed Mossadegh after he threatened to nationalize British oil and replaces him with the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, are as brutal as the Gestapo. Guatemala 1954–the CIA overthrows Jacob Arbenz and replaces him with a series of right-wing dictators who kill over 100,000 Guatemalans over the next 40 years.  Haiti 1959–the CIA helps “Papa Doc” Duvalier become dictator of Haiti, and 100,000 Haitians are killed.

Congo 1961–the CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. Dominican Republic 1963–the CIA overthrows Juan Bosch and installs a repressive, right-wing junta.  Indonesia 1965–the CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno and replaces him with General Suharto, who massacres between 500,000 to 1 million people.  

Cambodia 1970–the CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, which triggers the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who massacre millions of people.  Chile 1973–the CIA assassinates Salvador Allende and replaces him with Pinochet, who tortures and murders thousands of his own people.

Afghanistan 1979–the CIA supplies arms to fanatical Muslim extremists.  We all know how that turned out.  Iran Contra 1981–the CIA sells arms to Iran and uses the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.  Iraq 1991-2009–during the 1980’s the CIA provided Saddam Hussein with sophisticated arms, intelligence, training and financial backing.  He attacked Iran, he attacked Kuwait, Bush 41 attacked him, Bush 43 attacked him, the ensuing carnage has claimed the lives of two million Iranian, Iraqi, and Kuwaiti men, women, and children.

Enough is enough . . .

Citing a “significant shift in the mood” of the electorate and elected officials, US Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) told the Newark Star-Ledger that there is now momentum for a full investigation into the CIA’s unreported assassination program.  “Holt said he believes the investigation, which he also called a review, should be as intense and comprehensive as the probe conducted more than 30 years ago–in the wake of the Watergate scandal–by a special committee headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.”

JFK said the CIA should be shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds.  An intense and comprehensive investigation of the CIA would expose the horrific impact it has had on America and the world.   If the American people don’t demand that, if we don’t end this horror, if we don’t prosecute the war criminals and torturers who have inflicted so much suffering and death, the horror will go on, the consequences will intensify and escalate.  If the CIA isn’t shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds, America will be.