
Things that make you go hmmm…


A former Secret Service agent who was present at President John F. Kennedy’s assassination has come forward with a new claim that would debunk the ‘magic bullet’ theory and raises questions about whether there was a second shooter.
Paul Landis, 88, broke his silence on Saturday, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead in a motorcade passing through Dallas, to share his bombshell recollection with the New York Times.
Landis, who in 1963 was a young Secret Service agent assigned to protect First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy, said that in the chaos following the shooting, he picked up a nearly pristine bullet sitting on the top of the back seat of the open limousine.
It was just behind where Kennedy was sitting when he was killed, he says. Landis says he took the projectile and placed it on the president’s hospital stretcher to preserve it for the autopsy investigators.
That bullet, the first piece of evidence logged in the murder investigation, has for six decades been said to have been found on the stretcher of Texas Governor John Connally, and was hypothesized to have fallen free from a wound to his thigh.
Landis thinks the bullet may have rolled onto Connally’s stretcher from Kennedy’s while they were next to each other.
It has long been known as the ‘magic bullet’ — the bullet that supposedly passed through Kennedy’s neck from the rear, then entered Connally’s right shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple, passed through his right wrist and hit his left thigh.
But Landis’ assertion that it had actually exited Kennedy in his Cadillac could lay waste to the magic bullet theory – and bolster the claim that Lee Harvey Oswald did not operate alone on the day of the murder.
The six men arrested as suspects in the assassination of an anti-corruption Ecuadorian presidential candidate are Colombian nationals, a police report said Thursday as authorities investigated the motive for a crime that shocked a nation already reeling from a surge in drug-related violence.
The six men were captured hiding in a house in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, said the report, which was reviewed by The Associated Press. Officers also seized four shotguns, a 5.56-mm rifle, ammunition and three grenades, along with a vehicle and a motorcycle, it said.
Fernando Villavicencio, 59, who was known for speaking up against drug cartels, was assassinated in Quito on Wednesday, less than two weeks before a special presidential election. He was not a front-runner, but his death deepened the sense of crisis around organized crime that has already claimed thousands of lives and underscored the challenge that Ecuador’s next leader will face.
Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, had earlier confirmed the arrest of some foreigners in the case, although he didn’t give their nationalities.
Zapata described the killing as a “political crime of a terrorist nature” aimed at sabotaging the Aug. 20 presidential election.
The autopsy that the U.S. national-security establishment conducted on President Kennedy’s body has always been the Achilles heel of the assassination. That’s because the autopsy was fraudulent. But because the military “classified” the autopsy, forcing enlisted personnel to sign secrecy oaths and threatening them with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever revealed what they saw or did, the military was able to cover up much, but certainly not all, of its autopsy fraud for decades. That cover-up came to a screeching halt during the 1990s during the term of the Assassination Records Review Board.
When I began delving into the JFK assassination many years ago, I naturally read lots of books. Gradually, I became convinced that the assassination was a highly sophisticated regime-change operation orchestrated and carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment. I became convinced that it was no different in principle from other regime-change operations, especially ones that involved state-sponsored assassinations based on “national security,” such as those operations that targeted Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz.
But I was trained as a lawyer. My professional career began as a trial attorney. I practiced law for 12 years. I tried both civil and criminal cases in both state and federal courts. These consisted of both jury and non-jury trials.
While I became convinced that the Kennedy assassination was, in fact, a regime-change operation, I also believed that I could never walk into a courtroom and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard of proof required in a criminal case. I didn’t think that any of the assassination researchers had provided sufficient evidence to meet that burden. After many years of studying the assassination, I still believe that to this day.
To be sure, there are lots of suspicious aspects to the assassination, such as the so-called magic-bullet theory. But for me, all those suspicious aspects, while convincing me of criminal culpability, were still not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
Thus, in my opinion, those who cry “Conspiracy theory!” when one focuses on what happened in Dealey Plaza are essentially saying, “You don’t have enough evidence to convict the national-security establishment of this offense beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Not so, however, with the autopsy. Once I came to the realization that the military establishment had conducted a fraudulent autopsy, it was “game over” and “case closed” for the national-security establishment.
The fraudulent autopsy is the “back door” that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt criminal culpability of the national-security establishment in the Kennedy assassination.
During a podcast appearance with Lex Fridman, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined how during the pandemic the media engaged in an “organised conspiracy” by acting as “propaganda organs for the government agencies,” and acting to censor “anybody who dissented.”
Kennedy again spoke at length of the “insurmountable and mountainous and overwhelming” evidence that the CIA was involved in the murder of his uncle and his father, prompting Fridman to ask “What is the mechanism by which the CIA influences the narrative?”
“Through the press,” Kennedy responded, adding “Directly through key members — there are certain press organs that have been linked to the agency, the people who run those organs, things like the Daily Beast and Rolling Stone… have deep relationships with the intelligence community. Salon, Daily Kos.”
He continued, “I actually think the entire field of journalism has really shamed itself in recent years. It has become, the principal newspapers in this country, and the television stations, and the legacy media, have abandoned their tradition… they believed that the function of journalists was to maintain this posture of fierce skepticism toward any aggregation of power, including government authority… their job was to speak truth to power and be guardians of the first amendment right to free expression.”
“But if you look at what happened during the pandemic, it was the inverse of that kind of journalism,” RFK Jr. further urged, adding “the major press organs in this country… were broadcasting propaganda, they became propaganda organs for the government agencies. They were actually censoring the speech of anybody who dissented, of the powerless.”
“In fact, it was an organized conspiracy. The name of it was the Trusted News Initiative,” Kennedy noted, adding “Some of the major press organizations in our country signed onto it. They agreed not to print stories or facts that departed from government orthodoxy.”
Democratic presidential challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to be a thorn in the side of the incumbent administration — but this time, the issue at hand is a particularly personal one.
In a blistering Twitter tirade, Kennedy blasted the clandestine way President Joe Biden and his administration had decided and announced that it would “be maintaining secrecy indefinitely” on certain records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, Robert’s uncle.
Kennedy took to his personal Twitter account Sunday and did not mince words when he tore into what he called a “midnight announcement”.
“It’s not about conspiracy – it is about transparency,” Kennedy tweeted Sunday. “In a midnight Friday night announcement the White House has delivered the bad news that President Biden will be maintaining secrecy indefinitely on some JFK assassination related records.”
Kennedy appeared to be referencing a memorandum to executive-branch department and agencies released Friday from the White House.
The Biden release noted that “[i]n light of the recommendation for continued postponement of public release of information in the records identified in section 2(b) of this memorandum under the statutory standard, I hereby certify, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 5(g)(2)(D) of the Act, that continued postponement of public disclosure of that information is necessary to protect against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure.”
For Kennedy, the claim that there is still “identifiable harm” related to releasing information about an event so long ago made no sense, and he reacted accordingly.
“The assassination was 60 years ago,” he wrote in one Twitter post. “What national security secrets could possibly be at risk? What are they hiding?”
“I have chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived — yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace . . .”— PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, JUNE 10, 1963
Sixty years later it behooves us more than ever to penetrate the tenacious ignorance of which Kennedy spoke. To honor my friend and colleague, TRANSCEND member Prof. Graeme MacQueen, who passed away in April, this editorial addresses topics he was passionate about, namely peace, justice and truth, in particular 9/11 truth.
If we’re not willing to open our minds to the abundant evidence refuting the narrative, fed to us mere minutes after the heinous crimes of 9/11 unfolded before our eyes, that a band of foreign militants from the Middle East was solely responsible for those crimes, then we risk continuing to fall prey to propaganda leading to unending wars and suffering.
Johan Galtung introduced me to Graeme at a 2011 TRANSCEND symposium in North Carolina. 9/11 was not on the formal agenda, but came up in side conversations as the 10-year anniversary approached. Galtung has always promoted open dialog on challenging topics, bucking the penchant of academic institutions and major media platforms to ignore dissenting views on 9/11 and dismiss them as crazy conspiracy theories. He thus proposed adding a session on 9/11 to the symposium and opening it to the general public. Three of us presented our views, followed by Q and A.
Galtung accepted the official narrative that 9/11 was perpetrated by foreign Muslim extremists, viewing it as blow-back from the many injustices the US had inflicted on the Middle East. He called it a public execution of 3 buildings (World Trade Center 1 and 2, and the Pentagon) that symbolized the US military-financial complex.
Graeme and I enumerated unexplained anomalies pointing to complicity of key agents within the US Government and cast doubt on the culpability of Al-Qaeda operatives. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of 9/11, confessed involvement only after being subjected to prolonged torture via waterboarding, while videos of Osama bin Laden claiming credit for the attacks look suspiciously fake.
We all agreed, however, along with most peace activists, that the US response to the events of 9/11 was reprehensible: declaring the unending war on terror, fomenting widespread Islamophobia, curtailing civil liberties, decades-long military incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq that ruined both countries and cost countless lives. The US leadership justified its violent response by the fear, outrage and desire for revenge that swept across much of the nation, horrified at the shock and awe it had witnessed that fateful day. How could that have been prevented?
Imagine what our world might look like if the propaganda machine set in motion the morning of 9/11 had failed. What if most journalists, commentators, engineers, pilots, firefighters, police, and politicians on mainstream media had pressed for answers to valid questions, like:
How could damage and fires on the upper floors have caused both twin towers to explode and disappear into their footprints? How could World Trade Center 7, a third skyscraper not hit by a plane, have imploded symmetrically at free fall speed? How could an alleged hijacker who flunked flight school on small planes have executed a harrowing maneuver to ram a passenger jet into the Pentagon going 500 mph at ground level? How did the US, with its hundreds of billions in defense spending, fail to defend the nerve center of its military headquarters in the nation’s capital?
Once it was announced hijacked planes were crashing into buildings, why did Secret Service agents allow President Bush to remain in a Florida classroom with children, leaving them vulnerable to attack? Who made money on a significant increase in stock market betting right before 9/11 that prices of American and United Airline stocks would drop?
What if honest eye-witness journalists, who in the morning had reported explosions both before and during the destruction of the towers, had continued to develop that thread and ask deeper questions throughout the day and following days, rather than being diverted by select experts and pundits who silenced the “explosion” theme, supplanting it with unproven assertions that Osama bin Laden did it.
Had these questions — many raised also by 9/11 victims’ family members — been relentlessly pursued, the flimsy tale of Muslim extremists from remote parts of the world with no ties to any government being the lone perpetrators of this apocalyptic theatrical display would have soon disintegrated.
The National Archives and Records Administration released thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, meeting a Friday deadline set in a December memo by President Joe Biden.
NARA said on the JFK Assassination Records page on its website it worked in concert with agencies to jointly review the remaining redactions in 3,648 documents in compliance with the president’s directive. Between April and June, NARA posted 2,672 documents containing newly released information.
“At the National Archives, we believe in the importance of government transparency and the accessibility of information,” said Colleen Shogan, the 11th Archivist of the United States, in a statement. “The dedicated and detailed work completed by NARA staff and by our partners and stakeholder agencies is an excellent representation of how we can collaborate together to ensure that the maximum amount of information is made available to the American people, while we protect what we must.
“I have every confidence that the NDC’s [National Declassification Center] implementation of these plans offers a clear path forward for public transparency and the timely release of additional information as circumstances warrant.”
The largest block of more than 1,000 documents was released Tuesday. Some documents contain redacted information because of national security concerns, the Washington Examiner reported.
Iam Laurie Efrein Kahalas, survivor of the Peoples Temple. I never lived in Jonestown, but I held a key position in the States up through the time of the tragedy on November 18, 1978. I am also the author of the “In Plain Sight (IPS)” project, the documented deconstruction of the Port Kaituma airstrip massacre (where Leo Ryan was killed), which preceded the deaths at Jonestown. Hard to deconstruct what was accepted as “history” in just this single article, but the IPS project fills that out.
I realize that, from out of the deep dark jungle, headlines ablaze. From them all the public retains to this day is “drink the kool-aid.” For years following, it was even “a bizarre murder/suicide ritual.” Twin tragedies: Congressman Leo Ryan murdered—a foremost CIA critic and sponsor of the Ryan Hughes amendment requiring the president to report all covert operations to Congress sent to investigate the People’s Temple in Guyana—and then close to a thousand deaths at Jonestown. Not just that you can’t have one without the other, but that the same party must have been guilty of both.
That was never true; but there was never any investigation, just blaring headlines. I was in D.C. personally a year after, when congressional aides admitted that they had the on-site NBC film footage (NBC had accompanied the congressman). But when I demanded that they blow up the faces and bring in survivors to identify the so-called “Temple killers,” they adamantly refused. Even though that would have been Burden of Proof 101, especially in the face of massively contradictory so-called “eyewitness IDs”!
Several Western media outlets reported Tuesday that the CIA warned Ukraine last year not to bomb the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia and Germany.
In recent months, US and other Western officials speaking to the media have suggested Ukraine was behind the Nord Stream sabotage. Most reports on the issue have ignored or dismissed the fact that journalist Seymour Hersh has sources who said President Biden ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.
According to unnamed US officials speaking to The New York Times, Dutch intelligence officials told the CIA in June 2022 that they learned of a Ukrainian military plot to attack the pipelines. The CIA then warned Ukraine not to carry out the attack, and US officials now believe it was postponed to September 2022.
A European official told the Times that Ukraine’s original plan involved Ukrainian special forces renting a submersible vessel to attack the pipelines. The CIA was also said to warn Germany about a potential plot to sabotage Nord Stream.
The latest Nord Stream allegations were first reported by the news outlet Die Zeit and NOS, a Dutch broadcaster. They claimed that the Ukrainian plot was overseen by Valery Zaluchny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied Kyiv was involved in the destruction of the pipelines. “I am president, and I give orders accordingly,” he said. “Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way.”
The idea that the US suspected Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream bombings first surfaced in a New York Times report that was published on March 7. Sources told Seymour Hersh that the report was a cover-up planted in the paper by the CIA to discredit his story that points the finger at President Biden.
Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream plot hasn’t been confirmed, but the US is still a prime suspect as it had a clear motive and US officials made threats against the pipelines. On February 7, 2022, President Biden vowed to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine.
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