DAVID MARTIN'S AMAZING REVIEW OF PHILLIP NELSON'S BOOK "REMEMBER THE LIBERTY" - 2017

 USS Liberty book review:

DAVID MARTIN'S AMAZING REVIEW OF PHILLIP NELSON'S BOOK "REMEMBER THE LIBERTY" - 2017

https://dcdave.com/article5/170608.htm 

 

Remember the Liberty!

 

Most Americans have never heard of the Israeli, Ephraim “Eppie” Evron.  A half century ago, in May of 1967, he was deputy chief of mission in the Israeli embassy in Washington and in that ostensible capacity had a meeting with President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office on May 26.  From all indications, as we learn from Phillip Nelson in Remember the Liberty!: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas, Evron was likely the real power in the embassy as the top Mossad official there.  An even more interesting thing about Evron was that he was “one of the main conspirators” in the infamous Lavon Affair, a failed plot in 1954 by Israel to bomb U.S. and British facilities in Egypt and pin it on Arab extremists. (In 2005 the Israeli government outrageously honored nine of its agents involved in that episode.)  Thanks to America’s Israel-first press, the appalling, treacherous Lavon Affair is no doubt as little known to Americans as is Eppie Evron.

 

Thirteen days after that meeting, on June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of Israel’s highly successful Six-Day War with its Arab neighbors, after hours of aerial surveillance, Israel would launch a murderous, multi-staged assault on the American intelligence ship, the USS Liberty.  The identity of the ship was as unmistakable as if it had been the Statue of Liberty.  It was bristling with antennas, it flew a large American flag, and its name was clearly painted on its stern.  The 4-foot high identification numbers on either side of the bow were in Latin writing, GTR-5, not in Arabic. The weather and visibility were perfect. 

 

Beginning shortly after dawn, “at least twelve, possibly thirteen Israeli aircraft began surveilling the Liberty, some of which were only 1,000 feet or less in altitude, apparently to photograph and ‘map’ her for later targeting purposes.”  The assault began without warning just before 2:00 p.m. when three curiously unmarked French-built Mirage fighter jets “bore down on the ship in a fast low-level attack that began with rockets targeted at the four gun mounts and heat-seeking missiles aimed at the communications gear, with their warmed transmitters.” 

 

With the Liberty’s ability to defend itself completely neutralized by the knocking out of its four meager .50-caliber machine guns, slower Super Mystere fighters replaced the Mirage jets, “probably because they could rake the ship even more effectively.”  That they did with cannons, rockets, and napalm, spreading carnage among the defenseless, stunned crewmen.

 

The Liberty carried 294 men.  Just over 70% of them would end up as casualties of the attack, with 34 dead and 174 injured. Officially, to this day, the episode is written off as just a “tragic accident,” a simple case of “mistaken identity.”  So thoroughgoing has the news suppression been that four years after the event Lyndon Johnson (more precisely, his ghost writer, Doris Kearns Goodwin) was able to write in his memoirs, Vantage Point, that 10 men had been killed and 100 injured, and no one of note said anything about the outrageous undercount.  “Who cares?” our news media said in so many words.

 

The experience, as it is recounted in the book, is made all the more poignant by the fact that we get eyewitness accounts from Nelson’s co-authors, attack-survivors Ernest A. Gallo, Ronald G. Kukal, and Phillip F. Tourney.  The four writers together are almost uniquely qualified to provide in this 50^th anniversary year the definitive account and analysis of the assault on the Liberty.  Nelson, with his previous two books, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination and LBJ: From Mastermind to Colossus has established himself as the most incisive and fearless biographer of the “psychopathic,” ultra-Zionist 36^th president of the United States. In that second book, with most of a chapter devoted to the subject, Nelson gives the sort of attention to the Liberty attack that is missing from LBJ’s Wikipedia page, but one should not think that he already knows all he needs to know about the Liberty assault from that account.  This latest book is full of important new revelations.

 

Gallo was one of the many intelligence officers on the Liberty, which was under the control of the National Security Administration, though manned largely by U.S. Navy sailors.  He is the author of the 2013 book, Liberty Injustices: A Survivor’s Account of American Bigotry and is the current president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association.  Kukal was the petty officer in charge of body recovery and identification on the Liberty.  No one is more intimately familiar with the pain and suffering caused by the attack.  Tourney, a three-time president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, was a Navy enlisted man assigned to damage control (fireman) on the day of the attack.  He is the author of What I Saw That Day: Israel’s June 8^th, 1967 Holocaust of US Servicemen aboard the USS Liberty and its Aftermath and is the host of the Saturday call-in show Your Voice Counts on the Republic Broadcasting Network.

 

Frustrated Madman President

 

No one reading Remember the Liberty can reach any other conclusion than that, as with the Lavon Affair, this was another failed false flag attack, and that it was virtually a miracle that it failed.  After the ship’s defenses and communications had been blown away, gunboats fired four torpedoes that missed.  The fifth torpedo struck the Liberty, but it did not penetrate into the bowels of the ship, having squarely hit one of the structural I-beams.  Even so, it opened a large hole in the side of the ship.  Had the torpedo struck a couple of inches to the left or the right, though, it would have caused the ship’s boilers to explode as the cold sea water rushed in and the ship would have fractured and sunk within minutes.  That was the clear intent of the attackers.

 

As Nelson has pieced together the evidence, the assault on the Liberty was as carefully planned over a long period of time as was the Six-Day War itself.  The 294 men on board were meant to be the sacrificial lambs for the audacious, grandiose scheme that was to draw in the United States with both feet—likely even with the use of nuclear weapons—against the Egyptians, who had been virtually pushed into the orbit of the Soviet Union by America’s strongly pro-Israel policy under Johnson.  Two A-4 bomber aircraft launched from the USS America aircraft carrier at the same time that fighter jets took off from the carrier to come to the aid of the Liberty were, according to one of the pilots, carrying nuclear weapons targeted for Cairo.  Those fighter jets, had they not have been recalled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara himself, would have arrived in time to prevent the worst of the attack, the torpedo attack that killed 26 men in the communications room.  For their part, the bombers did not return until four or five days later.  As the pilot explained, the nuclear bombs made the planes “too heavy and dangerous to land back on the aircraft carrier,” and they had to be diverted to a land-based airstrip.

 

In California, at Beale Air Force Base north of Sacramento, B-52 bombers along with KC-135 midair refueling tankers were scrambled between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., which would have been at least an hour before the attack actually took place.  Presidential adviser and future defense secretary Clark Clifford wrote in his memoirs that he was awakened at home at 6 a.m. that same morning, June 8, for an emergency meeting at the White House.  That was two hours before the “surprise” Israeli attack began.

 

At the center of the scheme was President Johnson.  As an American politician not from the state of New York, Johnson had long since shown himself to be ahead of his time in his total commitment to the state of Israel, his “passionate attachment,” if you will.  To illustrate his point, Nelson reminds us of the letter that Johnson, as Senate majority leader, wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles in February of 1957 in opposition to UN sanctions on Israel for its role in the Suez Crisis and then leaked to The New York Times.  Eisenhower and his administration supported the sanctions and he was furious with Johnson for undercutting official U.S. government policy.  In response to Johnson’s affront, Eisenhower went on radio and television with this message, not mentioning Johnson by name: “America has either one voice or none, and that voice is the voice of the President—whether everybody agrees with him or not.” He further stated that the U.N. had “no choice but to exert pressure upon Israel.”

 

As president, Johnson didn’t just reverse John Kennedy’s policy on Vietnam, dramatically escalating American involvement in the war as opposed to Kennedy’s directive to begin bringing our troops home, but he gave the green light to Israel’s nuclear program, which Kennedy had strongly opposed, setting the country off on the extremely pro-Israel course that it has followed ever since.  That this was done in spite of the vicious, unprovoked assault on 294 Americans serving their country is evidence, almost in itself, that something is seriously amiss here.   America’s military assistance to Israel also took a big jump up during Johnson’s administration.  In Nelson’s words:

 

Unfortunately, the cost to the United States was very high, especially in terms of the intangible loss of valued integrity, respect and honor to its friends and allies.  Even to Israel itself, which Undersecretary of State George Ball concluded, poignantly, resulted in the Israelis coming to believe that, if they could get by with an attack of this enormity, then they could “get by with almost anything.” It may explain why Israel gets the most foreign aid dispensed by the U.S., but still wants more.  Their 2016 request is up to $5 billion per year from $3 billion in recent years.

 

As Nelson tells it though, as things have turned out they are not nearly as bad as they might have been had the plot to sink the Liberty succeeded. By Nelson’s thesis, Johnson saw our big plunge into the Middle East on the successful side of beleaguered little Israel as a dramatic way to reverse the course of his own political fortunes, always foremost in his consideration.  Jewish Americans, who tend to be heavily liberal in their orientation, were in the forefront of the opposition to his Vietnam policy.  Here was his chance for him to be their hero and to thereby cement his chance for re-election in 1968.  What the grand gesture on behalf of Israel needed was what something that the Project for a New American Century has since given a rather bad name, a “catalyzing event.” That event was to have been the sinking of the Liberty by the Soviet-allied Egyptians, we were to be told, with the loss of all of its crew.  A more dastardly plot is hard to imagine, but no other explanation for what is known to have transpired makes nearly as much sense.

 

“I want that Goddamn ship going to the bottom.  No help.  Recall the wings.”  That is the precise order that Johnson gave Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, the commander of the battle group of which the America was a part, the second time American planes were recalled, this time after the torpedo had struck.  Geis gave that information years later to Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, who had been the head of the NSA group on the Liberty.  Geis had asked Lewis to keep it secret until after he was dead, which Lewis did.

 

Johnson apparently thought Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had not been forceful enough when he recalled the planes from their first attempt at a rescue effort.   McNamara’s words to Geis had been, “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.” This information comes from Chief Petty Officer J.Q. “Tony” Hart, who worked in a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco processing communications between Washington and the 6^th Fleet.  Probably the most revealing thing about this conversation is that at that early stage of the attack neither Geis nor even the men on the Liberty knew that the attackers were actually our Israeli “ally.” Geis learned the identity of the attackers from his superiors, not from the ones who were crying for help.

 

The Foiled Plot

 

The scheme to sink the Liberty was thwarted not just by the fortunate trajectory of that one torpedo that struck the ship.  The heroic efforts of Captain William McGonagle and his crew must also be credited, but, before that, what the 23 year-old seaman Terry Halbardier did saved the day for the 260 men who survived, and probably saved the day for a lot more of us.  One can read a very moving and informative tribute to Halbardier by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern at Consortiumnews.com., who also wrote the foreword to Remember the Liberty!

 

As noted, the attacking airplanes had specifically targeted the ship’s communications.  Within ten minutes of the initial onslaught Halbardier risked his life to go out amid the strafing to string a new cable from the one undamaged antenna to the one functioning transmitter, which was only functioning because it happened to have been shut down when the heat-seeking missiles came in.  They sent a cry for help that somehow got through the intense radio jamming efforts of the Israelis (which were tellingly aimed at American radio frequencies).  It was because of this fact that Johnson and McNamara were forced into their extraordinarily incriminating scurry-around mode in which they had to justify orders to American military officers not to go to the aid of fellow servicemen under attack.  That action might well represent the lowest point in the history of the American presidency (although one can think of a number that rival it).

 

The authors are not sure as to what caused the Israelis to scuttle the fourth, coup de grace, stage of the attack.  Helicopters with armed commandos hovered for a while over the blasted ship with its gaping hole in the side.  The plan, apparently, was for the commandos to rappel down onto the deck and kill all the survivors before finally sinking the ship.  But not only did the Israelis know that the cry for help had gone out and might, in spite of the plan in which the American president was known to be complicit, result in rescuers arriving at any minute from one of their warships, but also a Russian destroyer had come into view.

 

From “Catalyzing Event” to Cover-up

 

When the Liberty failed to sink, LBJ and our ruling criminal elite were forced into full cover-up mode, and that is where we have remained now for exactly half a century.  “Rush up and hush up” is how we might sum up the farce of an “investigation” and the general aftermath of the attack.  Given the assignment of overseeing the under-rug-sweeping, the Court of Inquiry, was the Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, John McCain, Jr., the father of Senator and former Republican presidential nominee, John McCain III.  How McCain performed his duties is well summed up by this information from Gallo in the book:

 

We later learned the testimonies of the wounded on the USS America and USS Little Rock (a cruiser and Sixth Fleet Flag Ship) were considered important by the court but were over-ruled by Admiral McCain in London.  They also wanted to interview Israelis, however McCain insisted the court conclude as soon as possible.  Members of the crew who gave critical testimony obtained a copy of this report and they indicated that their testimony was left out if it indicated Israeli brutality.

 

A proper inquiry into the incident, according to the Navy Judge Advocate General Captain Ward Boston, Jr., who was chief assistant to the president of the Court, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, would have required at least six months.  Instead, they were given a week.

 

So much for the “rush up” part.  The “hush up” comes from the words of Admiral Kidd, addressing the men on the crippled ship, as recalled by Tourney.  The quote heads up Chapter 4:

 

Ok fellas, now I’m an admiral again and I want each and every one of you to understand something.  We’re talking about National Security here, not your personal feelings, not what you did or did not do… I could really give a shit about any of that.  You listen to me once, because this is the only time you’re ever going to hear it.  You are NEVER to repeat what you just told me to ANYONE—not your mother, your father, your wife—ANYONE!  Including your shipmates.  You are not to discuss this with anyone, especially—ESPECIALLY—not with the MEDIA, or you will end up in PRISON, or WORSE!

 

The general hush-up was successful for quite a long time.  The silence was broken with a bang, though, in 1979 when survivor James M. Ennes Jr. came out with his book Assault on the Liberty; The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship.  Since that time there has been no good excuse for anybody really interested in the truth to believe the official “tragic accident” story. 

 

That did not stop former U.S. Navy aviator and retired bankruptcy court judge A. Jay Cristol from publishing The USS Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S Navy Spy Ship, which purported to give the last word on the matter, that is, the same as the official first word, “tragic accident.” Thirteen investigations, said Cristol among a lot of other things, had all come to that same conclusion.   As Terence O’Keefe pointed out in his December 2003 article in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, actually that hasty first inquiry remains to this day the only thing that has been done that even purports to be an investigation, and here’s what he says about that:

 

The U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry: The senior legal adviser to the Court of Inquiry reflected that, in his entire career, he has never seen court of inquiry appointing letters with such limited authority, or an investigation made in such haste. The court’s hearings began before the Liberty even arrived in Malta, and the report was completed just 10 days after the attack. The court commented on this haste in the official record: “The Court of Inquiry experienced no unusual difficulties incident to conducting the subject proceedings except for the necessity of investigating such a major naval disaster of international significance in an extremely abbreviated time frame.”

 

Due in part to the required haste and the limitations imposed on the scope of the court’s inquiries (“It was not the responsibility of the court to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation”), the court concluded that “available evidence combines to indicate...[that the attack was] a case of mistaken identity.”

 

How, one might ask, could one inquire into all of the circumstances without hearing from the attacking nation? In fact, the court did neither. According to Captain Ward Boston, chief legal counsel to the Court of Inquiry, the court found that the attack was deliberate, but reported falsely that it was not because they were directed by the president of the United States and the secretary of defense to report falsely. So the findings are fraudulent. Yet these fraudulent findings were the basis for several other reports that followed.

 

Boston, in fact, had been so infuriated by the Cristol book that he came forward with an affidavit stating that what the Court of Inquiry had done was, in effect, a cover-up.  The full affidavit is on pp. 125-128 of Remember the Liberty.  On the Internet, one can read it at the web site of If Americans Knew.

 

Cristol, of course, has had his promoters.  One very predictable one is the Jewish-American academic, Daniel Pipes.  A response to Pipes’ favorable review of Cristol’s book on his own web site by David Smyth, which corresponds with what one will find in Remember the Liberty, to my mind, speaks very nearly the last word as to the deliberateness of the attack:  

 

Mr. Pipes says of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty: "conspiracy theories pointing to a purposeful Israeli attack arose quickly and have persisted through the years."  About twenty years ago I did a story for the Associated Press on the Liberty incident that was published by the Los Angeles Times and a large number of other US newspapers.  I spoke to the following officials (their titles correspond to the positions they occupied at the time of the Liberty incident) and they all told me that the Israeli attack was deliberate, not an accident:

Secretary of State Dean Rusk
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Thomas Moorer
CIA Director Richard Helms
NSA Deputy Director Louis Tordella.

I am no authority on conspiracy theories, but there seem to be three possibilities here. A) Rusk, Moorer, Helms and Tordella were all propagators of a conspiracy theory. B) They were all dupes of a conspiracy theory. C) There is no valid conspiracy theory.

I am retired now, but I have always considered it my business to report facts, not to disentangle conspiracy theories, so I will leave that task to others.  I might add that I gathered other statements. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told me on the phone that he had "no recollection" of the Liberty Incident. I also talked on the phone to Admiral Isaac Kidd, who headed the naval court of inquiry into the Liberty attack. I told him what Rusk and the others had said and asked if he had any opinion on Israeli culpability. He said, "The giants of that time can speak out. I know when to keep my mouth shut."

 

As it turned out, Kidd continued to keep his mouth shut about the Liberty attack until the end, but his assistant, Captain Boston, later did his speaking for him.

 

Where Does Your Allegiance Lie?

 

Although half a century has now passed, hardly any event, when looked at in the clear light of day, permits us to come to grips more completely with the political reality of the United States today than does the assault on the USS Liberty.  We live in an era in which members of the United States military have never been more venerated.  From sports events to airport encounters, we’re expected to honor them at every turn.  “Support the troops” is seemingly an admonition that no one can disagree with.

 

All of the military reverence comes to a screeching halt, though, when it comes to the surviving crewmen of the USS Liberty.  They can only be brushed aside, with their demands for a true accounting for what was done to them by our great “ally” with the connivance of their own leaders.  For our politicians to do otherwise and to get to the bottom of what happened there in the Eastern Mediterranean on June 8, 1967, would put them on a collision course with the real ruling power in the country.  When it comes down to the choice of supporting our troops or supporting the ethnic-supremacist state of Israel, whose fundamental nature was revealed as much by the Liberty attack as it was by the Lavon Affair, and for whom we regularly pour out our fortune, our credibility, and our blood, Israel it has to be.

 

David Martin

June 8, 2017

 

 

 

 

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Ernst Titovets 2024 paper "The Warren Commission's Bias and Lee Harvey Oswald"

Ernst Titovets was Lee Harvey Oswald's best friend in Russia. Titovets has long maintained the innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK assassination. Here is his 2024 paper "The Warren Commission's Bias and Lee Harvey Oswald.

                                                                                                                           Ernst Titovets

                                                                          “O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason! Bear with me.”

Antony’s speech on Caesar’s funeral,

           Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

                           The Warren Commission’s Bias and Lee Harvey Oswald          

               The assassination of President Kennedy stands out as the greatest unsolved mystery of 

the 20th century. Kennedy belonged to a new generation of top American leaders who had to deal 

with the challenges coming from the Communist World. It was at the height of the Cold War between 

the two world nuclear superpowers,--the United States and the Soviet Union. Their combined

 nuclear-weaponry capabilities, if unleashed, could turn the planet Earth into a lifeless desert.         

               Kennedy was fully aware of the danger of a nuclear confrontation in the tense and 

unpredictable atmosphere of the Cold War. The recent Cuban missile crisis with its thirteen days 

of high suspense, while the word was balancing on the brink of a nuclear war, was a sobering 

experience. Kennedy fully realized the necessity of a détente. Nuclear disarmament and 

peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union should become the motto of the day. That meant a departure from the long-rooted cliches about the Communist world and looking for some common human basis on which to built new rejatonahp between the two idioogical opposits.  This would be a prerequisite to meaningful talks on nuclear disarmament and for establishing peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.

              It was exactly to what the US military-industrial complex and the national security state categorically objected. In their faces, Kennedy acquired powerful and resourceful enemies who would hardly stop at anything to protect their interests.

President Kennedy was killed by sniper’s shots in Dallas on November 22, 1963 in broad daylight before a cheering crowd of people who came to greet him. The enormity and audacity of this crime was shocking. In the minds of Americans, there stood a question why should somebody assassinate a young progressive American President.

Assassination of the President and the manner in which it was executed reflected apron reputation of the government. People wanted to know why all those responsible for safety of the President turned out so sloppy about carrying out their duty... America waited for an official explanation.

 A first official response came in the form of an executive order issued by the new President Lyndon B. Johnson  to appoint a special commission to conduct a thorough investigation of the assassination. Handpicked by the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and approved by Lindon Johnson, the members of the Commission were all distinguished persons of high national reputation capable of exercising an independent and objective judgment. 

It would have been an exaggeration to say that every appointee was happy with his membership in the Commission. Some of the selected ones needed coercion to obtain their consent. Johnson had to use his impressive experience of dealing with those around him to snub the opposition and to talk the malcontents into submission. Thus, the chief justice of the United States Earl Warren, the chairman of the Commission, turned out to be the one to have received a full “Johnson’s treatment” before giving up and accepting his appointment.

Among the members of the commission was Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Following the failed invasion of Cuba, the “Bay of Pigs” fiasco in April 1961, Kennedy fired Dulles.

The Commission was to conduct a full investigation of the assassination but along the lines suggested by Lindon Johnson: the presidential killer was to be a Lee Harvey Oswald who acted alone. It might be due to some omission, but Oswald did not have any legal representation at the Commission. Incidentally, neither did he receive any legal help during his interrogation by the police following his arrest on suspicion of the assassination of the President.

The Commission Report must be the result of a most thorough investigation. It should reveal an identity of the killer and the circumstances leading to the assassination. No efforts will be spared to expose evil, to allay all fears, to restore peoples’ confidence in their government and democracy.

The fate of Oswald had been sealed well in advance.  The Commission had only to see to it that Oswald's role in the assassination was properly documented to prove his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.

The Official Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John Kennedy, presented to Lindon Johnson in 1964, expressed concern about the state of Oswald's mental health that received much suggestive verbosity. This concern seems to have been a point of departure for the Commission when featuring Oswald’s character meant for public consumption. But there was the rub.  The Commission must have failed to find any negative documentation on psychiatric evaluation of Oswald’s mental health. Otherwise, this critically important medical evidence would have certainly figured in the Commission presentation of Oswald’s persona and given much publicity. In short, there was no definitive evidence to suggest that he had a diagnosed mental illness.

In its evaluation of Oswald, the Commission made an assumption that Oswald was a sociopathic loner and malcontent disinterested in social relationships. He was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He was prone to antisocial behavior; he did not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination, he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. He displayed some schizoid personality tendencies and emotional coldness.

The Commission opinionated that Oswald's search for a perfect society of his imagination, was doomed from the very start. He was preoccupied with obtaining omnipotence or power to compensate for his perceived shortcoming He sought for himself a place in history as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. 

 The Commission must have intended to conceal behind the smokescreen of the Oswald’s implied mental-health problems some of its deficiencies and to preclude certain awkward questions. 

The Conclusion in the Warren Commission Reports opens up with a curious admission:

         “Many factors were undoubtedly involved in Oswald's motivation for the assassination, and the Commission does not believe that it can ascribe to him any one motive or group of motives.”

Nevertheless, the Warren Commission Reports presented an official view on the assassination of President Kennedy and the role of Lee Harvey Oswald, the main suspected assassin. The mainstream media got the clue and, in conformity with the Commission’s opinion, and continued with its own defamation campaign against Oswald…

It looked like the Commission was set to select only the information, unnecessary reliable, that would feature Oswald, burdened with his mental health problems, as a potentially criminal character with the mind of a killer. Oswald’s whole life, full of erratic behavior, was only a prelude to that nefarious final act of his, ^__ the assassination of JFK. Now, due to the Commission efforts, he stood fully “exposed”, unfortunately too late. A minor nuisance was that Oswald had never been apprehended red-handed and holding his smoking gun.

The Commission reported that during the interrogation following his arrest Oswald genuinely protested his innocence: “He consistently refused to admit involvement in the assassination of JFK or in the killing of Patrolman Tippit”. It was an unexpected mode of behavior on the part of a psychopath who must have craved media attention and public recognition for his deeds. There was no logic to Oswald’s madness!

Contrary to that, there was a growing suspicion about involvement of other forces in the assassination. Martin Schotz expressed general belief of many by saying  that  ”there is no doubt that President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963, by the US ruling establishment because of his growing radical opposition to Cold War policy. The vast cover-up from the absurd Warren Report to the ongoing blanket mass media denialism all point incontrovertibly to an orchestrated state agency”.

In 1976, the US House Senate Commission on Assassinations agreed, in principle, with the Warren Commission’s conclusion about Oswald’s participation in JFK assassination having only specified that there was "high probability that two gunmen fired" and that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy".

                                                   ***

The mystery surrounding this greatest crime of the 20^th century attracted much public attention. The opportunistic-minded writers and journalists saw in it an occasion to make themselves visible. They seemed not to care much about facts. Sensation was their motto. As a result, there followed a deluge of conspiracy theories in the form of numerous books, TV presentations, blogs etc., construed in conformity with the official views suggested by  the Warren Commission.

Oswald’s case has never been tried in a court of law; there is no legal decision concerning his role in the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald remains, at best, a suspect to the assassination. Nevertheless, it has never seemed to be in the way of the media and conspiracy theorists to brand Oswald a presidential killer and treat him as a mental case

 

                                                 ***

I could not recognize in the Commissions’ presentation of Oswald my friend Lee whom I knew here in Minsk for quite some time. Why would these dignitaries, the members of the Commotion, along with the conspiracy theorists, choose to so grossly distort and misrepresent the character of Oswald to feed it next to the American people as the final truth? A naïve rhetorical question addressed to the void! 

 It looked like in the spheres of high politics the truth was a fickle commodity dependent on a current political situation.  The members of the Commission must have certainly been aware of the real situation with Oswald, but they were only doing their job, regardless of their personal concerns. In that already set scenario, Oswald was made to play the role of a dispensable pawn to cover up the real perpetrates of the JFK assassination.

To me Lee was a friendly warm character with a good sense of humor. He might be prankish in places. He was serious when the two of us would launch ourselves into debating the socio-political and philosophical issues, would star comparing the exiting practices of capitalism and socialism and discuss their acceptable and unacceptable features… We would watch opera, go to dancing parties, visit friends, go hiking in the country, read books, reenact plays in front of a tape recorder, and generally have a great time. …

With all that, I observed in Lee none of those warning signs that might be associated with some or other mental problem. With a course of psychiatry at the Medical Institute under my belt I, certainly, would not have failed to observe at least some of the symptoms of the mental health problems that the Warren Commission would ascribe to Oswald. There was simply none of those. Neither, a psychiatrist doctor Skugarevsky, M.D., Ph.D., who also met Oswald, was able to diagnose any problems with his mental health.

An official psychiatric evaluation of Oswald’s mental health was carried out in Moscow at Bodkin Clinical Hospital in 1959. On October 21, Oswald faked a suicide attempt by cutting his wrist. That was his desperate, but coldly calculated, move to delay sending him out of Russia. His application for citizenship had been refused and he would  be sent back home that very day.

He was rushed to the hospital where he spent a week. The first three days he stayed in a psychiatric ward under the observation of a psychiatrist who came to the following conclusion:

“The character of the injury is considered light without functional disturbances. The patient is of clear mind, no sign of psychotic phenomena”…“During his stay in the [admission] department, his attitude was completely normal”… “His mind is clear. Perception is correct. No hallucinations or delirium. He answers the questions [illegible] and logically. He has a firm desire to remain in the Soviet Union. No psychotic symptoms were observed. The patient does not present any danger for other people.”

It looks like the Warren Commission failed to obtain any medical evidence proving that Oswald was a psychopath.  While in the US Marines, Oswald must have certainly passed a psychiatric evaluation. The Commission’s no comment attitude on the matter rather indicates that there was found no problems with Oswald’s mental health.

 A man’s real character manifests itself in critical situations that may arise suddenly. There was one such when Lee practically snatched me out from under the wheels of a speeding car. While crossing the street I was distracted and did not observe its approach. It was Lee who suddenly sprang back to evade the collision pulling me along with him. It was Lee all over.

Another revealing episode took place during our parting. Lee took off his finger his signet ring and gave it to me. I was deeply touched with his move. I knew it from Lee that the ring was with him throughout his service with the US marines, and that it was dear to him. I could not rob him of it. Having thanked him, I found an excuse to hand it back to him. No words were needed: we both knew how we felt.

            Hardly anybody, who knew Oswald in Minsk, would speak of him has an inaccessible remote person. To the contrary, the majority believed he was a kind young man with good manners; “a true gentleman”, as local girls would put it.

One of those people who had a personal grudge against Oswald was my former fellow student from the Medical Institute Alexander Mastikyn, whom I knew over many years.  Mastikyn spoke of Oswald as of a remote individual who would look down on him. I think I know how this opinion came about. I rather liked Mastikyn, a fan of Spanish, who was a nice guy but the one who would not stand on manners. Impulsive and impatient to have his say, he might offend, without realizing it, the feelings of the person he met for the first time. Knowing both Oswald and Mastikyn, I saw their problem: they simply failed to reach understanding between the two of them, in the first place. The rest was given to Mastikyn’s imagination, as I learned from the abusive nonsense, he carried about Oswald. It occurred to me that those negative myths about Oswald might have come exactly from those who did not know him well enough to see the real character of the man.

The Commission launch itself into gross misrepresentation of Oswald’s character guided by the restrictive instruction issued from Lindon Johnson. In conformity with the task set before it, the Commission accepted only what supported the idea of Oswald’s guilt was while the opposite was ignored. The members of the Commission must have fully realized that suppression of truth was not the final solution. No matter how hard they tried to conceal it, the truth would will emerge.

Lyndon Johnson was playing for time. His immediate task was to do all possible to allay the fears of the American people; restore their shattered believe in government and democracy and give people some plausible explanation of what had happened to ponder over. The international aspect had also to be taken into account: to prevent possible world repercussions in the aftermath of the assassination.

                                                            ***

       Oswald was ever open about his commitment to Marxism. Looking at Oswald’s life one might find an explanation to that fact. In his Manifesto Karl Marx predicted an appearance “of an ideal highly developed technologically and a truly affluent society of equals. A place where a citizen would contribute an undemanding share of work towards increasing common prosperity while, at the same time, able to follow one’s chosen pursuit and enjoy all the best that such a society offered in terms of material and cultural wealth–from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.“

 

Oswald, a teenager from a poor family, read Manifesto at his tender age of fifteen. With its happy fairytale promises, it appealed to his mind and he liked it. Moreover, historical materialism predicted the inevitability of demise of capitalism and the rise  of socialism to be followed next by communism. And there was the Soviet Union, a country of socialism, to proove thr apparent correctness of the prediction. (By the way, Oswaled did not live long enough to see the collapse of the socialist Soviet Unuon in 1991.)

His initial facination with Marx theory grew ever scince. He was looking forward towards a possibility of building on Americn soil a reformed society where the would be no poverty, no social inequality, while people would have good jobs, dicent living…  In short, he considered Marxism as a means to remedy all those current injustices in American society. It became his driving idea and remained so further into his adulhood.

John Maynard Keynes, an English economist, philosopher and one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, would share his thoughts by saying

“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians’ opinion—how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.” 

It looks like Oswald was one of many who would fall under the spell of Marxism.

Oswald loved his motherland. With him it was not just a cheap display of patriotism but how he really felt about America. As a researcher in political economy and sociology Oswald looked into the  systems as exsisting in both the Soviet Russia and in the United States. He was looking for the acceptable practices to borrow and adopt for the American Society of his drean to make it a better place to live in for all. On the way he would regect some practices that went  against his concept. He might express his attitude quite it imotionnaly, irrespective wether theye belonged to Russia or the United States. But it never meant tht he hated either country as a whole.

Unfotunatly, the Commission would snatch out a feature, deemed negative in the eyes of  Oswald, and misinterpret it as an expression of his overall hatred for the American society with an implication that such an attitude is the manifestation of his mental problems. That was one of the questionable tricks the Commission would employ to missrepresent Oswald’s character  and  distort  his image to serve the Commission’s ends.

In the document called The Athenian System, Oswald outlined the guiding principles of his preferred state. Based on democratic principles, the state of his dream would incorporate the best acceptable social practices borrowed from either Socialism or Capitalism. In his peace-loving America, there would be no poverty, no social inequality, no race discrimination, etc…

In his evaluation of socialism and capitalism, the two antagonistic system, he practiced a balanced approach. Oswald loved his country and was deeply disappointed with the Soviet type socialism. However, he realized that emotions should not stand in the way of his research.

Thus, he observed:   “To a person knowing both systems . . . there can be no mediation . . . He must be opposed to their basic foundations. . . And yet it is immature to take the sort of attitude which says ‘a curse on both your houses.’ Any practical attempt at one alternative must have as its nucleus the traditional ideological best of both systems, and yet be utterly opposed to both . . . “How many of you tried to find out the truth behind the cold war clichés? I have lived under both systems. I have sought the answer and, although it would be very easy to dupe myself into believing one system is better than the other, I know they are not.”

Communists would view Oswald with his compromise between socialism and capitalism, the two antagonistic systems, combined with his criticism of Marx, by a dissident. In their eyes, Oswald was a low revisionist who dared to challenge the only true Marxist-Leninist teaching of historical materialism. He did not deserve to call himself ether Marxist or a communist.

 Oswald himself did identify himself only as Marxist but never as a member of the Communist Party. The Warren Commission used Oswald’s theoretical views to antagonize him before the American people. At the time of the Cold war, the McCarthyism, and the dominating propaganda cliché, Oswald’s attitude was a menace to the values of the free world.

 

                                                 ***

In The Athenian System Oswald raises the issue of civil rights and stresses that “…racial segregation or discrimination be abolished by law…”.

On June 11, 1963, Kennedy delivered a speech on civil rights (The Report to the American People on Civil Rights) where called for Congress to take action against segregation and submit legislation to guarantee equal access to public facilities, end segregation in education, and protect the right to vote. He described the civil rights crisis as a moral, constitutional, and legal issue, and urged Americans to treat each other fairly. Martin Luther King, Jr. would refer to the speech as "one of the most eloquent, profound, and unequivocal pleas for Justice and Freedom of all men ever made by any President"

Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to the Alabama University to force its desegregation after Governor George Wallace prevented two African American students from registering at the University. The Civil Rights Act, initiated by John Kennedy, was signed into law already by President Lyndon Johnson and passed by Congress on July 2, 1964.

The Athenian System asserts that “… the dissemination of war propaganda be forbidden as well as the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.”

President Kennedy in his Commencement Address at American University on June 10, 1963 delivered a speech outlining American position on world peace and disarmament:

“…the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task… Every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.“

“…both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours…”  Kennedy stressed that the arms race comes into massive funding that should have better been used to fight poverty and to meet other urgent social needs.

The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963 was a landmark event. The three nuclear powers: the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water.  It was the first arms control agreement of the Cold War that established an important precedent for future similar acts. It was important for keeping world peace.

Kennedy’s attitude to the issues of war and peace, the weapons of mass destruction and his wiliness to negotiate those problems with the communist Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, was remarkable.  His will to negotiate across the ideological divide contrary to the opinions of his hawkish military advisers, still fresh from serving under Eisenhower and Truman, signified a start of a new realistic political trend in this divided world living under a constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

Martin Schotz stressed the significance the speech: "In 1963, President John F. Kennedy made a radical turn away from war and initiated a process of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. As part of this process, he made a speech at the American University, Washington DC, in June of 1963 which was a profound attempt to educate the people of the United States about world peace and to outline a path out of Cold War thinking. The concepts and principles that the president articulated are as true and valuable today as they were in 1963. At the time that this speech was delivered it so impressed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that he had it reprinted throughout the Soviet Union".

Jeffrey Sachs, economist and head of the High-Level Advisory Panel Forum to oversee progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), … praised Mr. Kennedy’s legacy, noting that “he helped to save the world from the brink of annihilation… and he spoke words that will live for as long as humanity survives.”

On September 20, 1963, President Kennedy addressed the 18th session of the General Assembly. He frankly acknowledged that the suspicions between the United States and the Soviet Union were at an all-time high in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis when the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation. The crisis was eventually diffused as a result of the talks between the leaders of the opposing superpowers. He further stressed the necessity of finding ways of conducting meaningful dialogues to promote the world peace.

Kennedy suggested to concentrate less on the differences and more on the means of resolving them peacefully. He thus said: “We have, in recent years, agreed on a limited test ban treaty, on an emergency communications link between our capitals, on a statement of principles for disarmament, on an increase in cultural exchange, on cooperation in outer space, on the peaceful exploration of the Antarctic, and on tempering last year's crisis over Cuba…We must continue to seek agreements on safeguards against surprise attack, including observation posts at key points. We must continue to seek agreement on further measures to curb the nuclear arms race, by controlling the transfer of nuclear weapons, converting fissionable materials to peaceful purposes, and banning underground testing, with adequate inspection and enforcement.”

Kennedy’s outlook strongly resonated with that of Oswald’s. It is curious to observe that some issues raised in The Athenian System by a grass-roots philosopher Oswald,-- an obscure nobody, were equally important to President Kennedy. What might have united the young President Kennedy and Oswald, an endeavoring young American, was that they both cared about America. They were both looking forward towards a reformed American society and did their level best to ensure prosperity of this country. Having watched the President’s activity Oswald might have viewed him as his powerful ally who, not only shared his ideas, but would put them into life. What more Oswald could have wished for!      

 To assassinate Kennedy, for Oswald, apart from facing the inevitable legal consequences, would have been tantamount to committing a political suicide. By such an act, Oswald would have undermined his own teaching and turned himself a low hypocrite.

The Warren Commission, having closely followed its predetermined mission of painting  Oswald black and presenting as a presidential killer, ignored the facts that did not fit into the picture. This biased approach led the Commission to absurd conclusions and reflected on its reputation.

As a means to overcome the problems on the way of introducing The Athenian System to life, Oswald suggests a solution through adoption the philosophy of stoicism with its guiding cardinal values of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

Oswald advised: “ only the intellectually fearless could even be remotely attracted to our doctrine, and yet this doctrine requires the utmost restraint, a state of being in itself majestic in power.  This is stoicism, and yet stoicism has not been affected for many years, and never for such a purpose.”

A non-violent approach was a corner stone in the whole of Oswald’s political activity. He kept to this principle at his every step. He realized that putting his ideas into life needed much of down-to-earth organizational work, persuasion and patient dissemination of his ideas.

 On July 27, 1963, Oswald, as an invited speaker, delivered a talk on Contemporary Russia and the Practice of Communism before the students and faculty staff at the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College. He was a success there. Even the professionals in attendance believed that he possessed a college education.

To increase his visibility Oswald ventured out into the streets handing out the FPCC literature to passers-by there. His activity did not pass unnoticed. The arose a street altercation involving him and some anti-Castro Cubans headed by anti-Castro activist Carlos Bringuier, the New Orleans representative of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.  Both Oswald and Bringuier were arrested for disturbing the peace. Oswald wanted his arrest to be presented in a political light. While in police custody, he asked for an interview with an FBI agent to whom he talked about his activity with the FPCC. This is how Oswald gives account of his new experience:

“I am experienced in Street agitation, having done it in New Orleans in connection with the FPCC. On Aug. 9, 1963, I was accosted by three anti-Castro Cubans and was arrested for ‘causing a disturbance’. I was interrogated by intelligence section of New Orleans Police Dept. and held overnight, being bailed out the next morning by relatives. I subsequently was fined $10. Charges against the three Cubans were dropped by the judge. On Aug 16, I organized a four man FPCC demonstration in front of the International trade mart in New Orleans. This demonstration was filmed by WDSU TV and shown on the 6:00 news.”

Oswald’s recognition by the local media followed. He was invited to make radio appearances, expressing his ideas as a secretary of the New Orleans chapter of the FPCC. His first appearance was on the program Latin Listening Post. His second appearance was in a live radio debate against two opponents of the FPCC and Fidel Castro. Oswald welcomed the challenge of a public debate and looked forward to it as a means of getting publicity to his cause. He made clear his attitude to Cuba by stating: “The principles of the Fair Play for Cuba consist of restoration of diplomatic, trade, and tourist relations with Cuba. That is one of our main points. We are for that.”

The above was quite a piece of oratory coming from a former high school dropout and delivered in a sure and relaxed manner. According to Stuckey, a participant of the debate, Oswald "appeared to be a very logical, intelligent fellow." Oswald firmly stood his ground against many challenges in that debate. He kept his mind open to his opponent’s argument. Although he held opposing views, nobody saw in him a political zealot with hypermaniac tendencies, but rather a reasonable, accessible and open-minded man. Oswald came through with flying colors having earned himself reputation of a capable agitator.

Oswald’s participation in the program Conversation Carte Blanche, a live radio debate on August 31, 1963, turned out to be his last public appearance as a political activist. On November 24, he was assassinated in Dallas while in police custody by Jack Rubi, who was a suspicious character with mafia connections.

McMillan gave the following  about Oswald in 1978:

“He [Oswald] had not been to college, nor had he been part of any political or intellectual milieu in the United States. In Russia he had been cut off completely from such currents as might be stirring young people back home. Yet the political solution he reached, from his own experience, from reading, from talking to his friends in Minsk, was familiar to the solution proposed by a generation of American activists in the later 1960s: participatory democracy at community level. Oswald was a pioneer; if you will, or a lonely American anti-hero a few years ahead of his time.”

George de Mohrenschildt reminisced about Lee Oswald:

 “Only someone who never met Lee could have called call him insignificant. ‘There is something outstanding about this man,’ I told myself. One can detect immediately a very sincere and forward man. Although he was average looking, with no outstanding features and of medium size, he showed in his conversation all the elements of concentration, thought, and toughness. This man had the courage of his convictions and did not hesitate to discuss them. …Lee’s English was perfect, refined, and rather literary deprived of any Southern accent. He sounded like a very educated American of indeterminate background. ….it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorky, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Turgenev in Russian….”

George de Mohrenschildt gave the House Select Committee on Assassinations a copy of a draft manuscript called I Am a Patsy! I Am a Patsy! In the manuscript, he said that his dear dead friend Oswald was rarely ever violent and would not have been the sort of person to have killed Kennedy.

A community of independent researchers started on their own investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Their combined result turned out devastating to the Warren Commission with its many deficiencies and misinterpretations of facts. Contrary to the official view, Oswald stood innocent of any crimes implied by the Commission.

                                                ***

Lee Harvey Oswald, a grassroots philosopher, driven by his idealism, was looking towards a reformed America devoid of her inherent social ills like poverty, social inequality, race discrimination, etc. Oswald would dedicate his life to realization of his dream. To this end, he learned Russian language,  went to the Soviet Union to get his firsthand experience of Socialism, studied Greek philosophers, closely watched  modern sociopolitical trends. He committed his experience to paper having written: “The Collective—Life of a Russian Worker”, “Speech Notes on the Far Right”, “On Communism and Capitalism”, “The Communist Party of the United States”, “The Historic Diary”. Oswald, as an invited speaker, delivered a talk on “Contemporary Russia and the Practice of Communism” before the students and faculty staff at the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College. He organized a New Orleans chapter ”FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee)”, took part in radio debates on Cuba where he defended the rights of Cubans on independence and their own choice of social development.

 A citizen of the democratic United State of America, Oswald believed in his constitutional right to free speech and free expression of his ideas. He sincerely meant good for his people. A young aspiring American, Oswald became visible and, unfortunately, was made a dispensable pawn in a big political game played by some unscrupulous top governmental figures, which resulted in his tragic premature death. The Warren Commotion, acting on instructions from the top, inverted his outlook and intentions, having featured Oswald as a psychopath, to wrongly accuse him next of killing Kennedy.

As Martin Schotz predicted: “The fact that an elected US President was brutally murdered in broad daylight simply because he wanted to make peace with the Soviet Union and banish the horror of war that shows how deep and nefarious is the Cold War logic of the American ruling establishment. Now, as it was then…The murder of JFK is not some distant event of wicked intrigue. It is a crime that haunts the US and the rest of the world to this day. Until the United States deals with that crime, it will never be at peace.”

 

                                                     ***

References

 

The Official Warren Commission Report on Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy,    https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report

 

Oswald: Russian Episode by Ernst Titovets (ISBN 9798783601071, ISBN 978-985-90215-3-4, ISBN 9798570499225) https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9798570499225/Oswald-Russian-Episode-Titovets-Ernst/plp

 

“JFK” film by Oliver Stone.1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)

Schotz, E. Martin. History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy. Publisher: ‎ Kurtz, Ulmer & Delucia.1996. https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Will-Not-Absolve-Orwellian/dp/0965381404ersion

Why People Think The Government Killed JFK? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r5eKpptixo&ab_channel=JohnnyHarris

Oswald,L.H.(manuscripts): “The Collective—Life of a Russian Worker” , “Speech Notes on the Far Right” , “On Communism and Capitalism” , “The Communist Party of the United States”,  “The Athenian System”, “The Historic Diary”.  https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html

The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/limited-ban

 Oswald in a live radio debate in Conversation Carte Blanche, August 31, 1963, New Orleans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_mg5-KCjRU&ab_channel=DavidVonPein%27sJFKChannel

 President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech on civil rights on June 11, 1963, which became known as the Report to the American People on Civil Rights. https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/televised-address-to-the-nation-on-civil-rights

President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the 18th session of the General Assembly (20 September 1963). https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-nations-19630920