The finding lends support to a theory that the guardsmen thought they were being shot at during a campus Vietnam War protest. Witnesses said at the time that an FBI informant monitoring the protest fired warning shots because he felt threatened.
The National Guard opened fire on student protesters on May 4, 1970, killing four and injuring nine others. Eight guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges four years later. Many believe the events contributed to the change in the public's attitude toward the war, which ended five years later.
The reel-to-reel audio recording was made by a Kent State student who placed a microphone at a windowsill in his dormitory, which overlooked the antiwar rally. He later turned the tape over to the FBI. A copy eventually wound up in a Yale University archive.
That's where Alan Canfora, a protester wounded by the Guard gunfire, found it in 2007.
Terry Norman, a Kent State student photographing protesters that day for the FBI, was carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver under his coat, the newspaper said.
from corbett report: If history has taught us anything, it is that we need to beware those populist politicians who claim to be men of peace by nature but men of war by necessity. The most violent wars this planet has ever seen, the most brutal regimes that have ever sought to repress their own citizens, the most genocidal schemes have always been nurtured under the leadership of politicians who offer war, violence and domination as a way of achieving peace ... To continue reading transcript, please click here.
from raw replay: In a Special Comment, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann argues that in the face political and financial opportunism, not to mention outright lies about the war in Afghanistan, and the stark historical warning represented by Vietnam, President Obama should make the change he promised during his campaign and pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Nov. 30, 2009.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the files "involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations - but never told the committee of his earlier role."
Joannides was the deputy director for psychological warfare at the CIA's Miami station, JM/WAVE, which was the center of anti-Castro activities in the early 60's and served as a spawning ground for figures who would later be involved in covert operations in Vietnam and in Iran-Contra. In 1963, Joannides worked closely with leaders of the the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil and exercised a significant degree of control over the group's leaders.
Former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley has been engaged since 2001 in a battle to learn move about the dual role placed by Joannides, which has raised suspicions that he was part of a coverup. "I know there's a story here," Morley told the Times. "The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive."
This past July, Morley wrote, "Last week, I did my part to hold the CIA accountable. I filed my sixth (!) declaration in connection with Morley v. CIA, my ongoing lawsuit against the agency seeking records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ... The Joannides file, say a diverse group of JFK authors, are part of the assassination story and should be made public. For six years, the CIA has refused, alleging their release would harm 'national security.'"
Morley's quest has gained prominent supporters, including even anti-conspiracy assassination scholar Gerald Posner, who believes that the CIA's secretiveness is feeding into conspiracy theories.
G. Robert Blakey, who served as staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the Times, "If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath - he would have been a witness, not a facilitator ... How do we know what he didn’t give us?"
Jimi Hendrix performed, as did Richie Havens, the Who, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Santana, and Sly and the Family Stone, among others. It was billed as three days of "peace and music." It became a generational signpost: Woodstock.
Forty years later, a faint patina of absurdity attaches to those days. One watches archival footage of young people groping and grooving and getting stoned in the mud with the same faintly horrified fascination one watches young people of earlier years dancing the jitterbug or swallowing goldfish. It seems quaint — something foolish and long ago.
And it comes as no surprise that one of former Vietnam POW John McCain's most memorable applause lines during the last presidential campaign was that he missed Woodstock because "I was tied up at the time." It's a wisecrack that neatly encapsulates the culture wars — feckless hippies turning on and tuning out versus a Navy flier doing his duty under duress for flag and country.
Which is not to buy into the inferred argument that there was no meaning in those mud-splattered days. Woodstock was the distillation of an ideal which held that avarice could be stilled, hatred could be silenced, and the disparate tribes of humanity could find reconciliation, in the chords of a song.
It was a common belief back then. It's hardly coincidental that Coca-Cola came out two years later with the iconic commercial in which a multi-ethnic chorus declares, "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony."
The idea that you could play your way to peace or harmonize your way to love did not end when the hippies left Yasgur's farm. It resurfaces every time a roster of performers gathers for some planet-wide concert to heal African famine, global warming, the American farmer.
For that matter, the idea was not born on Yasgur's farm, either. History records an episode on Christmas Eve of 1914 when German soldiers faced off against entrenched French, Belgian and English troops. The Germans set tiny Christmas trees and lighted candles upon the parapets of their trenches and began singing carols. Before long, allied troops had crawled cautiously out of their holes to watch and listen. Shortly after that, they joined in the singing. There followed an unofficial truce. Enemies sang together, played soccer, exchanged small gifts, buried their dead. For much of the week between Christmas and New Year's, music stopped the war.
But if the ideal was neither born nor died on Yasgur's farm, it nevertheless reached arguably its fullest expression there. Granted, Woodstock did not stop the war in Vietnam, even for a week. Indeed, young people left the farm, cut their hair, put on suits and ties, pantsuits and sensible shoes, and became doctors, cops, TV executives, mothers, fathers — respectable and responsible. Four decades later, they are retirees, dandling grandchildren on arthritic knees and eligible for the senior discount at Denny's. They joined the world they famously opted out of.
But before they did, they authored what amounts to a statement of faith in the power of all us we, singing harmony and getting by with a little help from our friends. Granted, it is a statement strikingly out of key in an era where music is more often associated with product placement than division healing. More to the point, it is a statement that bespeaks hapless youth and hopeless naivete. Who among us is still young enough to think you can sing peace into being?
But 40 years ago, some of us gave it a try. Absurd? Maybe. But as generational signposts go, you could do a whole lot worse.
from dpa: Iconic news anchor Walter Cronkite, whose journalism shaped US views and policies from World War II to the Vietnam War died Friday at the age of 92, his family said.
Often called "the most trusted man in America," Cronkite's deliberate reporting and analysis, together with his rare displays of emotion made him a key observer and interpreter of seminal moments in US history including the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights struggle and the moon landing.
Regarded as one of the all time greats of US journalism, Cronkite also played a decisive role in establishing television as a leading news medium and in defining the standards for news anchors during his stint as anchor at CBS News from 1962 to 1981.
"Walter Cronkite was an icon of American journalism who shaped his profession in countless ways during his decades on the air. Tonight, his family is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said.
"It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite," Sean McManus, president of CBS News, said in a statement. "More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments."
Katie Couric, the current anchor of the CBS Evening News, said Cronkite was so trusted "because he exhibited a sense of purpose and compassion, night after night. He was the personification of excellence."
walter cronkite: most trusted asset of operation mockingbird from kurt nimmo: “It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News, on the passing on Walter Cronkite. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”
I wonder if Mr. McManus knew the real Cronkite — Cronkite the a former intelligence officer who was lured away from his UPI Moscow desk by Operation Mockingbird’s Phil Graham.
Of course he did. Because the corporate media, at least at the level Walter Cronkite occupied, is rife with spooks, government agents, and disinfo operatives. The CIA has “important assets” inside every major news publication in the country, a fact established by numerous FOIA documents. A rare glimpse was also provided by Frank Church’s committee in the mid-70s.
Some of the journalists working the CIA’s side of the street “were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country,” Carl Bernstein wrote in an article published in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. “Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad.”
“It was not until 1982 that the Agency openly admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field,” writes Alex Constantine in The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD. “Most consumers of the corporate media were — and are — unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs... In the 1950s, outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of the CIA’s covert operations budget. Some 3, 000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates.”
Cronkite was a trusted and valued part of that huge mass propaganda effort.
from dpa: Robert McNamara, the former US defence secretary and architect of the Vietnam War, has died at the age of 93, the Washington Post reported Monday, citing members of his family.
McNamara was a key planner of the Vietnam War, leading the Pentagon from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He went on to serve as head of the World Bank.
McNamara orchestrated the escalation of the war in Southeast Asia and soon became the focal point for anti-war protests in the United States. The Vietnam War quickly became known as 'McNamara's War.'
But McNamara later in life admitted he developed deep regrets and doubts towards the end of his controversial tenure. As fissures began to develop with Johnson, he was appointed to serve as head of the World Bank in 1968. The war continued seven more years after his departure.
In a 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara expressed misgivings that prompted a renewed debate over the war, which killed nearly 60,000 US troops and millions of Vietnamese.
McNamara was a businessman, not a defence specialist, before being appointed the country's eighth defence secretary by Kennedy. He had been the first non-family member to head the Ford Motor Company.
McNamara, who was born in San Francisco, died at his home in Washington, the Post reported. He leaves behind a wife, Diana. His first wife, Margaret, died of cancer in 1981. They had three children.
mcnamara deceived lbj on gulf of tonkin, documents show from raw story: Official government documents reveal new side of defense secretary’s legacy... On the following audio file from The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Johnson can be heard telling McNamara that he had misinformed him about the alleged attack:
from dallas morning news: Use the latest scientific techniques to poke a hole or two in official findings on the Kennedy assassination and suddenly you have lots of new friends – and lots of enemies.
The group found that those fragments weren't nearly as rare as the government's expert witness concluded in 1976, when Dr. Vincent P. Guinn determined that all five fragments came from two bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. A third shot missed.
letters from jfk to marilyn are in a box from nypost: Marilyn Monroe's re-resurrection in the currentVanity Fair tells about her private papers stashed in a secret filing cabinet, which had an even more secret drawer. It tells of her never-before-seen superhush-hush treasure trove. It tells of her hidden diary entries, personal belongings, intimate celebrity correspondence, and how some of that - namely the John F. Kennedy letters - appeared to have disappeared. Didn't exactly totally disappear. Could be I know what happened to them.
beyond conspiracy theories to why jfk assassination matters today from your diocese: A veteran peace activist and author, James W. Douglass is among the few people in the world today qualified to write a book such as "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters." It's not just a rehash of the many conspiracy theories that have floated around literally since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, although Douglass did an admirable job of winnowing the wheat from the chaff in that regard, too. Of course, those who advocate for the various conspiracy theories will continue to argue in support of their own theories.
'virtual jfk: vietnam if kennedy had lived' from nytimes: The title of the documentary “Virtual J F K.: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived” pretty much says it all, though the movie itself says not nearly enough. Directed by Koji Masutani, this speculative, provocative, frustrating and finally unpersuasive historical gloss races quickly and all too lightly over the major political crises that John F. Kennedy faced during his aborted presidency — Laos, Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam — in what may be the most aggressive big-screen shine job since Oliver Stone’s much derided 1991 hagiography, “J F K.”
Hinged partly on the British historian Niall Ferguson’s controversial notion of “virtual,” or “counterfactual,” history — crudely, it didn’t happen, but it could have — the documentary embraces a view of Kennedy as a president more inclined toward peace than toward war. Divided into sections and illustrated with a wealth of archival material, including some of Kennedy’s lively, sometimes combative press conferences, the movie zips through one crisis after another, interspersed with guest appearances by the likes of Fidel Castro, Nikita S. Khrushchev and Robert S. McNamara. Every so often a spectral-looking James G. Blight, a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, the movie’s sole talking-head authority, pops up against a white backdrop to make the same argument to the camera.
scientist re-examines jfk assassination evidence from uky: Is it time to reexamine the Kennedy assassination? New scientific evidence indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald did not necessarily act alone. Simon Sheather, professor and chair of the Department of Statistics at Texas A&M has revealed that evidence used to rule out a second assassin has fundamental scientific flaws. Thursday, Sept. 18, he will speak at the University of Kentucky about new compositional analysis of bullets reportedly derived from the same batch as those used in the crime. As the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination approaches, Sheather's research offers to shed new light on this national trauma... "Dr. Sheather's work is an excellent example of the importance of mathematical approaches to real life situations," said Vincent Cassone, chair, UK Department of Biology. Cassone and Sheather were colleagues at Texas A&M.
As the brigade pulled out three hours later on that fateful day, March 16, 1968, the village of My Lai in south Vietnam's highlands was levelled. Not a living thing stirred. Blood-soaked bodies covered the ground - women, children, old men, dogs. Smoke from burning huts could be seen from afar. The bodies of young women bore evidence of sexual violation.
The number of dead ranged from 347 to 504, victims of a Charlie Company gone amok in blood lust. Not one shot had been fired at the infantry. It would be another year and a half before the American public learned the truth - after a cover-up by the US Army...
Last summer, historians were outraged by US President George W Bush's comparison of Vietnam to Iraq. Bush likened the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq to the 'killing fields' that followed the US withdrawal from Vietnam. The 2008 release of Pinkville, a new film about My Lai by director Oliver Stone - Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) - will no doubt bring up more comparisons to current US military actions.
from danger room: A recently-unearthed U.S. Navy research project calls for creating mad-made floods and droughts to "disrupt [the] economy" of an enemy state.
"Weather modification wasused successfully in Viet Namto (among other things) hinder and impede the movement of personnel and material from North Viet Nam to South Viet Nam," notes a Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division - China Lakeresearch proposal (96kb PDF), released last month through the Freedom of Information Act. But "since that time military research on Weather Modification has dwindled in the United States."
The proposal suggests a study of the latest weather manipulation techniques, to "give the U.S. military a viable, state-of-the-art weather modification capability again."
“We’re saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there,” said the spokesperson. “It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”
Without definitive evidence that it was Iran who was making the provocative verbal threats, Bush nevertheless seized on the episode - just hours before he was set to depart for the Middle East - to underscore “his assertion that the Iranians arecapable of acting recklessly.” “We viewed it asa provocative act,” Bush said. Yesterday, he warned Iran, “There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple.”
UPDATE: At a Pentagon news conference just now, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “You said yesterday that other similar incidents have occurred. Can you say what about this incident on Sunday was particularly different that created such a stir?” Gates argued there were more Iranian boats this time, and they were “more aggressive.”
UPDATE II: Gareth Porter writes, “New information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.”
US navy unsure iranians made threat from danger room: Hold off the invasion force. It turns out thatthe U.S. military isn't totally, 100 percent, completely sure that the threatening voice involved in therecent naval face-offwas even from Iranian forces.
an ominous non-event: the gulf of tonkin & the strait of hormuz from global research: Those either old enough to remember, or cognizant enough to understand history, will immediately be reminded of the infamous 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident, reported on August 2, 1964. On that day, the U.S. destroyer Maddox, on an espionage mission in the Gulf of Tonkin off the Vietnam coast, reported being fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats. In response the Maddox fired back, sinking one boat. Tensions in the area were already growing, and now the world watched and waited.
gulf of tonkin confirmed as false flag from 9/11 blogger: For anyone still harboring doubts about the status of the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an example of a False Flag event, a report made public by the NSA clears it up. The existence of the report was revealed a couple of years ago, but the actual report has now been made public, and you can view it via the Federation of American Scientists blog, "Secrecy News". Just in time to coincide with the latest Strait of Hormuzincident, aimed at Iran... "Report reveals Vietnam War hoaxes, faked attacks"
report reveals vietnam war hoaxes & faked attacks from raw story: North Vietnamese made hoax calls to get the US military to bomb its own units during the Vietnam War, according to declassified information that also confirmed US officials faked an incident to escalate the war.
from oregon truth alliance: On November 22, 1963, the United States of America had a military coup d'etat - an event that most people chose not to see (a society of "not see's").
President Kennedy was removed after changing his mind on the Cold War. He refused to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle, refusing to start nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though his military advisers were demanding it), stopped atmospheric nuclear testing and began the process to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
In his farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned that we should beware the unchecked power of the military-industrial complex. This speech is one of the greatest in American history, and prescient in understanding what was coming. Now, the future that Eisenhower warned about is the content of the daily news.
The removal of Kennedy (and later, of his brother on the threshold of his victory in the Presidential campaign) led to the escalation of the Vietnam war, Watergate, the 1980 "October Surprise," the Iran-Contra scandals, BCCI, the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm (1991 war on Iraq), allowing the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, the stolen election in Florida in 2000, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks on the Democrats and the media, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the stolen 2004 Presidential election (to cite a few of the many scandals since 1963).
If our society is going to shift course to use our resources for our survival - instead of military dominance - we will have to convert the military budget toward peaceful purposes. A key part of the understanding needed to shift course is an honest discussion of these events in Dallas - and how those events led to the permanent warfare national security state.
Perhaps the simplest question to understand who perpetrated the assassination of President Kennedy is to ask: Who had the power to change the motorcade route? (the original route would not have passed next to the Book Depository nor the famous 'grassy knoll')
In the film JFK, the character played by Donald Sutherland (loosely based on Colonel Fletcher Prouty), states:
"That's the real question, isn't it - why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia - keeps them guessing like some sort of parlor game. Prevents them from asking the most important question: Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?"
from ap: Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.
"We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier."
The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.
from afp/raw story: Tens of thousands of protesters marched to the Pentagon's doorstep Saturday demanding "US out of Iraq Now," ahead of the fourth anniversary of the US invasion.
Demonstrators from across the United States gathered in a cold winter day to descend on the US Defense Department offices and decry the conflict that has killed more than 3,200 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark called for Bush's impeachment, while Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, demanded a US withdrawal.
"I marched in 1967 here," Maureen Dooley, 59, said outside the Pentagon, site of Vietnam war protests, but results were not immediate: "It took seven years to end the war."
War opponents trickled into Washington for the rally organized by the peace group ANSWER as Vietnam war veterans wearing black leather jackets gathered nearby for a counter-demonstration.
Some war supporters confronted the peace activists, tearing up and spitting on anti-war signs while chanting: "USA! USA!"
Washington police do not give crowd estimates, but an AFP correspondent said tens of thousands of people could be seen at the march.
War opponents have organized a series of protests against the conflict that started March 20, 2003.
from raw story: Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, retired Lt. Colonel Oliver North, who hosts Fox News Channel's War Stories, said that he doesn't support President Bush's plan to for 20,000 additional ground troops in Iraq.
In this clip, O'Reilly quips that the conservative military analyst, best known for his key role in the Iran-Contra affair, is aligning himself with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when he claims that Bush's "surge" plan "sounds eerily like Lyndon Johnson’s plan to save Vietnam in the 60s by gradual escalation as a way not to lose."
fair use notice: this site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. we are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, & social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. In accordance with title 17 usc section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
from ap: A tape recording of the 1970 shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier, a newspaper reported Friday citing the work of a forensic audio expert.
