Friday, February 22, 2008

RECOVERED HISTORY


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ALLEGED OSWALD-RUBY TRANSCRIPT SURFACES

DALLAS MORNING NEWS - The Dallas County district attorney's office has
unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of
President John F. Kennedy's assassination in an old safe on the 10th
floor of the courthouse. It includes personal letters to and from former
District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the
Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to
him and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County
District Attorney Craig Watkins.

And conspiracy theorists [sic] will rejoice over one find: a highly
suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to
kill the president because the mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother,
Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

"It will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy,"
said Mr. Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was
killed in 1963.

But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the
conversation could not have happened. Terri Moore, Mr. Watkins' top
assistant, said she believes the transcript is part of a movie that Mr.
Wade was working on with producers. "It's not real. Crooks don't talk
like that," she said. . .

Mr. Wade wrote about the movie, Countdown in Dallas, in letters found in
the safe. Mr. Wade prosecuted Ruby in Oswald's death, although the
verdict was overturned and Ruby died of cancer in 1967 before his second
trial could begin.

"I believe it important for the film to be factually correct, that it
come from official files, that the witnesses who in any way were
participants should appear in person in the film, and in my opinion,
will result in an excellent film not only of interest at present but the
record of events for history," Mr. Wade wrote. It is unclear if any
further work was ever done on the film.

The purported Oswald-Ruby conversation took place on Oct. 4, 1963, at
Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street. It reads like every conspiracy
theorist's dream of a smoking gun that ties the men to a plot to kill
Kennedy. Part of the two-page transcript reads:

Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney
General.

Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into
everything.

Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.

Ruby: How's that?

Lee: I can shoot his brother.

...

Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.

Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting
the President?

Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.

Lee: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but
it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll
have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Later, Ruby warns Oswald that the mafia will ask Ruby to kill him if
he's caught. . .

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren
Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined
that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation -
again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor
- was definitely fake.

Mr. Mack said that it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving the
evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not
have been at Ruby's club. . .

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/
stories/021708dnmetjackruby.3bde49f.html



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RECOVERED HISTORY: HOW THE CIA SUBVERTED THE ARTS

NY TIMES 2000 - Many people remember reading George Orwell's "Animal
Farm" in high school or college, with its chilling finale in which the
farm animals looked back and forth at the tyrannical pigs and the
exploitative human farmers but found it "impossible to say which was
which."

That ending was altered in the 1955 animated version, which removed the
humans, leaving only the nasty pigs. Another example of Hollywood
butchering great literature? Yes, but in this case the film's secret
producer was the Central Intelligence Agency.

The C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too
influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the
capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents
were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate
fame) to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow to make its
message more overtly anti-Communist.

Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often
absurd lengths to which the C.I.A. went, as recounted in a new book,
"The Cultural Cold War: The C.I.A. and the World of Arts and Letters"
(The New Press) by Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. . .

This picture of the C.I.A.'s secret war of ideas has cameo appearances
by scores of intellectual celebrities like the critics Dwight Macdonald
and Lionel Trilling, the poets Ted Hughes and Derek Walcott and the
novelists James Michener and Mary McCarthy, all of whom directly or
indirectly benefited from the C.I.A.'s largesse. There are also bundles
of cash that were funneled through C.I.A. fronts and several hilarious
schemes that resemble a "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon more than a serious
defense against Communism.

Traveling first class all the way, the C.I.A. and its counterparts in
other Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual
conferences, concerts and magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet
agenda. Ms. Stonor Saunders provides ample evidence, for example, that
the editors at Encounter and other agency-sponsored magazines were
ordered not to publish articles directly critical of Washington's
foreign policy. She also shows how the C.I.A. bankrolled some of the
earliest exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the
United States to counter the Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.
. .

As it turns out, "Animal Farm" was not the only instance of the C.I.A.'s
dabbling in Hollywood. Ms. Stonor Saunders reports that one operative
who was a producer and talent agent slipped affluent-looking
African-Americans into several films as extras to try to counter Soviet
criticism of the American race problem.

The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of "1984,"
disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be
altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely
defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last line,
Orwell writes of Winston, "He loved Big Brother." In the movie, Winston
and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly shouts:
"Down with Big Brother!". . .

Ms. Stonor Saunders describes how the C.I.A. cleverly skimmed hundreds
of millions of dollars from the Marshall Plan to finance its activities,
funneling the money through fake philanthropies it created or real ones
like the Ford Foundation. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/health/17depress.html?_r=
3&sq=zoloft&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=3&adxnnlx=1203342737-
9amUcLCmzdxz7mrwW5dyPA



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