THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php


After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap.

Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:


Edit: Watch this less than one minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBkrijfhLSo

[spanone]

1. i wonder who the cia is answering to these days? i suspect cheney still has his hand in there.

i cannot forget that george herbert walker bush was cia director 1976-77

[lunatica]

10. They don't answer to anyone outside their own organization

There is no oversight. Even if the President were to order them to do or not do anything who would check to see that the order is followed? Of course the President will use them, but in reality they're behind just about every nefarious thing on a global scale. They assassinate, they create coups, they change governments and they start and stop wars. And no one can stop them.

[glitch]

17. More like they use the president, and if the president can't be used...

well, 80% of Americans know what'll happen to him.

[Chemical Bill]

26. Wall Street's private army.

Did you read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"? The titans of industry are in charge of the jackals.

Bill

[annabanana]

2. This whole subject is a juicy and under-explored jungle..

(There be monsters. . )

[EPIC1934]

25. Yep:there is no more important topic

Yep!! It amazes me that there is not more curiosity about this topic. There certainly is enough solidly researched stuff out there.

I also strongly strongly recommend a book called The Cultural Cold War: THe CIA and THe World of Arts and Letters. by Frances Saunders. It shows how the CIA used foundation funded ""left"" publications to control the """left""" towards what were essentially rightist ends. EVERYONE MUST UNDERSTAND THE HISTORY OF CIA ''LEFT'' MAGAZINE ENCOUNTER, TO UNDERSTAND WHY THERE IS NO STRONG OPPOSITON MOVEMENT TODAY. In England this book was called Who Paid the Piper. It is one of the best uses of your time in terms of understanding power, in my opinion.

Also i highly recommend the Spartacus threads as mentioned elsewhere on this topic. JUST THIS NOTE.
THE BEST THING ABOUT THE SPARTACUS THREADS IS VERY EASY TO MISS, CAUSE ITS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGES . HERE ONE FINDS MANY DIFFERENT EXCERPTS FROM MANY DIFFERENT ARTICLES AND BOOKS ABOUT THE PERSON WHO IS THE SUBJECT OF THAT PARTICULAR THREAD

MUST SEE SPARTACUS THREADS.

BEN BRADLEE thead as mentoned
MARY PINCHOT MEYER THREAD -- Interesing thing here (or rather one of about eight zillion interesting things on this thread, ) is first Huby was a high level CIA media guy named Cord Meyer.
Meyer was a leader in the World Federalist League which was a CIA """Left""" control group with similar aims as Encounter Magazine. A new book is coming out
in December called Mary's Mozaic It presents new evidence that the CIA murdered her, and is written by the best friend of her son, who was killed by a hit and run
driver in 1955. There is also a movie in the works, based on the book
PHILLIP GRAHAM
KATHERINE GRAHAM
JOESEPH ALSOP
HUGH AYNESWORTH -- AN IMPORTANT CIA CONNECTED JOURNALIST WHO WAS FEATURED IN THE PBS PROPAGANDA FILM AIMED SPECIFICALLY AT THE LEFT CALLED OSWALDS GHOST
PRICILLA JOHNSON-- YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS ONE!!!! ALSO FEATURE HEAVILY IN PBS OSWALDS GHOST.

thats just a start. REMEMBER THE KEY IS TO READ TO THE BOTTOM OF THESE THREADS THATS WHERE THE BEST STUFF IS SO YOU ARE NOT RELLIANT ON JUST ONE POINT OF VIEW. Then switch over to the Education Forum part to discuss and disagree freely.

[Hannah Bell]

27. r/t the roosevelts.

"Alsop was born into a socially prominent family in Avon, Connecticut; the son of Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876-1953) and his wife Corinne Douglas Robinson (1886-1971). His mother was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt, as her mother (Joseph's grandmother), Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, was Roosevelt's sister. Thus, Joseph and his brother Stewart were the great-nephews of Theodore Roosevelt. His mother was also related to President James Monroe.

Because of his family ties to the Roosevelts, Alsop soon became well-connected in Franklin Roosevelt's Washington...Despite his identity as a conservative and a Republican, Alsop was an early supporter of the presidential ambitions of Democrat John F. Kennedy and became a close friend and influential adviser to Kennedy after his election in November 1960. Alsop was a vocal supporter of America's involvement in Vietnam, a fact that subsequently led to bitter breaks with many of his liberal friends and a decline in the influence of his column as well.

Alsop kept his homosexuality private,<2> though in the 1950s the KGB photographed him in a hotel room in Moscow with another man and later disseminated the photographs to contacts in the United States.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alsop.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. while this has been discussed many times here, it's always good to repeat it. check this:

I have already written about Ben Bradlee's involvement in the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3520

However, I think he deserves his own thread. He is also still alive and might want to comment on my views on his work for the CIA.

One of Bradlee's closest friends as a child was Richard Helms. While at Harvard University Bradlee married Jean Saltonstall, the daughter of Leverett Saltonstall. Saltonstall also had close links to the intelligence services.

After graduating in 1943 Bradlee joined naval intelligence and worked as a communications officer. His duties included handling classified and coded cables.

At the end of the war Bradlee went to work as a clerk for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great) points out that as the ACLU is an "organization that promotes various progressive causes, including conscientious objection to war. This job, so out of character for the young patriot, may or may not have been an intelligence assignment."

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3541

that site has some of the best information available online, btw

[Gabi Hayes]

5. if you're interested in who killed JFK, coverage (or lack thereof) re: the Mary Meyer

incident is instructive in how disinfo specialists like (CIA connected) McAdams dupe the gullible into buying the corporate/military/intel coincidence mythology

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3520

the link is the first one in the passage above

Mary Meyer's husband, Cord, was Frank Wisner's chief Mockingbird operative

etc. etc.

hey, George Clooney....HERE's your movie

[Gabi Hayes]

8. Mary Pinchot (Meyer), Tim Leary, JFK, acid, etc:

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v308/__show_article/_a000308-000178.htm

[Gabi Hayes]

14. from the link

JFK attempted to have an affair with Mary Meyer in December, 1961. She turned him down (she was in a relationship with the artist Kenneth Noland). However, in January, 1962, she changed her mind. One of the things we now know is that Mary introduced JFK to LSD. The quotation from Timothy Leary’s book suggests that she had indeed retained the idealism of the late 1940s. Mary knew how the CIA infiltrated and betrayed left-wing groups. Mary was using the same tactic with the JFK administration. What is more, as she told Ann Truitt, she intended to keep a record of her activities.

Who knows what Mary discovered while JFK was under the influence of drugs. No doubt it was all written down in her diary. However, she made a mistake in confiding in Ann Truitt. She told her husband, James Truitt, who worked for Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post. It is probably not a coincidence that Bradlee sent James Truitt to work in Japan just before Mary was murdered (Ann went to Japan with her husband). This enabled James Angleton to get hold of Mary’s diary.

It would have all been kept a secret. However, in 1976, Bradlee sacked James Truitt. He was furious and gave an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Mary Pinchot Meyer was having an affair with JFK. He also claimed that Meyer had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me".

Bradlee and Angleton now had to come up with another story. They admitted they found the diary but it only included insignificant details of Mary’s relationship with JFK and it was destroyed. Operation Mockingbird was activated and James Truitt was portrayed as someone with mental problems.

[choie]

4. hasn't there been speculation that Bob Woodward

was a plant for the CIA?

[Gabi Hayes]

6. both Bradlee and Woodward worked for naval intelligence.

just another coincidence

nothing to see....just keep moving on to American Idol

[Gabi Hayes]

11. an obvious question, which I've never seen answered: what does Bernstein think of W/B's possible

links to the intel community?

???

[Liberation Angel]

20. Woodward worked in same ONI unit as Oswald (naval intel) and was book & snake at Yale

Book and snake is the science sister society to skull and bones and is intel associated

it was signal corp (communications)

they were not in it at the same time

book and snake was a channel into intel according to sources I have interviewed.

just sayin'

[ControlledDemolition]

22. They were well placed to throw everyone off 'the Cuban thing'! n/t

(Edit: Fix typo.)

[ColbertWatcher]

15. Wasn't there a reporter with the New York Times who was supposed to be CIA? n/t

[NNN0LHI]

21. I always wondered about this fellow

http://www.indypendent.org/2007/02/24/words-of-mass-deception/


John Burns

Former tennis partner of George Bush Sr. and the Times’ longtime Baghdad bureau chief, Burns will be leaving Iraq in the summer of 2007 to serve as London bureau chief. In an interview with Charlie Rose of PBS in February 2007, Burns blithely moved from conversations about his own curly hair to the grim fact that nearly every barber in Baghdad was dead, the victims of unrelenting sectarian violence.

In answering the question, ‘Was the Iraq war lost?’ Burns recently told CSPAN, “I think the honest answer is that we – that we don’t know, that the situation is extremely complicated, that it looks pretty dire, but all hope is not exhausted.”

[John Simkin]

35. Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee and the CIA

Ben Bradlee brought in Bob Woodward to manage the Watergate story on behalf of the CIA. Although it was known as the "scoop of the century" it was in fact part of the Operation Mockingbird dosinformation campaign.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwoodward.htm

[Octafish]

7. The Good Spy

Great resource, there, Don. Thank you.

Here's a bit the Company doesn't want people to think too much about:

The Good Spy

How the quashing of an honest C.I.A. investigator helped launch 40 years of JFK conspiracy theories and cynicism about the Feds.

By Jefferson Morley
Washington Monthly
December 2003

It was 1:30 in the morning of Nov. 23, 1963, and John F. Kennedy had been dead for 12 hours. His corpse was being dressed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, touched and retouched to conceal the ugly bullet wounds. In Dallas, the F.B.I. had Lee Harvey Oswald in custody.

The lights were still on at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., John Whitten, the agency’s 43-year-old chief of covert operations for Mexico and Central America, hung up the phone with his Mexico City station chief. He had just learned something stunning: A C.I.A. surveillance team in Mexico City had photographed Oswald at the Cuban consulate in early October, an indication that the agency might be able to quickly uncover the suspect’s background.

At 1:36 am, Whitten sent a cable to Mexico City: “Send staffer with all photos of Oswald to HQ on the next available flight. Call Mr. Whitten at 652-6827.” Within 24 hours Whitten was leading the C.I.A. investigation into the assassination. After two weeks of reviewing classified cables, he had learned that Oswald’s pro-Castro political activities needed closer examination, especially his attempt to shoot a right-wing JFK critic, a diary of his efforts to confront anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans, and his public support for the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. For this investigatory zeal, Whitten was taken off the case.

C.I.A. Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms blocked Whitten’s efforts, effectively ending any hope of a comprehensive agency investigation of the accused assassin, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, who had sojourned in the Soviet Union and spent time as a leftist activist in New Orleans. In particular, Oswald’s Cuba-related political life, which Whitten wished to pursue, went unexplored by the C.I.A. The blue-ribbon Warren commission appointed by President Johnson concluded in September 1964 that Oswald alone and unaided had killed Kennedy. But over the years, as information which the commission’s report had not accounted for leaked out, many would come to see the commission as a cover-up, in part because it failed to assign any motive to Oswald, in part because the government’s pre-assassination surveillance of Oswald had been more intense than the government ever cared to disclose, and finally because its reconstruction of the crime sequence was flawed.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.morley.html

Gee. It's a good an interesting thing they got The Mighty Whorelitzer on their side. Otherwise the Democrats and the rest of We the People might ask an embarrassing question or two.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. wouldn't it have been sweet to have waterboarded Helms, Ben Bradlee's good bud?

people still revere that traitor

wonder if Bradlee's ever been questioned about his friendship with that monster

''In 1961 Richard Helms tipped off Bradlee that his grandfather, Gates White McGarrah, was willing to sell Newsweek. Bradlee went to Philip Graham with the story. Graham was interested in buying the journal and gave Bradlee a handwritten check for $1 million to convey to McGarrah as a down payment.''

[Hannah Bell]

28. McGarrah = banker

McGarrah: chairman of executive committee of Chase National Bank until 1927... McGarrah's daughter Marion Lavinia McGarrah married Herman Henry Helms, Alcoa executive. Alcoa was 33% owned by the
Mellons.

"Announcements of the most authoritative character made it seem
certain, last week, that the governors of Europe's great central
banks of issue have told Gates W. McGarrah, now board chairman ol
the New York Federal Reserve Bank, that they wish to elect him board
chairman of the new Bank for International Settlements soon to be
set up in Basle, Switzerland, as "the cash register of German
reparations" (TIME, March 25 et seq.).

Massive and magnificent of mien is Gates McGarrah, 67, of striking
resemblance to the late J. P. Morgan Sr. He is a director of such
large corporations as American Brake Shoe & Foundry Co., a member of
practically every tycoon's club in Manhattan.

Banker McGarrah would not comment. Friends spoke of the "great
sacrifice" it would be for him to quit his august Federal Reserve
post; but few thought that he would not choose to go to Switzerland
and shoulder Europe's great task."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,738526,00.html

[EPIC1934]

42. for more on McGarrah Helms

Usefull for more on McGarrah Helms
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1329

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. Things that make you go "Hmm."

Oswald was under surveillance before JFK.

Al Qaeda was under surveillance before 911.

[Gabi Hayes]

13. Oswald and the CIA, by John Newman:

From Publishers Weekly

This meticulously documented expose gives the lie to the official CIA position that it had no relationship of any kind with Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John Kennedy. A former U.S. military intelligence officer for 20 years, Newman (JFK and Vietnam) relies primarily on newly released government documents made available within the last three years under the JFK Assassination Records Act, passed in 1992, which mandates that the U.S. government make available all its information on this case.

Using CIA, FBI, military and American embassy files to reconstruct Oswald's activities from his 1959 defection to the Soviet Union up until his murder, Newman shows that the CIA was spawning a web of deception about Oswald weeks before the president's murder. For example, the agency has denied that it knew about Oswald's 1963 visits to the Cuban consultant in Mexico City, but Newman refutes this, using interlocking CIA and FBI cables and reports.

The evidence presented here, though fragmentary and based on heavily censored and edited documents, strongly suggests that the CIA had a keen operational interest in Oswald, that it kept tabs on him and that Oswald, either willingly or as a patsy, was deeply involved in CIA operations. CIA documents suggest that the agency had a hand in Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union and monitored his activities there and his return home in June 1962. This heavily annotated tome, which reads like an intricate spy thriller, serves as a corrective to Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale.

[ControlledDemolition]

23. Oswald was a part of a program to penetrate the USSR.

He worked at the secret Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan. This base is where the top secret U2's flew surveillance missions over the Soviet Union from. There is a suggestion that Oswald was dangled in front of the Soviets and that to boost his credibility he was instructed to hand over some U2 related information.

Gary Francis Powers was shot down relatively soon thereafter. Interestingly enough, Powers, soon after saying that he believed his flight had been sabotaged, died in a helicopter crash.

Oswald was given a parafin test after JFK's murder. Police Chief Jesse Curry said 'I understand that it was positive'! That way if it ever came out that Oswald did not fire a shot at the POTUS, he had some wiggle room.

JFK's assassination is the key to understadning what has been happening in this completely mixed up world for the last fifty years.

[Gabi Hayes]

16. oh yeah, was it you that I asked about the wonder showzen picture awhile back?

I just ordered their first two seasons on DVD via interlibrary loan



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdL2jiM601U&feature=related

Slaves!

Gamble, gamble, gamble, ....die!


best show ever?

[Supersedeas]

18. we need to know more....more

[StateSecrets]

19. K & R

Excellent post, and so very timely.

[Time for change]

24. Doesn't this present a very serious conflict of interest?

Journalists have responsibilities as journalists and as citizens to present reliable information for their readers. But if they're simultaneously under cover for the CIA, then it would seem that they would be required to slant the news in ways that the CIA considers beneficial (but beneficial to whom?).

[TheUnspeakable]

29. k&r-we know this, yet we're always surprised

at the way events are covered

[Echo In Light]

30. ...which in and of itself is quite amazing, indeed

I always wonder why otherwise intelligent people continually, repeatedly fall for the shuck n jive.

One would think that after realizing that the game is rigged....

[NNN0LHI]

31. It is "seemingly" intelligent people who fall for it over and over again

I admit that I have been fooled here before.

I once had great respect for someones opinions on this board until one day the person let it slip that they based their views on what they seen on The Apprentice.

I was flabbergasted to put it mildly.

I don't think I ever seen that person post here again. And that incident occurred several years ago.

Don

[Echo In Light]

32. Yeah, it's odd...and psychologically complex. Really doesn't boil down to intelligence, per se

I mean, yes and no ...But the underlying motives and predominant social sources that shape the average person's background assumptions, and indoctrinates them into perceiving reality through a very specific lens.

[tomp]

37. love your sig line...

....but it should say "dominant", right?

[Echo In Light]

38. Yes, and very strange as I copy/pasted from this website where it's spelled correctly!!?

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/

Thanks, I'll fix it, and hope whomever changed it doesn't fuck w/my account anymore

[MinM]

33. Operation Mockingbird

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x144008

"Watching Crossfire was like watching the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA". Timothy Leary

[John Simkin]

36. Operation Mockingbird

The Wikipedia entry for Operation Mockingbird used to say it was an "urban myth". To be fair, after many deletions, they eventually allowed me to post a copy of my page on the subject at Wikipedia. However, you need to see my page on the subject to get the latest information on Mockingbird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

[MinM]

41. Braden was a key figure in the early days of Operation Mockingbird...

Thanks for all your great work, John
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=de3bc3fc7b00a2197b6550b2fd5b6f86&showforum=126

Democratic Underground - Operation Mockingbird - Democratic Underground

"Watching Crossfire was like watching the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA". Timothy Leary

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3600

Thomas Braden was a key figure in the early days of Operation Mockingbird. He was officially head of the CIA's International Organizations Division (Cord Meyer was his deputy)...

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-thomas-braden4-2009apr04,0,6736553.story


Don't be a stranger :web:

[John Simkin]

34. The CIA and the Media

It is interesting that Carl Bernstein does not name any journalists from the Washington Post as being under the control of the CIA.

However, as Deborah Davis pointed out in her great book, Katharine the Great (1979), Phil Graham, the man who ran the Washington Post, was a key figure in Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to influence the American media. Graham had developed a close relationship with Frank Wisner, who ran Mockingbird, when they served together in the OSS during the Second World War. To quote Davis:

"The Washington Post was in many ways like other "companies," as Walter Lippmann called the news organizations, fighting deadlines, living uneasily with unions, suffering with "technical conditions (that) do not favor genuine and productive debate." But the Post was also unique among news companies in that its managers, living and working in Washington, thought of themselves simultaneously as journalists, businessmen, and patriots, a state of mind that made them singularly able to expand the company while promoting the national interest. Their individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason that the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war; their secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning with MOCKINGBIRD. Philip Graham's commitment to intelligence gave his friends Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles an interest in helping to make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they did by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the Times-Herald and WTOP. The Post men most essential to these transactions, other than Phil, were Wayne Coy, the Post executive who had been Phil's former New Deal boss, and John S. Hayes, who replaced Coy in 1947 when Coy was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission."

No wonder Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post, spend so much time making sure that "Katharine the Great" got pulped. It also explains why Bradlee was used to "manage" the Watergate story to benefit the CIA.

You can find more details about Operation Mockingbird and Graham, Wisner, Davis and Bradlee here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgrahamP.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwisner.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdavisD.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbradleeB.htm

[EPIC1934]

39. This thread is Ye Old Epistomological Bellybutton!??!

The Ben Bradlee threads and the Mary Pinchot Meyer threads are very complementary as you might see.

In my opinion this thread is the most important I have seen anywhere. This topic is The Epistemological Bellybutton. How can we ever expect to change our society if we allow the credibility of the Corporate Media to go unchallenged? Yet, "alternative media" ALL BY ITSELF is not the answer, because it cannot provide a critical mass to challenge the superficially diverse but really highly centralized structure of Corporate Media lies.

The Corporate Media itself must be legitimized in front a broader audiences.

That is why I think this is the most important thread I have seen on DU thus far.

[Octafish]

43. A most hearty welcome to DU, Mr. Simkin!

You and your colleagues at SpartacusSchoolnet and the Education Forum are preserving history, sharing truth, and helping save democracy.

[EPIC1934]

40. Alsop--key CIA-friendly WaPost Journalist.

Joseph Alsop the WaPost CIA very-friendly mentioned in the clip above was one of the most important journalists in Washington as far as the CIA making its voice heard in the US press.

Crucially, LBJ's phone call will Alsop was one of the key factors in getting LBJ to form the Warren Commission. Originally, LBJ wanted almost no national investigation at all. It was in conversations with Alsop and the assistant AG filling in for RFK that the WC emerged. The crucial book on this is the absolutely incredible Breach of Trust How the Warren Commission Failed American and Why.

THis book is in some ways the ideal first book for that well-educated liberal on your list who has been trained to mumble the word "conspiracy theory" like a mantra that will prevent them from ever
having to do something really wacky like.... read the even the slightest bit of testimony.

The reason this is the perfect book for such an GOOD LEFTIST upper middle class status conscious type who reads Chomsky and thinks that will lead to anything... is because this book does not even try to say how the conspiracy did happen what forces were behind it et al. Rather it maintains a singular focus on the WC report itself and there is no way anyone can ever believe this report ever again after reading this extremely disciplined and scholarly treatment. No way.

http://www.amazon.com/Breach-Trust-Warren-Commission-Failed/dp/0700613900

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKalsop.htm Alsop-WaPost-CIA