Thanks to Starseed Starseed.

“My Dad Helped the CIA Kill JFK!”

Kevin Barrett, Truthjihad, November 19, 2011

https://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-dad-helped-cia-kill-jfk.html

[Don’t miss James Fetzer’s talk Who Killed JFK? this Tuesday, November 22nd at the University of Wisconsin-Madison! Details here.]

Saint John Hunt, recipient and custodian of father E. Howard Hunt’s confession to participating in the LBJ-approved, CIA-orchestrated murder of JFK

Of all the big lies told about the JFK assassination, perhaps the biggest is: “I guess we’ll never really know what happened.”

Bullshit! We do know.

Some of us know because we have studied the issue. Others, like Saint John Hunt, son of CIA executive and covert action agent E. Howard Hunt, know because they got it straight from the horse’s mouth.

In 1979, as a 20-year-old undergraduate, I wrote an article for the Madison, WI Daily Cardinal compiling evidence that the CIA killed JFK. Shortly after the article was submitted to a dozen or so publications, but before it was published, a woman appeared at my house and very politely announced she was a CIA-operated mind-control slave, brain wired with electrodes, whose job was to target enemies of the CIA for elimination. The next day, I asked my politically-savvy journalism professor, John T. McNelly, what was THAT about. He said, “They’re just f**ing with you, kid. They’re trying to intimidate you.”

Saint John Hunt knows how badly “they” can f** with you. He helped his CIA-agent father Howard conceal money and documents during the Watergate scandal, and suffered the pain of having his mother, Dorothy Hunt, blown out of the sky under circumstances that are far beyond suspicious.

So Saint John Hunt gets my vote as one America’s greatest living heroes, for having the guts to stand up and tell the truth about his father’s confession to participating in the LBJ-approved, CIA-orchestrated assassination of John F. Kennedy. His family didn’t want him to do it, the lawyers didn’t want him to do it, and of course the CIA didn’t want him to do it. But Saint John Hunt chose to live up to his arrangement with his dying father, who apparently felt some ambivalent remorse about his participation in “The Big Event” and, at the end of his life, asked his son to help expose the truth. By doing so, Saint John Hunt is not only keeping faith with his father, but also keeping faith with his country and its tortured, slowly dying Constitution. And if you believe, as I do, that one of God’s highest names is al-Haqq (truth/reality), Saint John Hunt is keeping faith on that level as well.

11/18/2011 Interview with Saint John Hunt, lightly edited, Part 1 (Listen to the full interview here)

Saint John Hunt

(The JFK assassination) happened 49 years ago this November 22nd. That’s basically a generation. And the old generation has published, I don’t know, 500 books on the subject, noting all manner of conspiracies from every conceivable source – everything from the CIA to space aliens.

We were well warned by Eisenhower, when he passed the torch to JFK, that we’ve got a very dangerous situation here with the miltary-industrial-congressional complex – that’s what was left out of his speech, the word “congressional.” Those were (Eisenhower’s) words, and he was correct in that appraisal.

Kevin Barrett

You’ve laid it on the line in a way that few have. I mean, this is your father that we’re talking about! It must be really, really tough, (dealing with) the feeling of betrayal that we all have when we look into issues like this, when (we find) our own government has betrayed us, our own government has slaughtered 3000 people in the World Trade Center and blamed it on their enemies. People in our own government, the people really in charge, kill the President, kill his brother, and so on. We all feel a horrible sense of betrayal. But having it in the family must be worse. It must be like betrayal squared.

Hunt

Yeah, it was a pretty big shock when he called me down to his, we’ll say his death bed side in Florida. And of course I had heard and seen…I had even attended a lecture in the mid-1970s by a comedian-turned-activist named Dick Gregory at San Francisco State. He was one of the first, along with Mark Lane and Silvia Meagher. And of course they accused my father of being one of the agents involved. So I was well aware that there were a lot of accusations flying around, and I just wanted to sort of figure things out for myself. But I kind of dropped the issue for ten or twenty years, until I got this phone call from my father. And lo and behold, there was some truth to the accusations and the alleged evil deeds. So that was quite a shock. And the arrangement that I had with him…originally we were going to bring it out together, before he passed away. But there was so much pressure from the inner family circle, and from various lawyers, and of course the CIA itself, that he backed down.

Barrett

What year was this happening?

Hunt

This was in 2005. And so he decided that he couldn’t really come out with this information himself, while he was alive, because there would be too many repercussions. First of all, he was extremely worried that any up-and-coming hotshot lawyer would have him arrested for complicity in the death of the President, which there is no statute of limitations on. So he backed down. And of course his family was deeply distressed over the overwhelming repercussions this would have in their lives. His second family, which we’re talking about, were relatively untainted by the things he had done when I, and my sisters and brothers and his first wife, were his main family. So he was a gentle man, toward the end there. But his wish for me was for me to bring this out after he had passed away. And of course that weighed very heavily on my shoulders. He passed away in 2007. After two years I just said “I’ll do this.” Against all pleas from my family, I decided to go ahead.

Barrett

Wow. That must be tough.

I know there’s a tape and a handwritten letter (confession to participation in CIA execution of JFK). Did he give you those in 2005?

Hunt

He gave me the handwritten notes in 2005, I believe. That’s when we were both working on how to bring this out to the mainstream media. He sent me the tape after I left. I just found it in the mail one day. I opened up the mail, and it was in an envelope. I put the cassette in and it was my father saying, on this audio cassette, how he was part of this “Big Event” (CIA code for its JFK asassination plot), naming the key players that he spoke with, that were arranging this. He ended the tape by saying that this information was for me and me alone.

We had had a very dynamic relationship. He was a staunch conservative Republican, while by that age, I was 17 in 1969 and very much part of the antiwar movement. So we had our differences, but we had always been very truthful with each other. And we had a bond of secrecy that really developed on the night of June 17th (1972) when he came home from Watergate. I was part of those crazy shennanigans, and I helped him dispose and disseminate lots of information, cash, money, you know. He trusted me with those. I never came forward and told anybody about it.

Barrett

Was he set up on Watergate? What’s your take on that?

Hunt

Yeah, I believe Watergate was a set-up job. I think my father – I know my father was part of that set-up.

The interesting thing is that although my father claimed to have retired from the CIA in 1970. And then in early 1971 he was asked by Charles Colson, one of Nixon’s advisors, to work under Mr. Colson in the White House in a special projects team that later became known as the Plumbers. But the truth of the matter is, and my father told me this years later, was that he never resigned from the CIA. Now he had had left the CIA twice before, and they were both false exits. They were so that he could have a new cover, yet still tapped into all the necessary CIA drop sources and do his job as an agent. So even in 1970, when he officially retired from the CIA, that was a third false exit from the CIA. He was still with the CIA, still on their books, still having meetings with Dick Helms and other top people at the CIA about Watergate and what Nixon was doing. So the CIA had my father there (in Nixon’s Plumbers) as what they call a “mole,” a deep agent, a double agent. So whatever was going on, the CIA was very well aware of it, because my father was reporting back to them on everything that was going down, all these crazy plots: kidnapping people, renting houseboats with prostitutes in them during the Democratic Convention in Miami, Florida, breaking into the George Wallace shooter, Arthur Bremer’s apartment – Colson sent (Hunt) up to Milwaukee to break into Bremer’s apartment and plant pro-McGovern literature so that Bremer would look like a leftist.

Barrett

That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?

Hunt

That’s just so crazy to me.

Barrett

I don’t know if you’ve seen Gore Vidal’s essay on (Howard Hunt’s connection to Bremer and the Wallace shooting, etc.). He’s kind of hard on your father. And he points out that Bremer, who had something like a 65 IQ and was marginally literate, left an “assassin’s diary” that reminds one of the prose style of the spy novels of Howard Hunt.

Hunt

Yeah, that was alleged to have been written by my father, and it really wouldn’t surprise me, because my father was a ghost writer for, let me give you an example, Allan Dulles, one of the Dulles brothers. The two Dulles brothers, Allan Dulles and John Foster Dulles…Allan Dulles was head of the CIA before Dick Helms, I believe, and his brother John Foster Dulles was head of United Fruit Company, as well as many other corporations that had interests in Latin American businesses. And when Allan Dulles was planning his retirement from the CIA, he wanted to publish a novel, you know, his autobiography, which was actually written by my father, along with Allan Dulles. That’s a little-known fact.

Barrett

I remember reading that, back in the day, and noticing that the passages about JFK just dripped with venom.

Hunt

Well, JFK was one of the most hated presidents, politically speaking, of all of our presidents, with possibly the exception of Abraham Lincoln. He was much-loved by almost all of the public. But…

Barrett

But not in the intelligence community.

(music) We’ll be back in a moment. I’m talking with Saint John Hunt.

“My Dad Helped the CIA Kill JFK!” Part 2

Kevin Barrett, Truthjiahd, November 20, 2011

https://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-dad-helped-cia-kill-jfk-part-2.html



Below is the lightly-edited transcript of part two of my interview with Saint John Hunt, recipient and custodian of father E. Howard Hunt’s confession to participating in the LBJ-approved, CIA-orchestrated murder of JFK. (Go to Part 1.) (Listen to the interview.) (Listen to my interview with James Douglass, author of the best single JFK assassination book, JFK and the Unspeakable.)

* * *

Kevin Barrett

Welcome back. This is Truth Jihad Radio. I’m your host Kevin Barrett, talking today with Saint John Hunt. He’s the son of Howard Hunt, the Watergate burglar and confessed CIA conspirator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who did us quite a service by leaving that confession. And his son Saint John Hunt, a very brave man, has done us an equally big service by helping get the truth out about history. Unfortunately, it seems the truth is out there, but the truth is still being kept “out there,” away from most of the people. You know, I recently had Vincent Bugliosi on my show, Saint John, and he’s a very smart guy.

Hunt

Yeah.

Barrett

But he thinks that his magnum opus is his book supposedly proving that Oswald acted alone. How do smart people like Bugliosi look at your material, which is backed up by so much evidence, and somehow not get it?

Hunt

Yeah, Vincent is, like you said, a very intelligent guy. He’s done tremendous work in the justice system. When his book, which is probably about the size of two telephone directories on top of each other – it’s a good six inches thick, probably weighs fifteen pounds – and of course the entire book is pointing in the direction that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. When that book was hitting the stands, I did a couple of talk shows. And Bugliosi was asked about my book, and my purported evidence and stuff. He dismissed the entire thing by saying that I, Saint John Hunt, was not to be trusted.

Barrett

So he thinks you’re making it all up?!

Hunt

Well, he just said I was not to be trusted because I had a history of substance issues in the past, and that it was all just the ravings of a senile old man, and the greed of his son to try to make a fast buck.

Barrett

Oh boy. “Kill the messenger.” It’s the same story everywhere.

Hunt

I respected Mr. Bugliosi up until that time. But that was really a courtroom tactic that’s well-known. You smear – I mean, if a prostitute gets raped, you bring out the fact that she’s a prostitute, and everybody goes, “Oh, well it’s okay, then, because that’s her line of work.” You smear, you kill the messenger. But really the message isn’t my message, it’s my father’s message. So it has nothing to do with what I’ve done in my life.

Barrett

There are hand-written notes. There’s a tape recording.

Hunt

And my father told me it isn’t the first time it’s been suggested that our own American government was the lead provocateur in this assassination attempt. So there have been several books that have made bigger splashes in the media but have been kind of discounted and thrown to the side. Certainly Madeleine Brown’s book detailing her long-term affair, even having a child, from LBJ, and that LBJ confided in her many times, after much drinking, that he was involved in the killing, the assassination, of JFK. And everyone knows that Johnson had a very dark, dark history, where there were several killings, and Johnson was just mad with power. He had a lust for power. And he realized, of course, this according to my father, that if JFK were re-elected, that would put Johnson as the vice-president for another four years, making it probably impossible for him to run for the presidency.

Barrett

And they were thinking of dropping him from the (1964 Democratic) ticket too, I understand.

Hunt

Yes they were, that’s correct. And Johnson barely got on the ticket as VP the first time around.

Barrett

And they didn’t like him, apparently.

Hunt

Not at all.

Barrett

The Kennedeys took him (Johnson) on as a necessary evil to win Texas and to win the presidency. But they couldn’t stand him, and Johnson couldn’t stand them. And he got wind that they were going to drop him from the ticket. And he was a born power-craving kind of leader…

Hunt

Yeah, well, he had a lot of people backing him. He did have a lot of power. In some ways, it’s that lust for power that this really is all about. And of course this is a tried-and-true scenario here. You can go back to Julius Ceasar.

Barrett

Right.

Hunt

This kind of stuff has been going on for such a long time. But the United States of America holds itself up as a place where this could never happen. And so you’ve got 200 years of this kind of fairy tale. And people just don’t want to believe (the truth). It’s got to be somebody else doing it. That’s why the truth is out there, but I don’t think it will ever be admitted to by this government, the Obama government, or any future government. Because to admit that the assassination of JFK and possibly RFK were coups d’état constructed by our own government is just gonna be too much to tell the world at large.

Barrett

Well part of the problem, Saint John, I think, is that the same forces are still in power, maybe even more ensconced in power now, and that’s why they work so hard at keeping the truth covered up. If this (the CIA’s killing of JFK) were just an aberration, and we didn’t have these deep state actors and these secret governments running around behind the scenes, then nobody would really have that strong of an interest in keeping it covered up. Sure, there would be an emotional interest, but not a really compelling one. But the problem is, these same types of people blew up the World Trade Center. And God knows what they’ll do next year.

Hunt

You’re absolutely right. And it goes beyond the individuals, because a lot of the key players in this – almost all of them – are dead and gone. But it’s not the individual, it’s the ideology that they serve. And the ideology, as you’re saying, is very much in control today. It’s that same ideology that allowed for the 9/11 attacks, and the continuing wars, if you want to call them that, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The people aren’t still alive, but the ideology is stronger than ever. It’s really bringing down this country.

And now, because corporations are viewed by the Supreme Court as people, you have this huge ability for corporations to donate tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns, which further entrenches that same ideology. So we’ve really got a lot of work to do. A strong battle’s ahead of us, to even this out a little bit.

Barrett

It’s really a terminal case of corruption. And it seems to me that the more you deny it, the more you buy into this myth that “such things could never possibly happen in the pristine, antiseptic United States of America,” the more cover these corrupt forces have to get away with bigger and bigger forms of murder. And it really seems to me that November 22nd, 1963 was the turning point. If they can get away with that, if they can murder the President in broad daylight – and then murder the patsy, the fake assassin, on live TV – and have this (second murder) done by Jack Ruby, a mobster, a mob hit man from the Chicago mob, moved down to Texas – I mean, if they can get away with that, they can get away with anything.

Hunt

That’s right.

Barrett

And they have. And they still are.

Have there been any openings for you in the mainstream media, besides Rolling Stone, which broke your story and did a pretty creditable job of it. I was surprised; they’re not always that good. But that seemed to be the end of it. I was expecting that after that Rolling Stone piece, your story would at least be making into, you know, page two of the New York Times, and they’d start trying to verify it or disprove it. But it seems like they all just kind of turned away from it.

Hunt

Well, there were a couple of points where it could have gone mainstream. The Los Angeles Times did a story on it. But much to my dismay, the headline of the story was “No Credible Evidence in Son’s Allegations of His Father…” And more recently, I would have to say…well, Alex Jones certainly isn’t mainstream, but he’s one of the bigger off-mainstream-media icons. And of course Jesse Ventura, doing his Conspiracy TV show on TruTV, had me on and did part of a segment for his show. He showed the documentation and stuff. Jesse Ventura is a very serious guy, a wonderful man. He’s got great morals, great courage.

Barrett

He’s one of my heroes. He actually endorsed my campaign for Congress in 2008.

Hunt

That’s excellent, yeah.

And that’s about as far (into the mainstream) as it’s gotten. Because really, the way the mainstream media, the powers that be, the corporate controlling interests – they’ve realized now that the best way to deal with something like this is to not deal with it at all, and just let the “conspiracy kooks” talk all they want, and let them have all their little publications, their little TV shows and radio shows, and just not even give them enough credibility to deny (the allegations). The slimiest way to avoid dealing with something like this is to just avoid dealing with it at all. And that’s a very powerful weapon.

Barrett

Indeed. And with the 9/11 case, I had some direct experience there. Because I got into that at the beginning of 2004 – the obvious controlled demolition of WTC Building 7, which should have been front page headlines on September 12th, 2001 –

Hunt

Yeah.

Barrett

-but was just completely buried, they had orders from the top not to ever show it or talk about it in the media. But by the summer of 2006, things were building up to the point that they apparently decided to switch tactics and bring us into the spotlight for awhile and throw rotten fruit at us. So I was selected as one of these people to be dragged on Fox news and have rotten fruit thrown at me.

But it didn’t work well, the rotten fruit bounced back in their faces. So after a couple of months of this, they slunk back into their holes and won’t talk about it any more.

But with the JFK thing, it’s far enough behind us, that you would think there would be the potential for more honest coverage.

Let’s talk a little bit about the specifics of your information. You mentioned that Johnson was a key player in this, according to your father. And Cord Meyer of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s media-control outfit, was another.

Hunt

Yeah, well, some of the characters that my father mentioned as having been involved were: Cord Meyer, he was a chief of station in Great Britain, a CIA officer. And of course Cord had a much deeper resolve for hating Kennedy. His ex-wife was one of Kennedy’s many, many mistresses. Mary Meyer.

Barrett

That’s an interesting story in itself, isn’t it?

Hunt

She was later killed quickly and very cleanly while she was walking her dog or jogging or something in Georgetown, in the tow path alongside the canal.

Barrett

She was hanging out with Timothy Leary –

Hunt

She was.

Barrett

And taking LSD, and taking it with Kennedy at the time that he suddenly turned towards peace, and started talking about complete disarmament.

Hunt

So Cord was (involved). And Lyndon Johnson was in agreement, all he had to do was nod and say yes, let’s get rid of this guy, and he can become president. That was his end. He was not involved in the day-to-day planning that my father said he attended sat the safe houses in Miami, Florida.

Bill Harvey was a CIA boss, and he was head of the Rome office, and he brought in – now it’s been uncovered that he sent messages to his superiors suggesting the use of Corsicans for hit men rather than American mafiosi, which would be much easier to trace in a trail leading back to the CIA. So he suggested the use of Corsicans. And of course the Corsican that my father told me, his name was “Sarkay,” and he didn’t know anything more about that gentleman. But that’s the name that he recalled from some of those meetings. Antono Veciana was an anti-Castro in Alpha 66, one of the most dangerous, bloodiest anti-Castro ex-Cuban military brigade 2506. This all ties in and goes back to the Bay of Pigs, for one thing. And then in later years, some of these same characters surfaced in Watergate.

Barrett

And the interesting thing about that is, that in Watergate, I think it was either Erlichman or Haldeman that Nixon sent over to Helms to threaten Helms with exposure of “The Bay of Pigs thing.” And Helms reacted by screaming, “This Watergate thing has nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs thing!” And, I think it’s Haldeman who said in his book that “the Bay of Pigs thing” was code for the JFK assassination.

Hunt

That’s correct, you hit it on the head. Yep, that is absolutely correct. And Nixon, of course, knew my father, and knew my father as a very serious and potentially dangerous person. Under Eisenhower, Nixon had been White House liason to this very, very secret and illegal crew under the name Operation 40, I believe. It was a ring of assassins that were on call to assassinate any foreign leaders, dignitaries, embassy employees, or anybody else that was unfriendly to the United States. And Nixon knew about that.

Barrett

Wow. And Nixon was of course also part of the Bay of Pigs operation, the CIA’s secret invasion of Cuba that was planned under Eisenhower, launched under Kennedy, but then Kennedy refused to send in the Marines and the bombers, and everyone (in the CIA) hated him after that.

We’ll be back in a moment. This is Kevin Barrett, talking with Saint John Hunt.

* * *

“My Dad Helped the CIA Kill JFK!” Part 3

Kevin Barrett, Truthjihad, Nov. 22, 2011

https://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-dad-helped-cia-kill-jfk-part-3.html

[Don’t miss James Fetzer’s talk Who Killed JFK? TODAY, Tuesday, November 22nd at the University of Wisconsin-Madison! Details here.]* * *Kevin Barrett * * *Kevin Barrett Welcome back. This is Truth Jihad Radio. I’m Kevin Barrett, talking with Saint John Hunt. He’s…well, he’s done more to bring out the truth about the JFK assassination than just about anybody…in part because although the information has been brought out by others, it has never been brought out in the form of an actual full confession. And what the debunkers, the people who didn’t want this information to be widely known, used to say, was: “If there were such a complex plot, wouldn’t someone have confessed?” Well, actually, a lot of people have confessed. But the most important of all of these confessions is the confession of Howard Hunt, the CIA operative who helped kill President Kennedy as part of his work with the CIA.

Saint John, we only have a few minutes left, so let’s cover a few more of these points about who really did this. CIA assassin David Morales was also one of the people your father named, right? Hunt Yeah, that’s right. David Morales was an interesting guy. He became involved in 1953 with the CIA’s Executive Action plan, also known as Operation 40, which we were just discussing. He became one of their top assassins, and carried out a lot of their “wet work” as they say. In 1961, Bill Harvey, who was then Station Chief in Rome, whom my father called “a two-fisted gun-toting alcoholic psycho,” who also hated Kennedy, brought David Morales to the secret CIA station in Miami called JM WAVE. So this was the genesis of this plot (that killed JFK): You had David Morales there in Miami, you had Frank Sturgis, who was considered the mercenary – another guy who carried out wet work for the CIA, used to be a mob enforcer at the casinos for the American mafia, and a long-time friend of my father’s. My father testified that he had only met Sturgis in the early 70’s. But he told me, and gave me documentation, that he had known Sturgis for many, many years, going all the way back to the pre-Bay of Pigs invasion. And so here you have this cadre of very angry CIA contract agents, assassins, and bigwig personnel that formed this circle in order to eliminate Kennedy. The initial assassination attempt was to have been in Miami, Florida. I don’t know the details of how and why that was switched, but it was moved over to Dallas, probably because…they had several “assassins” lined up from what I understand, but certainly Oswald was one of the “assassins,”or actually the patsies, you know, the fall guys, to take the blame for this. And he of course was located in Texas. Barrett They had another one in Chicago, supposedly. If Dallas didn’t happen, they were going to do it in Chicago, right?* Hunt Yeah, I think there was the one on Miami, and if it didn’t happen there they were going to hit him in Dallas, and if it didn’t happen there they were going to hit him in Chicago. These guys were on a one-way track to getting this situation resolved: “We’re going to neutralize JFK, get him out of the picture.” Wherever and whenever. They had long-range plans, like you said. Chicago was the third attempt that was going to happen if the other two didn’t, for some reason, come off. And they used different circles of assassins, and different patsies. So this is a multi-layered thing. But the conspiracy itself was very minimal. You have LBJ giving his nod of approval, and you have his cohort and long-term buddy and neighbor J. Edgar Hoover, who agreed to it – who was going to be forced into mandatory retirement within a year or so of 1963, and who headed the investigation, did all the investigating in the assassination. Of course we all know that most of that was horseshit, excuse my language. But after Kennedy died, Johnson gave Hoover the life term position of Head of the FBI, in exchange for his mounting this farce of an investigation (into JFK’s death). They only investigated what they wanted to have turn out as having Oswald being the sole lone-nut gunman. They didn’t investigate any of the other credible witnesses. In fact, the FBI apparently harassed and threatened many of the witnesses from Dealy Plaza who said they heard shots, saw smoke, and saw movement behind the Grassy Knoll on the fence. These people were told never to say (what they saw); they were browbeaten and harassed – much like some of the witnesses in the RFK assassination, when they saw a woman in a polka dot dress (shooting RFK). Barrett Some of the same players were involved there, too. (Top CIA assassin) David Morales is actually on film fleeing the scene of the RFK assassination. Hunt I’ve heard that that was the case. It would not surprise me. He was a very handy guy to have around. (laughter) And was not afraid to do the heavy work. Barrett He (Morales) bragged about it, too. He bragged, “I was in Dallas when we got the son-of-a-bitch, and I was in LA when we got the little bastard.” And it was after he started drinking and bragging like that he suffered an untimely death. There’s a great article about his funeral, where the whole spook elite sort of just shows up out of nowhere. [Note: This article was published in a national magazine sometime during the past decade. Feel free to find it and email me the url! kbarrett(at)merr(dot)com Hunt Is that right? Oh my God. That’s very interesting. Yeah, he told his long-time friend Rueben Carbajal that he had helped take care of that SOB Kennedy in Dallas. So you have LBJ in the White House giving his approval. You have J. Edgar Hoover for doing all the legal work.

People think, how could you get all of these hundreds of people involved? It was not (that elaborate). It was very simple and well thought-out. You had the crew that did the planning and the assassins that were part of the crew. And then you had the really top guys, Hoover and LBJ, that took care of both ends of the spectrum: The White House, and the Justice Department and FBI. And that was about it. A few other people here and there – the doctors at Parkland Hospital were prohibited from examining the head wound, they actually destroyed some of the tissue, and – Barrett How did they get the Secret Service on board? The Secret Service’s job is supposed to be to protect the President. Hunt Right. There’s a very interesting film, a short film, of the motorcade getting ready to drive from the airport to the motorcade route. And there’s a call that comes in to the top Secret Service guy on that detail. And suddenly all of the Secret Service agents who should be running alongside the car start dropping off. Several of them are seen throwing their hands up in the air, like “What the hell’s going on?” Of course, it’s almost legendary now that they were all drinking heavily in a bar the night before. But yeah, there were a lot of things that just went AWOL that morning for JFK. And we now know why. Barrett That event really did send a message to future presidents. Like today, Obama probably has to think about these things. He’s just gotten a bunch of threats. There were people with a huge pile of ammunition down in Georgia, gunning for him, Eric Holder and Cynthia McKinney. And there’s this guy with the word “Israel” tattooed on his neck who was arrested for shooting a couple of bullets into the White House. All of this happens right at the moment when Netanyahu is all but ordering Obama to attack Iran for Israel. And Obama, he and his crew of military people, seem to be hesitating. So it seems like decision-makers now have to take into consideration the ease with which they could be killed if they don’t do what the powers-that-be tell them to do. Hunt That’s absolutely true. I feel badly for Obama, who really was the great hope of this generation to pull itself out of that ideology of greed and corporate power and military excess. He had wonderful promises. But once he got into the middle of all this stuff, it probably became very clear to him that he was going to have to downsiz…almost everything that he naively promised, with good intention and good heart. It just kind of altered and fell. And that’s one of several strong reasons why. Barrett That could be. I tried to grant him every benefit of the doubt in my book Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters . But he may have been somewhat of a “made man” even before he ran for the White House. On the other hand, I don’t think he really wanted to keep Guantanamo open and keep torturing people and ordering people murdered. He’s a Constitutional lawyer, after all. We’ve reached the end of the show. You have a terrific website: SaintJohnHunt.com. I hope to have you back. We’ve barely scratched the surface of some of these things. Hunt Let’s do this next year, and on the 50th anniversary. Maybe we can have a little round-table of folks. Barrett Sounds like a plan. Maybe I’ll bring on Jim Fetzer, who’s speaking at the University of Wisconsin this Tuesday, November 22nd, 7 pm, 3650 Humanities: UWsw.blogspot.com .

Thanks, Saint John Hunt, it’s been great. Keep up the good work.Hunt

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to be on show. And thank all your listeners.

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*Commenters have corrected me, saying that actually the Chicago JFK assassination attempt was to have taken place before Dallas, but apparently was a no-go. See James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, chapter 5, “Saigon and Chicago.”