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by Roger Feinman, Esq.
While many Kennedy assassination researchers continue to pore through the recent releases of official documents pertaining to a cover-up that began thirty-two years ago, the judicial branch of the United States Government recently initiated its own cover-up in Robert Groden's and Mark Lane's cases against Random House over the advertising campaign for its book Case Closed. It is a cover-up of which the public, even the legal profession, are completely unaware because of the false front presented by the courts and the willing play that their decisions received from several media outlets.
These lawsuits made claims against Random House and other defendants for misappropriating Groden's and Lane's photographs as part of a "rogue's gallery" of well-known critics in their ads; false advertising (the campaign's slogans that they are "GUILTY OF MISLADING THE AMRICAN PUBLIC," and that there was only "ONE MAN, ONE GUN, ONE INESCAPABLE CONCLUSION in the assassination) and, in Mark Lane's case, the additional claim of defamation. In both cases, the court drastically short- circuited fair procedural practices and changed the substantive law to deprive Groden and Lane of their days in court. What will particularly interest the critics and the general public, however, is that Groden offered to prove Random House's ad slogans false by submitting for the first time in a court of law an extensive body of evidence that more than one gunman shot President Kennedy. The Groden courts tried twice to prevent that submission, refused to consider that evidence after it was forced upon them, and falsified their decisions to conceal that we even made the attempt.
These cases have profound implications, not only for Warren Commission critics subjected to unfair personal attacks by the established media institutions, but also for other citizens who must consider the vulnerability of their essential legal rights before participating in issues from the local community level to the national playing field. The emphasis will be, however, on the relationship of the Warren Commission critics to government authorities who attempt to appear to observe procedural fairness while actually using their authority to shield the government's apologists and give them a greater edge against the critics' struggle to expose the truth.
This special presentation, geared to a general audience, will combine lecture and demonstration formats to examine the construction (and deconstruction) of official lies and propaganda, in symbiosis with friendly journalistic media, to combat and discredit the critics. Its subtext is a mini- primer on how to identify, analyze and respond to the rhetorical devices and fallacies of reasoning in current use by the other side. The evidence for two gunmen submitted to the official record of the Groden case, but which the courts lied about not existing, will be demonstrated through slides, videotape, and the possible participation of live witnesses. The presenter represented Robert Groden in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
by Mike Clark
This paper will take a new look at an event which lay at the foundation of Jim Garrison's investigation.
On the night of August 1, 1961, the Schlumberger Wells facility in Houma, Louisiana was visited by Sergio Arcacha-Smith, David Ferrie, Layton Martens and Gordon Novel. Weapons and explosive materials were removed from bunkers at the site; transported to New Orleans; stored briefly in the apartments of Ferrie and Novel and the office of Guy Banister; and eventually placed into the hands of Cuban exiles.
This incident, occurring two years prior to Lee Hay Oswald's return to the city of his birth, was important to Garrison because it linked these interesting individuals in a criminal and/or intelligence- related enterprise well before November of 1963. Garrison eventually came to believe that the Houma action was a "transfer" of arms rather than a burglary. The HSCA, on the other hand, concluded that it was an actual theft, down-playing the intelligence aspect.
Among the areas that will be explored are:
a) Schlumberger's links to intelligence circles and the role played by its director, Jean de Menil, a friend of George DeMohrenschildt;
b) the importance of this event in the broader context of the gunrunning activities taking place during those days; and
c) the relationships among the four key players and implications, if any, for the JFK assassination.
On one night long ago, the Houma event brought together four individuals who played a number of intriguing roles --- the director of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a friend of Carlos Marcello, a suitemate of Guy Banister, a friend of the teen-aged Lee Oswald, a young friend of Clay Shaw, a roommate of David Ferrie, the assistant to the CRC director, an individual identified as being part of the Rose Cheramie incident, and, for good measure, at least three CIA operatives. Surely, sorting out the details of this incident and assessing their significance are important to our ongoing work.
I propose bringing together materials from disparate sources, e.g., books and articles, press accounts from the period, memoranda and affidavits from the Garrison investigation, HSCA materials, and documents from the District Attorneys' Offices of Orleans and Terrebone Parishes, and reviewing them in a comprehensive fashion.
Given the recent interest in gunrunning as a subtext in the JFK case, a fresh look at this Cajun example is long overdue.
by Gerry Satterfield and David T. Krall
Several things prompted our research in the direction of covert communications through the media. First our knowledge of several historical references to coded messages in the 20th Century, and second, a perusing of the New York Times on the day of JFK's assassination led to our delving deeper.
Our initial suspicions date back to historical precedents set in WWII and forward, when covert messages were sent over the airwaves and appeared in major Tokyo and American newspapers. Listed below are a few examples of coded messages sent at that time via the media:
Japanese weather report codes. The author cites coded instructions for Japanese weather reports on November 2, 1941. The codes were to be broadcast daily over Japanese shortwave news programs. These codes were to be given in the middle and at the end of the news broadcasts s weather forecasts, and each sentence was to be repeated twice. "East Wind, Rain," according to Toland, meant "We are in danger of cutting off diplomatic relations with the U.S. [p.201].
Japanese want ad codes. According to Toland, on December 3, 1941, the Japanese placed Want Ads on Hawaiian radio as signals about the US movement of ships along the coast of Hawaii. The ads were to alert the Japanese fleet to prepare for Pearl Harbor [p.221].
Japanese newspaper codes. According to Toland, a local Japanese dentist living in Hawaii sent a coded message, "The Hibiscus and Poinsettia are in bloom," over the telephone to a Tokyo newspaper editor who was to place the gardening tip (coded message) in his newspaper to impart information about the impending bombing of Pearl Harbor [p.224].
"Theodore Koerner" New York Times classified ad. Breur writes that on April 6, 1936, a classified ad appeared in the New York Times in response to a blind contact made by a German-American [Gunther Gustav Rumrich] living in the United States, who, using the code name "Theodore Koerner" (a German poet who had been dead for over a hundred years and whom the Germans would recognize as being dead) wrote a letter to German intelligence in Berlin, offering his services to the Third Reich as a spy within the US. German intelligence replied, upon his request, through the NYT classified ads in the public notices column, using his code name and accepting his offer to spy. He went on to become a master spy for Germany.
We will demonstrate that the conspirators used the national print media to assist in their planning and subsequent execution of President Kennedy. The forms of print media used include advertisements, feature articles, media self-promotions, various cartoons, and poems. In addition, we discovered articles containing historical analogies and parallels that were used as a pretext for standard communication, but instead communicated covertly. Information directly related to the impending tragedy. Such material had the dual pure of looking ordinary, yet also served a far deeper, more sinister and devious purpose of being a form of clandestine communication. If one can legitimately ask how the media, either on Its own or through infiltration or pressure, covered up evidence of conspiracy FOLLOWING the assassination on November 22, 193, then one can seriously ask if any use of media, as a covert mechanism for the various levels of the conspiracy, occurred PRIOR to the murder. Thus, if the media was used to maintain a cover-up and thus shield the perpetrators AFTER the fact, it is logical that the media (or an element of or within the media) could have served the purposes of a conspiracy BEFORE the assassination.
Inside knowledge of Presidential plans and policy guidelines antagonized and endangered corporate, military, and intelligence interests. A clandestine enterprise emerged, involving high- powered people for high stakes, that demanded intricate planning and development. In addition, intimate knowledge of governmental procedures and operations, involving Presidential section and security and probed travel plans by the President and his entourage. guarantee a successful camouflaged coup d'etat.
The conspirators, determined not to fail, needed a concealed means of communication to guarantee their success. The cryptic messages expedited communication between secret networks and displayed an arrogance of power horn the conspiratorial sectors. The following evidence indicates the plotters used "amusing hints" and a joking manner - almost congratulating themselves - regarding the impending assassination. Some of the items appear to indicate a go/no-go signal BEFORE and ON November 22, 1963. These communications even managed to use historical events themselves as hidden signals, particularly the historical figures of Lincoln, Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, and royalty from both antiquity and the modern era.
Based upon the available public record, we believe that a pattern exists, which is neither coincidental nor random, demonstration prior knowledge, hinting treason and murder. The cited examples are Just a small sampling of material found in the printed media throughout the Summer and Fall of 1963.
Further study is underway by us to examine the origin and actual sources of these cunning communiques linked to corporate, military, and governmental intelligence agencies.
Works Cited
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