JFK Assassination Forum

"BC" wrote (my comments are in brackets):

TG --

1. The paragraph regarding Clay Shaw is high and prominent in the CIA historian's report [LOL], on a matter of intense interest. It is hard to imagine the description on Shaw contains inadvertent, multiple, and crucial typos in the key sentence that describes Shaw relationship to the CIA. I assume the historian meant what he said. That leaves possibility No. 2:

2. If the description of Shaw is intentional, as it obviously is [LOL], then you are assuming the historian and his staff made an error when they read through the HSCA documents -- but have you reviewed the contents of the 64 boxes they reviewed [wowie zowie!!!]?

Has Fred Lifton [sic], who claims the CIA historian, J. Kenneth McDonald, was in error due to mistakes he made in understanding "the underlying" documents [read the 64 boxes of documents that the historian and/or his helpers allegedly read]? Which underlying documents misled the historian [and/or his helpers]?

This is risible. Yes, Clay Shaw was [allegedly] a highly paid CIA contract source up until 1956 and likely [wowie zowie!!!] worked informally after that. Big deal.

Does that mean Shaw helped perp the JFKA? Very unlikely. [Bummer, dude.]

It would be interesting to find out if Bruce Solie, or someone else in the CIA, put Shaw onto LHO, the way J. Walton Moore (in Dallas) put DeMohrenschildt onto LHO.

Solie was intensely involved in the CIA monitoring and reaction to Garrison (says Blunt). [Wowie zowie!!!]

Why did Solie, ostensibly in counter-intel, get involved with LHO and Garrison?

 . . . . . . . .


My reply:

Dear "BC,"

To err is human.

For example, you mistakenly called Fred Litwin "Fred Lifton" in your post.

Along that same line of thought, I figure that one of J. Kenneth's helpers probably made the mistake of writing either "Clay Shaw was a highly valued contract source," or "Clay Shaw was a highly paid contact source," and J. Kenneth or one of his other helpers compounded the error by trying to "clarify" it.

It is interesting to note, however, that J. Kenneth compiled his report in 1992, one year after Oliver Stone came out with his self-described mythological ("to counter the myth of the Warren Report") piece of KGB disinformation known as "JFK."

Who's to say that J. Kenneth didn't get zombified by it as did so many other otherwise intelligent Americans?


-- "TG"


PS Malcolm Blunt didn't say, "Bruce Solie was intensely involved in the CIA's monitoring and reaction to Garrison."

He said, "There's a great mass of documentation. Solie is all over the JFK investigation, [and for] Jim Garrison, the person that's all over Clay Shaw is Bruce Solie. You know (to his assistant Bart Kamp), there are handwritten notes by Solie. He's the guy who was really sitting on the Clay Shaw stuff."

Benjamin: That CIA document is a summary of the segregated collection, and there is NO underlying document which says that Clay Shaw was a "highly paid contract source." Of course, there is no such thing as a "contract source." And,
there are many underlying documents that say he was not paid.

It was a mistake, pure and simple. But, go ahead and find the underlying document that supports the statement. They are all online.

fred

Meagher was smart and literate but she revealed, to her credit, her mindset, her motivated reasoning if you will, when she said that when she heard that JFK was shot her first reaction was, "They are going to blame a communist for this." Her first thought. It was not, "Is he dead? Did they catch the people?" but "they are going to blame a communist."

This was something that affected all of her analysis of the assassination. She really did see Oswald as an American Alfred Dreyfus but instead of anti-semitism being the cause for the frame up she saw anti-communism as the reason for "Oswald-as-patsy". It was the anti- anti-communism view of the Left that saw opposition to the Soviet Union and communism as a greater danger - McCarthy and the Red Scare - than Moscow. As Fred pointed out, she was very critical of Garrison, again to her credit, but when he later said that Oswald was innocent she came to if not defend him at least no longer wanting to exile him from the assassination community. And if I have it right, she never really did give an explanation as to what happened, who did kill JFK. She was focused on exonerating Oswald and not saying what happened (which frankly, is a cop-out).

In order to defend Oswald in both the murder of JFK and Tippit (which she also did) you really have to have a deep conspiratorial worldview. She was closer to thinking of Garrison then she realized. I think Tom Bethell said when he met her at her house that it was filled with UFO books. He said to himself, "Oh boy, here we go."

What happened to Richard Smith? He was a breath of fresh air around here.

You've got to be kidding.

"BC" wrote:

The chief of the CIA history staff in 1992 said Shaw was a "highly paid CIA contract source" until 1956.

Some have said that quote was typo, the historian meant to say "highly rated (sic; valued) contact source," although the historian never issued a correction. This seems like a weak argument, to the point of risibility. On such a matter on intense interest, the CIA historian just happened to make multiple typos?

Others have said, somewhat mysteriously, that the underlying documents do not support the historian's conclusion.

I wonder what that means, and who reviewed all the HSCA documents and files, and microfilms, that the CIA historian's office did back in the early 1990s.

Inside those 64 boxes were any number of microfilmed documents.

Am I to believe a JFKA researcher also went through all 64 boxes, and then confirmed that Clay Shaw had never been a CIA contract source? And that the dreadnought researcher's work was confirmed by others?

As it stands, the CIA historian's statement seems solid.

Dear "BC,"

Could you please explain to me what in the world a "CIA contract source" is?

Tangentially, do you agree that Shaw was a voluntary source for the Domestic Contact Service for eight years, and that he produced something like seventeen reports?

If so, don't you find it strange that J. Kenneth would fail to mention that, but would say that he was a "highly paid contract source," instead?

Do you think several people may have been involved managing and summarizing, etc., Shaw's reports from 1948 (when he either patriotically volunteered to be an unpaid contact source or was given a very lucrative contract, indeed, to spy for the evil, evil CIA) to 1956?

Do you think J. Kenneth did all of his own research on everything he wrote about in that long report, or do you think he probably had several helpers?

Do you think that several people on J. Kenneth's hysterical I mean historical staff may have been involved in cobbling the long report together?


'Nuf said.


-- "TG"