"All Governments Lie"

but supposedly told the truth about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King assassinations

2018 film profiling journalist I. F. Stone and contemporary "alternative" reporters: another mix of good info and limited hang outs about war and peace

 

 

 

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/journalists

 

Democracy Now

- probably best reporter Jeremy Scahill

- good work, but glaring omissions

- coup of 1963, covert ops / shadow gov't (before Snowden, at least)

- Jim Douglass, Oliver Stone (and followed by Thom Hartmann denying it)

- no mention limits to growth, peak - only show ridiculed it

- financial / ideological limits

 

Glenn Greenwald

 

Carl Bernstein

 

David Corn

 

 

 

 

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/HWNAU/RMappVIII.html#AB-IFS

History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

E. Martin Schotz
Copyright © 1996, 2013 by E. Martin Schotz
All Rights Reserved.

[reprinted for fair use purposes]

KURTZ, ULMER, & DELUCIA BOOK PUBLISHERS, BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS 1996

The Work of Ray Marcus: Excerpts from Addendum B

I.F. Stone

from pages 30-33:

I.F. Stone, author of numerous books, including The Hidden History of the Korean War, was most famous for a weekly he began publishing in 1953 with 5,300 subscribers and which grew to a circulation of 70,000. Although most of his important work was done in Washington, he was not viewed as part of the political or journalistic establishment. Instead of cozying up to important insiders, he based his work primarily on the study of newspapers and comments, employing his exceptionally keen and probing intellect to slice through the fog of official positions on national and international affairs so as to expose the underlying truth to his readers with characteristic brevity and clarity.

Stone was an independent leftist. Although . . . in earlier years he tended to minimize Moscow's misdeeds while maximizing Washington's . . . he was no friend of Communist dictators. He bitterly denounced the Soviet bloc after his trip to the Soviet Union in 1956 and wrote, "The worker is more exploited than in Western welfare states. This is not a good society, and it is not led by honest men."

I was a charter subscriber to the Weekly. Having earlier subscribed to George Seldes' In Fact, I found Stone's newsletter a worthy successor and looked forward to each issue. The Weekly undoubtedly reached a readership far more influential than its small circulation would indicate.

In the months following the assassination I eagerly awaited Stone's critical analysis. With his long demonstrated ability to demolish official falsehoods, I had little reason to doubt he would make mincemeat of the just released Warren Report, whose noconspiracy conclusions had been leaked to the press -and public for many months, and whose questionable veracity in many crucial instances had already been amply demonstrated.

Then came I.F. Stone's Weekly of October 5, 1964, headed "The Left and the Warren Report." It was a paean of praise for the Warren Commission and its conclusions. He said, "the Commission has done a first rate job on the level that does our country proud and is worthy of so tragic an event." He regarded the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer as "conclusive."

"[Of the Commission members, he was full of praise and said that although he had] criticized Allen W. Dulles constantly over the years . . . I would not impute to him or any other member of the Commission conduct so evil as to conspire with the secret services to protect the killers of a President." Of Chief Justice Earl Warren he said, "This is also to assume that Chief Justice Warren, whom the right hates for his decisions protecting Negroes and radicals, would be a party to a conspiracy to protect a cabal of rightist assassins." He said those who, by rejecting the official conclusions could believe otherwise, "belong in the booby hatch."

. . . I was shocked. I wrote a lengthy letter to Stone listing fifteen highly improbable separate sets of circumstances surrounding the case, all of which would nevertheless have to be true for the official conclusions to be true. I urged him to study the questions and reconsider his position. I received no response to my letter.

In September 1966, I was planning a trip to the east coast. From L.A. I phoned Stone at his home in Washington. I told him I had previously written to him about his position on the case and requested a meeting with him so that I could present to him some important evidence, primarily photographic. His answer was immediate, loud (very loud), and clear: "I don't care about that asshole case!," he bellowed and then hung up. The thought occurred to me that had he written in his Weekly, instead of the actual contents of his October 5, 1964 issue, that he didn't care about the case (with or without the expletive deleted), it would at least have had the virtue of being honest, and incapable of misleading his readers, despite being an uncharacteristic position for I.F. Stone to take on so vital a matter of national interest.

Three years later, in his March 24, 1969 issue, Stone expressed his belief that the killing of Martin Luther King was the result of a conspiracy. He said, "J. Edgar Hoover, who hated and once insulted King, should be challenged to explain on what basis he announced within 24 hours of the killing that there was no conspiracy. How could he possibly have known so quickly?" He called for pressure on the White House for a complete investigation "independent of the FBI and its Chief," adding that "The only virtue of the Memphis deal (Attorney Percy Foreman's arrangement in which he persuaded James Earl Ray to plead guilty, ostensibly in order to avoid the death penalty) was that it keeps Ray alive someday to tell the full story."

I again wrote to Stone, and suggested that Hoover (and Attorney General Ramsey Clark) knew within 24 hours that there was no conspiracy just as the federal establishment "knew" within five hours following JFK's murder that Oswald was the lone assassin. I again asked him to reconsider his position on the JFK case. . . . Again Stone did not deign to respond.

 

 

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/africom

 

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/nsa

 

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/wmd

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/watergate

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/gulf-of-tonkin

 

 

https://allgovernmentslie.com/lie/operation-northwoods

 

no mention that JFK fired Lemnitzer

RFK Jr book p. 135

 

 

 

I saw the "All Governments Lie" film tonight about I F Stone, featuring a variety of stars from the "alternative" media world. They carefully avoided any mention of JFK, the coup, MLK, NSAM 263, etc. Chomsky and David Corn got considerable profiles. Democracy Now. Others.

Jeff Cohen, at an event last night, claimed that there was no evidence that JFK was planning to withdraw from Vietnam. Lumumba was killed by JFK -- I reminded him that this happened BEFORE JFK was inaugurated and JFK was upset to learn about it ... but if the facts don't conform to the theory they must be disposed of.

He said that Pepper was a charlatan, the King family misled, John Judge was a kook (but of course could not provide details), we're all kooks for believing this conspiracy crap. He had never heard of Jim Douglass or JFK and the Unspeakable. I told him that RFK Jr endorses it, which took him back a bit but to acknowledge that RFK Jr. is endorsing our paradigm is not something he can absorb.

I asked if he knew David Talbot - he said of course, but hadn't read about "The Devil's Chessboard" -- I recommended it as quality documentation about Dulles role in the coup.

I stayed after the movie showing to ask Cohen a question / make a comment (our local political audiences don't like comments from informed audiences, a simple question is all they seemingly tolerate despite rhetoric about inclusion / diversity / democracy). The film has an interview with Carl Bernstein - I asked why the film didn't mention the intelligence agency role with the media and pointed out Bernstein's 1977 article. He was very familiar with the article but would not answer why they ignored this in a nearly two hour film. Jeremy Scahill, probably the best alt. journalist profiled, suggested there has been a coup but called it a corporate only coup (something I doubt he actually believes given his own research). The suggestion that the coup was Nov. 22, 1963 was not acceptable to Cohen and his local sponsors.

I also asked why there was no intel mention of the media given that Oliver Stone was a producer for the film, and mentioned "JFK" the movie as a good introduction. Cohen did not respond to that. Perhaps next time you talk with Oliver you could ask about that. My view is the silence and complicity of the media was as essential as anything else re: JFK, MLK, RFK, etc.

The film also pointed out that the war on Iraq was for a lie (WMD) but did nothing to suggest what actual motives were. During the first few months of Bush the Lesser I publicly suggested that if I could read about the looming Peak Oil crisis then surely Cheney and Bush could read about it, too. On 9/11, I went, "oh," that is what they're going about it.

Afterwards there was an informal discussion outside. I asked Cohen, who was expressing shock that Obama turned out to not be as wonderful as advertised, if he knew where Obama's first job was after college. He said he was an organizer. I replied that he was actually employed by a CIA front group. He retorted that it did not matter if Obama was CIA ...

The local group that sponsored Cohen had a "peace and media" conference back in 2003. I made the mistake of attending their planning meetings and suggesting that Mike Ruppert would have been a good choice for a speaker. The main gatekeepers said "he's not credible," several of us asked them to explain their view but never got the courtesy of an explanation. Like good manipulators, they had meeting after meeting until most people were not at the meeting, and then made their "democratic" decision not to invite him. The real "third rail" of politics is talking about covert operations, this is true whether in the mainstream media or the alternative media (funded by philanthropic foundations).

A friend earlier today suggested that focusing on the psychology surrounding this denial is very important and he wants to understand it better. That seems more important to me, too.

The binary view that there is the official media vs. the heroic alternative media is very misleading. Tempting for dissidents ... but a form of control, as you know.

 

 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/visas-for-al-qaeda-cia-handouts-that-rocked-the-world-an-insiders-view/5498201

Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World – An Insider's View.

By J. Michael Springmann and Bonnie Faulkner
Global Research, December 28, 2015

I think one of the reasons for this is that nobody wants to believe the entire government is corrupt from top to bottom, that you can talk about Edward Snowden or Tom Drake or William Binney and the very focused, very tightly organized situations for a particular person for a particular item. What I'm saying is that the United States of America and all of the branches – the executive, the judicial, and the legislative – know about this and are covering up essentially state sponsored terrorism, and nobody wants to hear this. Nobody wants to go any deeper in it than I've gotten, and I think there's a lot more to be uncovered if you can ever find the right person to talk.

 

Michael Springmann was Chief of the Non-Immigrant Visa Section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from 1987 to 1989. In his position in Jeddah, he was routinely overruled by superiors when he denied VISA applications submitted by unqualified travelers to the United States.

The events of September 11th gave him a more profound understanding of the troubles he experienced in that job. He is the author of "VISAs for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World – An Insider's View". He describes the American VISAs For Terrorists Program and the Arab-Afghan Legion.

 

Bonnie Faulkner: The problem that you ran up against professionally in your job is that you were actually denying visas. Isn't that right?

Michael Springmann: Yeah. With a visa application you've got to establish some kind of connection to the place of application or your own country. You have a job, you're going to school, you're running a business, you have an investment, whatever that's going to be strong enough to bring you back from the United States for whatever reason you're going here. For example, people go for tourism, to visit relatives, to sign a contract with a business in the United States, whatever. Then they can't stay here. They have to go back to managing their own business, they have to graduate from their university, they have to manage their job, they're either a manager in a company and they just can't go away and leave it.

None of these people had any of those ties. They were people that couldn't name the city they were going to, couldn't tell me why they were going there, had absolutely no information available to me as to what they were doing or why they were going. I thought once I had yelled and screamed and filed lawsuits that this had all stopped. Yet after September 11th, and in researching the book, I found that Shayna Steinger had been the consular officer in Jeddah who had issued 11 visas to people who were participants in the September 11th attacks, and I was thunderstruck at this. Shayna Steinger, who from my research on the Internet had given equivocable answers to the 9-11 Commission, she still has a job and has gotten promotions.

Bonnie Faulkner: You're saying that 11 of the, what, 19 …

Michael Springmann: Twenty. I think 19 or 20. 15 got their visas in Saudi Arabia and 11 of the 15 got them in Jeddah.

Bonnie Faulkner: I see, at the very office where you worked.

Michael Springmann: Exactly.

Bonnie Faulkner: You complained because you were being overruled when you denied visas, right? Who did you complain to?

Michael Springmann: I complained first to Justice Stevens, and Justice is the given name. He was head of the consular section. I complained to Jay Frerers. I complained to Stephanie Smith, who I have since found out is a CIA official. When she was counsel for consular affairs in Riyadh and she told me, "This is a very bad thing. When you go back to Washington, tell the Bureau of Consular Affairs about this," which I did and they had absolutely no interest.

Once I was out of the State Department I complained to the Government Accounting Office, as it was known at the time. I complained to the Justice Department and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They told me after September 11th, after I called office after office at headquarters, to call the Washington District office and when I did, they said, "Well, we'll get back to you. That was 15 years ago and I'm still waiting.

Bonnie Faulkner: So how massive would you say the cover-up is?

Michael Springmann: I think it's bigger than I even suspected. I had thought originally that it was a small, rogue operation and as time went by and I talked to people and started researching the book I saw that it was bigger than ever. Given the pushback and the blocking of people, like Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow! and Tom Devine at the Government Accountability Project, I really think that it goes wider and deeper than even I suspect.

I think one of the reasons for this is that nobody wants to believe the entire government is corrupt from top to bottom, that you can talk about Edward Snowden or Tom Drake or William Binney and the very focused, very tightly organized situations for a particular person for a particular item. What I'm saying is that the United States of America and all of the branches – the executive, the judicial, and the legislative – know about this and are covering up essentially state sponsored terrorism, and nobody wants to hear this. Nobody wants to go any deeper in it than I've gotten, and I think there's a lot more to be uncovered if you can ever find the right person to talk.

Bonnie Faulkner: You write, "What I was protesting was in reality an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."

Michael Springmann: Exactly. They went all in with the mujahedeen. They had recruited them, they had trained them, and along the way I think they realized that, hey, we've got a cadre of people who are really good at destroying governments and countries. Why don't we apply this group to other countries where we have an interest in having an unstable government with a failing economy? And I think they brought them to Yugoslavia first. They had Osama bin Laden and 5,000 or more Saudis there. They had people that they had trained and had worked with NATO in Yugoslavia to destroy the country, and according to this guy, John Schingler, who had been with the National Security Agency and the Naval War College in Providence, Rhode Island, they got a lot of help from the American government to get them there, to keep them there, and provide them with intelligence and weapons and training and so forth.

After that, they sent them to Iraq and we've all seen what's happened to Iraq. It's been split into virtually three pieces with no functioning government and no functioning economy. They moved them to Libya. They had more arms amongst the so-called rebels in Libya than they had in the British Army's inventory. Once they had gotten these people there and had killed the American ambassador because he was apparently in the middle of their efforts to move weapons from Libya to Syria to help destabilize the country there, they had this great opportunity to just shift people and weapons to other countries they wanted to get rid of, and the Turks are helping. The Turks ship planeloads and shiploads of arms and ammunition. They were shipped in Saudi aircraft, as well. They were shipped in Turkish aircraft and Jordanian aircraft.

Bonnie Faulkner: President Carter and his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, authorized, at the urging of the CIA, the secret American backing for Afghans resisting the Soviet support communist government in Kabul. This then triggered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was predicted by Brzezinski, so the arming of the mujahedeen was not in response to a Soviet invasion but the cause of it. Isn't that right?

Michael Springmann: That's right. They were working on this before the Soviets invaded on, what was it, December 24th 1979 or thereabouts – or earlier. Anyway, yeah. They drew them in and this was the beginning of the mujahedeen and the visas for terrorists program, which is now called ISIL, after another brand change.