Episode 14: JFK - Operation Mongoose

If JFK was headed on the path to peace, how do we explain Operation Mongoose? Are members of the Noam Chomsky - Seymour Hersh crowd right after all?

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose

https://wcfia.harvard.edu/files/wcfia/files/jd_missile_crisis.pdf

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/02/20/807790520/the-most-dangerous-economist

https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-bay-of-pigs

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15815500/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Progress

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/14127319

https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Camelot-Vietnam-Political-Literary/dp/0896084582

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/143373

https://www.amazon.com/Plausible-Denial-Was-Involved-Assassination/dp/161608359X

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jamiekirchick/seymour-hersh-assassination-of-jfk-was-form-of-l-55m2

https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-kirchick/the-deceits-of-seymour-hersh/

https://coffeeordie.com/operation-mongoose


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Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive the typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to talk about Operation mongoose. I recorded an episode to talk about operation zapata, aka the Bay of Pigs invasion and the other George Bush. But not that George Bush. Oh, and then not the other George Bush, another George Bush. That's a George W. Bush, but not the George W. Bush that you're thinking of a different one. And all the confusion, Marian. And I felt like I would be remiss to not record an episode about Operation mongoose, because it seems that people have the tendency to get into one or the other. When it comes to Kennedy. In episode two of this podcast, I asked the question, was JFK a war hawk? Or was he a peacemaker? Because people have the tendency to think it's purely one or the other? There's not as many of us that fall in the middle like I do. I'm thinking of that Oscar Wilde, quote, truth is rarely pure and never simple. And so it is with Kennedy, in the same way that we get the murkiness and the strangeness around the Pop Pop, who did it, who was responsible, who benefited, who covered it up, etc, we get some of the same murkiness with the man's actual legacy. It's one thing to talk about the death, which some people find quite morbid and McCobb. And I understand. But we also have to talk about his life as well, who actually was he What was he doing? What was he up to good, bad or indifferent. So I have a bottle of carbonated beverage here that I'm going to get into, and we can saddle up and take this ride. If you're not familiar with Operation mongoose, let's begin at the begin to quote Cole Porter. We'll go to the Wikipedia page and read our little summary here. The Cuban project also known as Operation mongoose, was an extensive campaign of t e r r o r i s t attacks against civilians, and covert operations carried out by the US Charlie India alpha in Cuba. It was officially authorized on November 30 1961 by US President John F. Kennedy. The name Operation mongoose was agreed to at a White House meeting on November 4 1961. The operation was run out of JM wave, a major secret United States covert operations and intelligence gathering station owned by the University of Miami and established a year earlier in Miami. The operation was led by United States Air Force General Edward Lansdale on the military side and William King Harvey at the agency and went into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Operation mongoose was a secret program against Cuba that aimed to remove the Cuban government from power and to force the Cuban government to introduce intrusive civil measures and divert precious resources to protect its citizens from the attacks. The removal of the Castro government was a prime focus of the Kennedy administration in quote, if we scroll down just a bit under the origins tab, we read an official report from the Charlie ini Alpha states that by March 1960, the United States had already decided that Fidel Castro must be displaced, I'm gonna button and say so again. 1960 Being an election year, this was still Eisenhower's tenure, Kennedy is not yet on the same. Due to the United States fear of repercussions from the United Nations The plan was kept at the highest level of secrecy and this plausible deniability was made a key focal point in American Clandestine Service policy and quote, one of the sources used by wiki pedia is this article from April of 2000 by Jorge Dominguez the blank missile crisis, and that's literally I'll drop a link to it so you can see it for yourself. That's how it's written like in an at sign, the hashtag sign $1 sign, like the blankety blank, I guess, missile crisis. So somebody didn't want to use foul language. I guess. We're all adults here. What kid is going to be reading this? Okay, let's get real. And from this article we read on the afternoon of October 16. Soon after the adjournment earlier that same day of the first full meeting at the White House to discuss the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy convened in his office a meeting on Operation mongoose, the codename for US politics, policy of sabotage and related covert operations aimed at Cuba. The Attorney General open the meeting by expressing the general dissatisfaction of the President with Operation mongoose, because there have been no acts of sabotage, and that even the one which had been attempted and failed twice, Kennedy concluded that in view of this lack of progress, he will hold a meeting every morning at 930 with the Mongoose operational representatives from the various agencies. The desire to overthrow the Castro government In this way, at this time, could have escalated to general war. Fortunately, President Kennedy himself on that evening ordered the sabotage actions be put on hold for the duration of this crisis thereby containing temporarily the effects of this policy. President Kennedy made it clear even when important details of the crisis remain to be settled that an assurance covering invasion does not ban covert actions or an economic blockade to tie our hands completely. We can't give the impression that Castro is home free and quote, that for me paints a slightly different picture. Because if we read that opening paragraph on Wikipedia, it sounds pretty damning. I mean, doesn't it? That sounds like we are firmly in the Noam Chomsky Seymour Hersh camp of Well, I mean, the guy went around promoting Pop Pop, so you know, how good of a guy was he anyway, when we read about Operation mongoose? I mean, that's a pretty logical conclusion. In reading Richard Belfield book terminate with extreme prejudice, which I actually bought, because I was hoping that he would get more into these twip programs that like Judith very bigger talks about that, that Richard belts are talks about in his book hitlist, like I want to know about these programs that can give somebody a heart attack or a stroke or a virulent strain of cancer. Like I, I thought that I was going to get more of that when I purchased this book. When I really came away from the book feeling is that apparently Richard Belfield really, really liked Princess Diana and really hated JFK, because there's Marriott kind word for JFK in this book. And he has this chapter called Get your cover story straight. And it outlines the story of Henry the second and Thomas Beckett, and how the idea was that Henry the second just made this sort of throwaway comment about why Won't somebody just get rid of that guy is a thorn in my flesh. And so a group of people did, supposedly they were going to go into the church and get Thomas Beckett and bring him outside, but instead he wound up being murdered in the church and the whole thing backfired on everybody involved. And in this chapter, he brings up operation mongoose, and he writes, The spark was transmitted with great clarity, the Kennedy White House ordered the Charlie India alpha to get rid of Castro, and there were no limitations on just how they did it short of military invasion. After the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs, no one had any stomach for that, but there was no shortage of support for pop pops. Everyone was frustrated, and there was no shortage of nutty schemes suggested as the White House turned up the pressure on the Charlie India Alpha White Heat, as helms called it. One senior Charlie India Alpha Officer Richard Bissell, who was at the heart of the Pop Pop program, described meeting the Kennedys and being chewed out in the Cabinet Room of the White House by both the President and the Attorney General for sitting on my ass and not getting rid of Castro in the Castro regime. The pressure was then amplified as it got passed down the line with US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, remarking that we were hysterical about Castro, and there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro. The minutes of one meeting were clear no time, money, effort or manpower is to be spared. The note continued yesterday, the President had indicated that the final chapter had not been written. It's got to be done and will be done for helms the meaning was clear, writing Castro's final chapter meant pop popping him. The problem for the committee investigating the pop up plans was that the Kennedys knew their history and the story of Henry the second plausible deniability was built into their every move in quote, that's pretty damning, too. It's worth noting also, okay, because I think in fairness to the argument, I want to bring this up in the footnotes section, forget your cover story straight. footnote number 20. Mentioned Seymour Hersh. So in fact, Richard Belfield writes for a fuller account see Seymour Hersh is brilliant account of the Kennedy years he calls it a brilliant account. See Seymour Hersh is brilliant account of the Kennedy years the dark side of Camelot

so that that kind of tells me what I need to know there. If somebody is wanting to read a bunch of tabloid trash in my opinion, that's what it is tabloid trash about, who Kennedy was sleeping with and having naked pool parties and all of that, that that tells me where somebody's landing. I mean, it's not a very thesis because throughout the book, he makes Kennedy sound like some bloodthirsty pop popper. And so whenever he gets Pop Pop, it's like well, I mean, a and then the guy gonna have a gun. It's also I think, worth noting that quoting Bissell is, you know, probably not going to be your most objective neutral resource. I'm reading now from an article that was published on NPR, Kennedy had reservations about the invasion and insisted on circumscribing the mission and making sure the United States could deny involvement if it failed. There were many reasons to believe it would. The invading force was only about 1500 people and Bissell counted on them to inspire mass uprising across the country. The President nonetheless gave the go ahead and the men landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 17 1961. It was an infamous disaster. The Cuban exiles were slaughtered and it in part led to the Soviet plan to shoot nuclear meant to ship nuclear missiles to Cuba. Kennedy had planned to promote Bissell to Charlie India Alpha director, but an embarrassed Kennedy demoted Bissell and fired his boss director Allen Dulles. Bill so long harbored resentment towards Kennedy for not fully committing to the invasion, and in 1962, he resigned from the Charlie India Alpha. Nonetheless, President Kennedy awarded him the national security medal calling his contributions unique in quote. So somebody that got demoted, and ultimately resigned, their boss got fired, they kind of got their asses dragged over the coals for what happened at the Bay of Pigs. Is that going to be the most neutral resource? Probably not. I would say the same thing about appointing Allen Dulles who was fired by Kennedy to the Warren Commission, how objective Is he really going to be about that man's murder? James W. Douglass's book JFK and the unspeakable, why he died and why it matters. He mentions operation mongoose twice. This book is a tome, it took me some real time to get through it. It's densely researched. And there's a lot of text even in this paperback copy. I mean, the font type is small, it takes you some real time to get through it. I checked it out from the library initially and decided to buy a copy from Amazon. I wanted to have it in my personal library, I felt like it was a book I would come back to, more often than not, but because he falls into the peace camp, let's put JFK on the Peace Train starts out as a Cold War, cold warrior. And at some point, he makes a change and he starts moving the world towards peace instead of nuclear annihilation. He mentioned the operation mongoose twice, first and the chronology section where he just goes over basic events November 30 1961, President Kennedy authorizes operation mongoose a covert action program to help Cuba overthrow the communist regime. He appoints counterinsurgency specialist General Edward Lansdale as its chief of operations. So that's the first reference that we see the operation mongoose just in the chronology section to mention that it happened. Now on page 66, he attempts to deal with this contradiction, probably the best way that he knows how. And he writes, John Kennedy's turned toward peace was not without reversals and compromises. On June 19 1963, President Kennedy succumb to Cold War pressures and step backwards. He approved a Charlie India Alpha program of sabotage and harassment against targets in Cuba that included electric power, transportation, oil, and manufacturing facilities. Kennedy was responding both to mounting demands in his own administration for increasing pressure on Castro and to the appearance of a more aggressive Cuban government policy of exporting revolution to other Latin American countries. While adhering to his promise to Khrushchev not to launch a US invasion of Cuba, Kennedy nevertheless agreed to a modified version of the covert action campaign against Cuba that he had endorsed his operation mongoose in November 1961, only nine days after his American university address aka that's what people typically call the peace speech. Kennedy had ratified a Charlie India Alpha program contradicting it. Douglas goes on to write Kennedy's regression can be understood in the political context of the time he was, after all, an American politician, and the Cold War was far from over. For the remaining five months of his life, John Kennedy continued a policy of sabotage against Cuba that he may have seen as a bone thrown to his barking Charlie India alpha and military advisors, but was in any case a crime against international law and quote, I give him props for at least calling it out because I think we should I think whatever your opinion is, good, bad, indifferent, middle of the road, huge fan, huge opponent, whatever this needs to be acknowledged. On the JFK Presidential Library and Museum website under their like historical article about the Bay of Pigs. They also mentioned operation mongoose, almost in passing. And here in the aftermath section of that blog post we read the disaster at the Bay of Pigs have a lasting impact on the Kennedy administration. Determined to make up for the failed invasion, the administration initiated operation mongoose a plan to sabotage and destabilize the Cuban government and economy, which included the possibility of pop popping Castro in quote. So they're using some hedging language the possibility not that he was bloodthirsty and couldn't wait to pop up Castro but it just included the possibility Pop popping Castro. So I think one narrative we get is this was a holdover from Eisenhower. It was something that the Charlie India Alfa wanted to do and Kennedy just got pulled along by the coattails into it. Is that the case? Or is it not? To his credit and his Docu series, JFK, Destiny betrayed Oliver Stone brings up operation mongoose. It's not skirted. And it's not just completely omitted from the historical record, he does bring it up. And in the Docu series, it is said the idea was to keep pressure on Castro. So he would not export communism further into Latin America and endanger the Alliance for Progress. And before I give you more of a quote, I want to talk briefly about the Alliance for Progress. Let's go to Wikipedia, and we read the Alliance for Progress was a 10 year plan proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. To foster economic cooperation between North and South America particularly aimed at countering the perceived communist threat from Cuba. The program was signed at an inter American Conference in Uruguay in August 1961. The main objectives for the Alliance for Progress included economic development, democratic governments education and literacy, price stability, income, distribution and land reform, economic and social planning, financial commitment, tax reforms. The Alliance for Progress aimed to strengthen ties between the United States and Latin America promoting economic growth, political stability and social progress. However, the success of the program was limited due to various challenges, including political instability, corruption and insufficient implementation of the proposed reforms. And so that is what Oliver Stone is referring to when he talks about the Alliance for Progress and he shows a few clips in that Docu series related to the Alliance for Progress. The idea being that, again, we have to, we have to go back in time and think about Sovetsky SCI use the Soviet era, the USSR, the boogey man in the corner was always communism. So the idea being that to halt the spread of communism and communist dictators, if these people have democratic governments, if they have economic opportunities, and a real chance at life, maybe they won't want to choose the big boogeyman of communism. So I'll read this quote again. The idea was to keep pressure on Castro, so he would not export communism further into Latin America and endanger the Alliance for Progress. And despite later accusations of Kennedy's complicity in pop pop plots, there is no known document that's emerged from the Mongoose files showing that he knew of any such attempts. This seems to be a remnant of the Eisenhower plan in quote. So Oliver Stone deals with this issue by saying there's no documents that we have access to nothing has been declassified thus far. That tells us that Kennedy knew about Pop Pop plots and wanted to murder Castro. This appears to be something that's a holdover from Eisenhower and probably also from the Charlie India alpha and not from JFK. Obviously, somebody like Richard Belfield is going to have a different take and make Kennedy out to be the most bloodthirsty jerkwad that ever lived.

One of the final episodes I did of this flavor on my daytime podcast before I launched conspiracy theories, was titled rethinking Camelot and rough justice. Two wrongs do not equal a right. And in that episode, I talked mostly about Noam Chomsky, his book rethinking Camelot, because his thesis is that JFK gets portrayed as the shining knight who promised peace, and he would have been able to give that to the nation except he was foiled by murderers, who stopped the lone hero. And Chomsky argues that actually had he lived there wouldn't have been that big of a difference in policy, if any difference at all. In his mind JFK was just a war hawk, like all the rest of them before and since. And one of the things that he says in this book that really got my attention and made me suspicious of it is this. Camelot became a favorite image of the liberal intellectuals entranced by the years of glory cut short cruelly by the pop pop of JFK, just at the time when he was about to go on to marvelous achievements, murdered for that reason, according to many admirers, this book is concerned only with what actually happened, which accords poorly with the legend. It touches on the popup only obliquely taking no stand on the culprits except negatively. The evidence is overwhelming that it was not a high level plot with significant policy consequences. The main focus here is on Vietnam, a core part of the Camelot myth is that Kennedy was planning to end the war and quote, now for me, it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. If your focus is not on The Pop Pop, your focus is on what was JFK? Is Vietnam war policy. Really? Why are you even bringing up the pop pop? And why would you say the evidence is overwhelming that it was not a high level plot with significant policy consequences? According to who, according to you, and how does the high level plot part if you're going to make the argument JFK was a war hawk. He was just going to do the same shit different day in Vietnam, that we saw with LBJ. I get saying significant policy consequences, sort of anyway, sort of see that. But it was not a high level plot. Why don't you just come right out and say the Warren Commission report was accurate. And this is nothing more than a hit piece to try to deflect from Oliver Stone's film JFK mean, why not just put it all out on Front Street? Oh, we can't do that. Everything has to be hidden right. And then see more Hirsch's book. The Dark Side of Camelot gets more into the salacious, the sexual, the show the nasty stuff. What was Kennedy doing with his genitalia? If we go over to goodreads.com, they have a very good blurb from the book itself. If the Kennedys are America's royal family, then John F. Kennedy was the nation's Crown Prince magnetic, handsome and charismatic. His perfectly quaffed image overshadowed the successes and failures of his presidency, and his Pop Pop cemented his near mythological status and American culture and politics. Struck down in his prime he represented the best and brightest of America's future and when he died, part of the nation's promise and innocence went with him. That at least is the public version of the story. The private version according to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour M. Hirsch, is quite different. His meticulous investigation of Kennedy has revealed a wealth of indiscretions and malfeasance ranging from frequent liaisons with prostitutes and mistresses to the attempted pop pop of Fidel Castro to involvement in organized crime. Those scandals in the White House are nothing new hers maintains that Kennedy's activities went beyond minor abuses of power and personal indulgences, they threaten the security of the nation, particularly in the realm of foreign policy and the integrity of the office. Hearst believes it was only a matter of time before Kennedy's dealings were exposed, and only his popularity and charm compounded by his premature death spirits such an investigation for so long exposure was further stalled by Bobby Kennedy's involvement in nefarious dealings, enabling him to bury any investigation of his brother and by extension himself, based on interviews with former Kennedy administration officials, former secret service agents and hundreds of Kennedy's personal friends and associates, the dark side of Camelot rewrites the history of John F. Kennedy and his presidency in quote. Wow, that's a mouthful, isn't it? In the review section, one reviewer writes, this is the truth. John F. Kennedy was a terrible human being a sexual predator, a drug addict, a crook, a plotter, schemer liar, and all around nasty individual who made deals with organized crime essentially bought his own election and took the country to the brink of nuclear war largely for political self preservation. Hersh pulls no punches, obviously, but don't dismiss this as conspiracy theory claptrap. It isn't. This is exhaustively researched. Hirsch is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote for The New York Times. This book is a culmination of hundreds of personal interviews, declassified documents, transcripts, manuscripts, and other credible sources. Wow. Another reviewer writes If you woke up from a 40 year nap and still believed much good about the Kennedys this heavily researched account by a New York Times guy should in that silly notion when you compare JFK in his wanted family with the one all the leftist and media loves to despise today. There's really no comparison at least what we know today. Poor Donald seems a saint compared to these guys. Stolen elections actual real mob connections misogyny, pop popper in chief. And he writes about true helo DM and of course the prolonged effect of Castro, blustering blowhard liar, entitled rich prick. Pick your pejoratives JFK and RFK were a pair of dangerous jerks and Hearst reveals it all about the low life Kennedy clan. It all started with Joe who set the example but the shenanigans of the two Jack and Bobby have them really makes you wonder if Oswald and Serhan didn't do us a great favor. I'm not kidding. He writes this really makes you wonder if Oswald and Sir hand didn't do us a great favor, especially Bobby who was a ruthless aihole without a shred of moral fiber, though so was Jack but probably more fun to hang around. And Bobby certainly was on a mission when he finally did run in 68. What a despicable president he would have been. Of course, this book is 20 years old and so none of it is News. but it bears repeating from time to time. Oh, and her spent five years research on the book and said he found nothing to contradict the Warren report. So perhaps I don't have to read another one on that rabbit hole and quote, before I leave, let's do one more. JFK on speed treated by Dr. Feelgood. Absolutely during the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK on speed and why not? Gosh darn it. Vienna summit with Khrushchev JFK on speed. And what's the worst possible downside of that? JFK having sex essentially daily sexual romps and featuring naked cannonballs at lunch in the White House pool with hookers, West Wing secretaries movie stars and girlfriends of mafia dons at lunch threesomes booze fests and not just at the White House and not just for lunch. This went on all over America in some of the finest hotels and private estates available in the United States. Nothing to see here. Please move along. JFK getting the 15 Minute Warning to get rid of all the poolside naked ladies and to tidy up the naked president and the naked Attorney General. And all the other assorted naked midday party goers before the First Lady Jackie got home to the White House and caught everyone. JFK would have been in so much trouble if Jackie had to see all that public nudity. JFK joining in wild sexcapades in Hollywood with Marilyn Monroe and wild orgies in the desert southwest with members of the Vegas Rat Pack thrown in to mix things up. You betcha and why shouldn't he? He's the president. Please give him some space and another bloody mary if you don't mind? JFK having insanely irresponsible sex with mobster Sam Giancana his girlfriend Judas and an East German spine and Ellen. Why not? How could this possibly endanger national security? JFK oozing with sexually transmitted diseases and spreading the love indiscriminately? I don't see why not what could go wrong 20 year old girls get the clap all the time so grow up JFK employing the mafia to try to pop pop Castro Yep, using bag men to transport bags of cash to mobsters and labor union officials to tilt elections and JFKs favor sure who could possibly see any criminal recklessness in this behavior. JFK infuriating the Cubans and the Charlie in a alpha by protecting his own reputation first and then double dealing with the Cubans in exile on one hand, and the agency on the other to do the underhanded clandestine deeds necessary in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. JFK exploiting the mall and labor union connections JFK is orchestrating the political overthrow and murder of the Dominican Republic's dictator, Rafael Trujillo. And then south Vietnam's leader damn Nothing to see here. It seemed to be a prudent course of action at the time. In hindsight, it seems suddenly misguided ask who could have wanted to carry out the tragic murder of JFK in the prime of his life and Dealey Plaza? A better question is to ask who didn't want to pop pop this guy end quote.

you know, sort of feel like I need a shower after reading that. If you enjoy the tabloid sex stories, that's the book for you. If you hate JFK, and you want to come away from it feeling like I am justified in believing he's a terrible bastard. That sounds like the book for you. This is one of the things that I talk about in my episode about rethinking Camelot and rough justice is alright, let's just drag the guy let's say there was nothing redeemable about him at all. He was just a sorry, son of a bitch. And there was no good found in demand whatsoever. How does that absolve the pop poppers? I mean, are we going to get so far off the beaten path? That we start to say, yeah, maybe they did do us a favor. Maybe they did. We're already living in a world where the power brokers who control us are not elected anyway. In some cases, we don't even know who they are. They're living in the shadows existing in the shadows. They're behind somebody else behind somebody else, find somebody else. You don't even know who they are. And they're not. They're not democratically elected. We didn't pick these people to govern over us. They just do it. So then you want to say these, these types of agencies and intelligence bureaus do us a favor when they pop up somebody that has a lot of scary implications and ramifications to me. Maybe I'm the crazy one. I don't know. It makes me think back to Mark lanes epilogue at the back of plausible denial. He talks about operations of PATA and the other George Bush and that whole kerfuffle, but one of the things he also brings up is Jonathan Yardley, from the Washington Post, in the Sunday book review from Bookworld, May 26 1991. And he's talking about the book Thomas Reeves wrote called question of character. And here's what Yardley says this hadn't come to pass could have been more damaging, even in Watergate, the spectacle of a president of the United States on trial for illicit liaisons within and without the White House for questionable relationships with ranking figures of the underworld. This would have been more than the United States of the mid 1960s could have stomached. The proceedings would have torn us apart in ways we can scarcely imagine. and left us with a cynicism about politics by contrast with which the residue of Watergate would seem a mild case of disenchantment, better that the handsome young president died a mythical if not actual hero, and that the true story of his character emerged so tentatively and gradually that we were given time to come to terms with it. Have we been forced to bear in a single blow the full import of the story, Thomas Reeves tells it would have shattered us and quote, We did y'all a favor. We did y'all a favor. We let you little peons and plebs and simple minded little morons out there. We'll let you have your illusion, your delusion of grandeur, that you had your golden Prince. Oh, he's cute. Oh, he's wealthy. Oh, he's young. He's got a nice, cute little family. Isn't that nice? We let you have your little illusion there. But we really did you a favor. Because what you didn't know is he was a rich, entitled prick. He was going around screwing anything that had a hole in it. And he was taking drugs. Oh, and then he also had connections to the mob. So we did your favor. You know, you were too simple minded to see it. But you know, over the course of time, maybe just maybe you'll see we were right. Mark lane, in his response to this writes, perhaps the cynical assessment that Kennedy's death may have benefited the nation arises out of our distance from the events of 1963. The case is 28 years old. Most of us I suspect prefer the electoral process and the ballot box rather than the concealed Rifles of snipers as engines to move our democracy. I believe it is the view of most Americans that it was not better that the handsome young president died of mythical if not actual hero that day in Dallas and quote, yeah, I would have to agree with Mark lane on that one. You know, even if at all, is all just the illusion of choice, because I believe in in controlled opposition. That's a topic for a whole nother episode. But I think in a lot of ways, we're given the illusion of choice. And then we have these power brokers behind the scenes that actually run the show. But I don't I Yeah, it's it's hard for me to even talk about this kind of a topic at times, guys, because it's like, that's just so vile. What about justice? What about a trial? What about due process? What about somebody being entitled to have a lawyer and to have their day in court to face their accusers to be brought out in open court? Here's what you're charged with. Here's what we think you did, and then be able to put on a defense for that. You just circumvent all of that by blowing somebody away. That doesn't strike me as being a fair situation. An article that I quoted in my episode about rethinking Camelot. And rough justice was this article from Buzzfeed. Posted on April 11, of 2012. The title of it is Seymour Hersh, the pop pop of JFK was a form of justice. The byline reads, I just didn't have the guts to put in writing what I came to believe was an inevitable conclusion. Wow. So not pulling any punches there. And this article talks about how Albert Alioto a San Francisco bus driver had written to Seymour Hersh about his book, The Dark Side of Camelot. And so in this letter Alioto writes If your portraits of John Robert Kennedy are essentially accurate, given the emphasis on Pop Pop plotting, do you see any moral difference between the Kennedys and Oswald and Serhan?

 And then Hirsch writes back the morality of JFK in comparison with Oswald and or Serhan is an obvious question. I just didn't have the guts to put in writing what I came to believe as you do was an inevitable conclusion. Hirsch wrote of the death of a president which he also called terrible. Hirsch appears to have taken Ali odos letter to be an endorsement of Kennedy's pop pop as a form of payback for plotting against Castro, which Alioto said he didn't intend. I was not trying to say that the pop pop of the Kennedys were a form of justice Alioto wrote in a letter this year, I didn't regard his book as essentially accurate to stress his purely conjectural intentions. Alioto told her that on the subject of any moral equivalency between JFK RFK and their pop hoppers, I asked the question purely out of curiosity. And so Hirsch responds back, you're right in believing if that's what your letter suggested, that there might have been some justice one reviewer wrote rough justice in John F. Kennedy's terrible death by Pop Pop, means he had sought to end Fidel Castro's life in quote. And that's one reason why operation mongoose is so significant to the story because it's like, okay, it's rough justice. Really, the man deserved to get executed in broad daylight in front of his wife and little kids on the sidewalk. Why? Because he cheated rampantly on his wife. He wasn't the good Catholic little school boy that he pretended to be out in public. He was having sex with other women, apparently on a revolving door basis, based on what we hear, it's like how did how did he sleep? How did he eat food? How did he go to the bathroom? How did he do anything? Because apparently all he did for his entire life was used his Penis 24 7365 Penis. And as I've said before, I don't really care. As long as we're talking about the realm of consenting adults, if we're talking about the Epstein stuff, where people were messing around with minors, there were women being sex trafficked against their will, that becomes a societal problem. And I damn sure have a problem with that. When we're talking about consenting adults, hey, here I am. Do you want to have this activity with me? And you're over the age of 18? You say yes, it's not my freakin business. What consenting adults do behind closed doors is not my business. That's like Peter McWilliams book, ain't nobody's business if you do, which could easily be its own episode. It's an amazing book about so called victimless crimes, and why does the state prosecute them? Why is the state involved in consenting adult saying, Do you want to do this with me? Yep, sure. Do. All right, let's go do it. Why is the state involved in any of that? Why is it their business? Right? As Peter McWilliams says like nobody's business if you do, it's not my business. If Kennedy was having sex with a whole bunch of women, as long as they were of age, and they consider it to be their having the naked pool party, I don't give a shit. Was like does that deserve capital punishment? Are we gonna start publicly executing people for infidelity? It strikes me that probably a whole lot of men and women in relationships would say, you know, what, how about let's don't pass that law. And let's don't enforce capital punishment for cheating on your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend. It was rough justice, because Kennedy had ties to the mafia. Well, if that'd be the case, look at how many politicians before, during, and after that also had ties to organized crime. You'd have to wind up getting rid of all of them, there would be no politicians left. And hey, look, I'm not saying that's an entirely bad thing. Maybe we do need to just say, well, I'll govern ourselves and be really cool about it. If we don't have to put up with a bunch of corrupt as politicians anymore. We wouldn't have anybody left and Jim Marrs his book, crossfire. On page 172. He talks about Jimmy Hoffa giving suitcases of money to old Tricky Dick Nixon, page 172. We find when the election year of 1960 arrived, Hoffa knew which side he had to be on. He and the teamsters threw their support behind Richard Nixon. In fact, Edward Parton, the Louisiana teamster, official and later, a government informant had revealed that Hoffa met with Carlos Marcello. He related I was right there listening to the conversation. Marcelo had a suitcase filled with $500,000 in cash, which was going to Nixon, it was a half million dollar contribution. Another half million was coming from the mob boys in New Jersey, and Florida. But money wasn't enough, Nixon lost and Robert Kennedy became Attorney General. After the election, Hoffa was quoted as saying nobody had to tell me he was really going to go after my scalp now and quote. So what would have been the difference? If you had one set of mobsters contributing to dig Nixon's campaign in 1960 and another set of mobsters contributing to Kennedy's in 1960 What the f wasn't gonna matter? You're gonna publicly execute him for that. No, when it typically boils down to is he needs to be regarded as a garbage can human being. He got what he deserved. He lived by the sword he die by the sword and yeah, we might feel sad about it in retrospect, but we kind of had to come in. It's not what we're going to tell you. It's not about the infidelity. It's not about mob ties. It's really about he advocated for the pop pop of others, so when someone pop popped him, shit happens. It's also worth noting that on commentary.org There's an article titled The deceits of Seymour Hersh and the byline reads chronicling a singular career in meretricious journalism. This was published in March of 2012. And it does get into specifically the dark side of Camelot. I'll drop a link of course, please check all this out for yourself. In this we read, but it wasn't until the 1997 publication of his 500 Page tome on the Kennedys, the dark side of Camelot, that Hearst would earn the opprobrium of the elite media that had up until that time praised him as the greatest muckraker since Upton Sinclair, as he had with his book on Israel's nuclear weapons program, Hirsch fell for a hoax. In this case, a series of forged documents indicating that John F. Kennedy had among many other indignities offered hush money to his alleged lover Marilyn Monroe, and had conspired with mafia bosses to overthrow Fidel Castro, ultimately to forensic experts hired by ABC News in the midst of producing a documentary based on the working draft. versus book concluded that the documents were fakes. Hershey admitted that he had been duped and removed all references about the documents from his manuscript before the book was published. But as is his want hers made many other dubious claims in the book, for instance, that John F Kennedy had been married to a Palm Beach society Matron. Prior to wedding Jacqueline Lee movie A reviewers Pandit. What was notable about the critical reaction, however, was the ecumenism of the condemnations now that Hirsch's journalistic agenda to paint the United States as the world's greatest malefactor, had impugned a Democratic Party hero, his ethics and practices came under scrutiny by the very liberal media establishment that had fallen over him when the same tactics were turned on their ideological enemies and quote, so just as I did on my episode about rethinking Camelot, let's just assume this is true. Just for the sake of argument. Let's play devil's advocate just for a moment. Let's assume that he was married to somebody else before he married Jackie. Let's assume that he did give some kind of hush money he had sex with Marilyn Monroe, and then paid her off to make her Shut up and go away. Let's assume that those things are true. I don't care. How does that affect my life? Seriously, I do not care about any of that. It seems rather silly to me to think about these sexual trysts and relationships I know they grabbed the headlines. I know that it's something sensational. I guess for me, I just don't find this kind of stuff. Shocking. My ability to be shocked by that is gone. Years ago, I read Peter mantos book and it is a tome. I think it's like what 1000 pages long, maybe more. I read Peter Mann Zoes landmark biography of Marlon Brando. And it was one of those things like wow, damn, this is so much different than anybody expected. And I remember either reading an interview or maybe seeing an interview on TV, where Mansa was talking about how he set out to research this biography of Brando. And he went in with one set of expectations and just deflated because it was the reality of Marlon Brando for Peter Manzo was so different than what he had in mind. And we think, sometimes that if somebody is really good at their profession, whatever that may be a good politician, a good negotiator, a good lawyer, a good rock star, a cool musician, whatever. That also means that they're a good person by extension, and it just simply does not. It does not. And Brando in in return, published his own autobiography, which you know, look, Brando being the way that he was, how much of that is actually true, how much of his account of things really hits the mark and doesn't. I watched the documentary Listen to me, Marlon, and cried after it was over with I cried, I found it very emotionally affecting me, he talks about getting to New York with holes in his socks and holes in his brain. Just this, you know, abusive upbringing with alcoholic parents, and you start to see this person who really wanted to have love and acceptance that didn't get it properly, and then struggled to try to get it for the rest of his life. And just because somebody is a very talented actor, Rockstar, whatever, that doesn't mean that they are some paragon of virtue. We're all human. So I think for me, being somewhat cynical and jaded, it's like, okay, so you're telling me that these politicians had potential mob connections, and they were carrying them around on their wives and they were having naked pool parties? Where's the surprise? Next, you're going to tell me that rockstars do things like trashing their hotel rooms, and sleeping with their groupies and smoking dope. I mean, collect my pearls kills the priests, I can hardly take it. What kind of a world do we live in? We assume that these things are going on. You know, you assume that if somebody is a rich, good looking guy, who's also famous on top of that well known whether you're talking about a politician, an Actor, a Musician, you're just going to naturally assume that guys probably getting a lot of sex. I mean, that's what I assume anyway. I'm thinking of that scene suddenly in Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere is trying to hire Julia Roberts character and she's like, you're a rich, good looking guy and get a million girls for free. Why do you want to hire me? I mean, you just sort of naturally assume that men in powerful places man was a lot of money. Rich, good looking guy. Probably not going to have that much difficulty finding a date for the night. Does that make it right? No, not necessarily, it doesn't. I mean, it's not. It's not always for us to judge somebody else's relationship. There are people that do the ethical non monogamy thing. There are people that feel it's about the lying, it's about the going behind somebody's back. That's the real betrayal and not necessarily the actual act. That's for other people to design. We may have one opinion about the morality, the ethics of something, Hey, that guy was really a CAD to step out on his wife the way that he did. What kind of sorry, sack of shit husband does that we may have those types of opinions. But this is separate from political policy issues. And so the rough justice argument often comes down to well, he was going around advocating for all of these pop pops. And so karma came back and got him the same, probably some of the same people he was plotting with to do these pop pops pop up him and got him out of the way. And so Oopsy daisy, can we really feel that sad? That's typically what the rough justice narrative looks like. In one of their articles, coffee or die magazine outlines some of the weird, outlandish ways that the Charlie India Alpha had planned on trying to take Castro out everything from perfume laced with LSD to drugs that were going to make his beard fall out exotic seashells that could be rigged to explode a skin diving suit that was going to be tainted with fungus, et cetera, et cetera. So it's typically what what gets used by the detractors. And maybe they have a point, right? Maybe they do. What gets used by the detractors is, if Kennedy was going around plotting these pop pops, or being involved in them, or just turning a blind eye to them, having complicity by silence, then maybe he deserved what he got. The part that I really just find so incredibly disgusting is this notion of Well, we did you a favor. We did do a favor that day. It was better that you got to have your myth of Camelot for a little while longer. And then in small doses, you got to see that this guy was a bastard and a no good. It would have just been too traumatizing too early to mid 1960s whitebread America to have known all of that, but you know it now. And so like, isn't it kind of okay that we did this? Is that where this narrative is leading to? Remember I talked about on the daytime broadcast in my episodes about dag hammer sholde. What barren Lea supposedly said, you know, allegedly had this conversation with Daphne park where she said, Yeah, we did it in response to the death of Lumumba Yeah, we did it that was us, is not where this is going. See, that's one of my thoughts, potentially unpopular thought, I guess. But that's one of my thoughts is that's where this is leading to the idea of, we're going to be smart to this guy's legacy so that he has no legacy left and say he was just an all around sack of shit. No, good. So we did you a favor. Yeah, we did it. It was us. But we did you a favor. He was a pop popper himself. He was a no good he had it coming. So nobody should be mad about this. Meanwhile, who will be their entire generations people that were not alive during the Kennedy administration that don't care about history. They're not going to care anyway. So why go to the links of dragging his name through the mud and making him sound like he had no redeeming qualities at all. I mean, think about one of those reviews that I read to you from goodreads.com. Like this guy was a terrible human being. It wasn't just okay. He was a terrible president, or I didn't like this. I didn't like that he was a terrible human being. He was a sack of shit. That's pretty powerful. So look, is James Douglas. Right? Is it that Kennedy had this lapse in judgment. He had his back against the wall. He didn't want to appear to be soft on Communism. He didn't want to look like he was reneging on campaign promises. He had to put a certain image out for the public because hey, reelection was coming up in 1964. Is that what it was? As Oliver Stone says, in his Docu series, JFK Destiny betrayed is it that in terms of the Pop Pop plots, there's no no document that's emerged from the Mongoose file showing that he even knew of any such attempts. It's a holdover from the Eisenhower administration, and Kennedy just inherited it but it wasn't that he personally wanted Castro to die and be involved in all of these pop ups. Another thing that James Douglas brings up in his book JFK and the unspeakable is that Kennedy was laboring to create a back channel in the same way that he had a back channel circumventing his administer. stration to talk directly to Khrushchev, he was working to get the same kind of bat channel established with Castro. So the two of them could figure out something to try to stay out of warfare and conflict with one another. If you go to page 253, of the paperback copy of JFK and the unspeakable, he discusses this type of communication, he talks about how Kennedy had stated the purpose of his Miami speech, when he spoke to Ted Sorensen about it was this idea that it would open a door to the Cuban leader, and apparently Castro understood Kennedy's words as an open door, and that Castro took a special interest in JFK is November 18. Miami speech recognizing that it signaled an opening to himself and thus posed a threat to those opposed to rapprochement.

 On page 249, Douglas writes at the risk of his political future in his life, John Kennedy continued to pursue a secret dialogue toward the rapprochement with Fidel Castro. And he goes on to talk about trying to set up this line of communication between us diplomat William Atwood, and then the Cuban Ambassador Carlos le Chuga. And allegedly upon hearing about the death of Kennedy. Castro said, this is very bad news. If there was really that much enmity, enmity between them if you really thought that Kennedy was actively trying to kill him, and then it was Kennedy, it wasn't an agency. But it was Kennedy specifically why why would he have said this is bad news? Why wouldn't he have said, well, I mean, tough shit for him, but it's a good break. For me. This is a point to ponder. So what do you think what I think is less important? What do you think? Do you think that Kennedy was involved in operation mongoose? Do you think he was a pop popper himself? Do you think that he went around the world looking for enemies and looking for people to pop up? Somebody disagrees with me they'll just be moved out of the way by force. Do you think he was just bloodthirsty? Was he a rich prick and arrogant, rich prick? Terrible garbage can human being like we hear these people on goodreads.com saying just awful, no redeeming qualities? Was he the next Jesus or the next Gandhi the next Blessed are the peacemakers, or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle? That is for you to decide? Stay a little bit crazy. And I will see you in the next episode.

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