 The recent written confirmation from Anthony Veciana that his long time associate Maurice Bishop was indeed CIA officer David Phillips gives me the opportunity not only to write a bit about that revelation but also about how it fits into the much broader picture that we developed with "Shadow Warfare". Actually there was no doubt in my mind about the identity of Bishop and I think the extensive information developed by Gaeton Fonzi and Tony Summers fully supports the expanded study which I did in my Phillips chapter in SWHT. Veciana also made it quite clear to Fonzi and others why he would not identify Phillips in his formal testimony without Phillips permission and its clear that he has now only done so following Fonzi's death and out of respect for Gaeton and his wife Marie.
What a good deal of the discussion about Veciana's recent statement is missing however, is that the relationship between the two men started in 1960 inside Cuba and continued for a full decade, with Phillips assisting Veciana to get a USAID position in Latin America in 1968 - even while Veciana was under official INS restriction to Miami's Dade county and should have never have been allowed out of the U.S. This long term relationship becomes extremely important in two areas that we address in "Shadow Warfare".
First, in the context of Kennedy Administration policies and CIA official positions, it is clear that Phillips worked with and was in contact inside Cuba with a very well organized revolutionary group which almost did assassinate Fidel Castro in a bazooka attack...only very bad luck on their part saved Castro. And it appears that Phillips continued to contact and work with Veciana in attempts to kill Castro over the next decade, including one extremely complex plot developed in Chile in 1971. Given that there appears to be no Presidential approval or CIA executive sanction for the ongoing attempts, a serious question is raised as to whether Phillips was pursuing his own private agenda and to what extent the plots were supported by CIA vs. private resources. There is also a major question about whether or not his superiors were aware of this, to what level within the Agency and to what extent the Agency officially covered up his activities to the Church Committee and HSCA investigations.
That becomes much more critical in terms of Phillip's long term influence on events in Latin America, including his admitted contacts with Louis Posada, Posada's terror attacks and the activities of other CIA related Cuban exiles across South America - something we discuss in great detail in "Shadow Warfare", including Phillips (and David Morales) seminal activities in what became known as the Condor operation.
Another explosive issue raised by Veciana's confirmation is the relationship between the CIA and Alpha 66, which according to Veciana was instigated, funded and directed by Bishop/Phillips. Exactly who inside the CIA knew that Phillips was helping create Alpha 66 and who knew that he was directing it towards attacks on Russian targets inside Cuba though 62/63 in direct opposition to Kennedy Administration policies and presidential directives? In "Shadow Warfare", we discuss the issue of CIA rogue action and the real risk posed by decisions by officers who decide to obstruct and subvert administration policies.
In short, those interested in the Kennedy assassination sometimes come to view people like Phillips, Hecksher, Morales, Shackley, Sforza, Robertson and their Cuban exile associates only in terms of 1963, in "Shadow Warfare" we follow their careers and activities over some 30 years and readers will see there impact on a global scale. Its a much broader view and we think a much more revealing one.
copied from the blog of Larry Hancock
Thank you, Larry, for all of your hard work and sharing it with us.......cl
just saying shall we put this together with the recent post from the Boston Globe talking about the suspicions of RFK after JFK was shot?
Then we will ask Vincent Bugliosi his opinion after that.
............................................................... links to more info about David Atlee Phillips: from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Atlee_Phillips from Spartacus Educational: http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKphillips.htm from JFKfacts.org and very interesting comments: http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/from-the-files/what-has-bill-oreilly-learned/ |
London Mayor Raises Eyebrows, and Ire
Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, shown in May. Many believe that Mr. Johnson wants to succeed David Cameron as Britain’s prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party.
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: November 29, 2013
LONDON — Boris Johnson, the flamboyant, self-mocking and ambitious mayor of London, has put his gilded foot in his mouth once again, suggesting that the poor of Britain are victims of low I.Q. and that greed is good.
Mr. Johnson, who many believe wants to succeed David Cameron as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, has created for himself an image that is both bumbling and endearing, based on bluster, wit and fundamental competence.
He has survived missteps, including various affairs and a love child, that would have sunk ordinary politicians, and he is a fiercely intelligent debater and funnier than most comedians.
But his comments on Wednesday night in the Margaret Thatcher Lecture at the Center for Policy Studies here have created an uglier fuss, with the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, of the Liberal Democrats, accusing Mr. Johnson of a “careless elitism” and discussing humankind “as if we are a sort of breed of dogs.”
Mr. Johnson is no scientist, but he has stepped into the kind of debate over the relationship of I.Q. to race and poverty that has tripped up many others before him. He was defending the record of Mrs. Thatcher and her belief in hard work and meritocratic reward, and he urged both helping the poor and giving more support to the brightest. But as he did so, he appeared to mock the 16 percent “of our species” who have an I.Q. below 85 and urged that more help be given to the 2 percent who have an I.Q. of 130 or above.
He said that inequality was inevitable and essential to spur envy and ambition, and hailed greed as a critical spark for economic activity, even as he said he hoped that the financial boom of London would not produce the cruelty of the past.
“I also hope that there is no return to that spirit of Loadsamoney heartlessness — figuratively riffling bank notes under the noses of the homeless,” he said. At the same time, he spoke about growing inequality as a danger to civic peace and made an analogy comparing people to cornflakes in a cereal box that, when shaken hard produced some cornflakes that rose to the top.
“For one reason or another — boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants — the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever,” he said, adding, “We cannot ignore this change in relative economic standing, and the resentment it sometimes brings.”
The left-leaning Guardian newspaper was not alone in pointing out, in an editorial, that Mr. Johnson had misunderstood the nature of the I.Q. test, on which a score of 100 is defined as average. So it is simply a matter of a normal bell curve that 16 percent of the population would be below 85 and 2 percent at 130 or above.
“Any idea that they say anything about ‘our species’ is, well, specious,” The Guardian wrote, adding that I.Q. figures were irrelevant to any discussion about wages. And the newspaper suggested that Mr. Johnson’s elite upbringing, including his time at Eton, might have had something to do with causing “his flake to float to the top of the box.”
Mark Steel, writing in The Independent, praised Mr. Johnson’s “courage,” noting sarcastically that the trouble with Britain was that its bankers had not been able to display any greed. Even in 2006, Mr. Steel noted, they were instead “renting out their offices for free to orphans and injured kittens.”
^^##:: copied from the New York Times.
