From server@firefly.prairienet.org Sun Apr 16 19:57:46 1995
	id TAA09081; Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:57:42 +0200
	id AA05747; Sun, 16 Apr 95 12:54:50 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 58


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 58
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE GANGSTER NATURE OF THE STATE
 
My transcription of a talk by Dr. Michael Parenti. Michael 
Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale 
University in 1962. He has taught at a number of colleges and 
universities, and is the author of many books, including 
*Democracy for the Few* (St. Martin's; sixth edition); *Inventing 
Reality: The Politics of News Media* (St. Martin's; second 
edition); and *Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (St. 
Martin's). I will include a list of his audio taped lectures at 
the end of this transcript.
 
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[...continued...]
 
MICHAEL PARENTI [continues]:
And this is why they relentlessly -- the mainstream media, and 
the opinion leaders and the political leaders of this country -- 
relentlessly attack or ignore this literature. And this is why 
they give fulsome, gushing, ready publicity to the likes of 
Gerald Posner, with his book *Case Closed* {3}, which got put 
into every major magazine {4}. I couldn't put the TV on all week 
without seeing this guy's face and hearing him blather these, 
kind of "cliche" statements (whose credibility are dependent on 
you being totally ignorant of what the investigators, for 30 
years, have been uncovering and the questions they have been 
raising), and who did a grotesque, idiotic whitewash of the whole 
thing.
 
And this is why they savaged, they savaged Oliver Stone's movie, 
*JFK* -- a movie that was *very* accurate about the specifics of 
the murder; a movie that reached *millions* of people, that broke 
through that thing that they were keeping down. The only movie in 
the history of Hollywood (and I wrote a book called *Make-Believe 
Media*, which is about TV and film, so I think I know something 
about films -- at least I *did* spend the better part of a year 
reading a lot of literature)... It's the *only* movie that I know 
of that was attacked 6 months before it was released (in the 
*Washington Post* and in the *New York Times* and in *Time* and 
in *Newsweek*), and attacked relentlessly for a year after it was 
released. {5}.
 
And this is also why, this past week, they kept up the relentless 
propaganda campaign, with the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy 
assassination, to show that Oswald was the "lone assassin". And 
they're always limiting the question, just as the Warren 
Commission did, *a priori*: Was Oswald the "lone assassin"? Did 
he act alone? Did he, or did he not, act alone? Meanwhile, all 
the serious investigators have a different question -- it's not 
that. He [Oswald] was not at *all* one of the people that shot 
Kennedy. He did not act at all, although he was involved in 
another way: he was involved as a fall guy.
 
And this is why they do this. If you want to know why, you just 
listen to them. It's not *my* analysis, it's what *they* say. The 
propagandists of the "right" and the "center" know why they've 
got to trash this issue and contain it. Listen to what Tom 
Wicker(sp?) of the *New York Times* had to say... Now Tom Wicker 
has never written a book review in his life. But when *JFK* came 
out, he wrote a book review... I mean, a movie review. (I'm 
sorry.) He's never written a movie review in his life. *JFK* came 
out, and Tom Wicker, who is a columnist, a Washington columnist 
to the *New York Times*, suddenly became a movie reviewer! And 
instead of getting the usual movie review length of 800 words, he 
got 2,000 words. It's a whole page, with pictures and all that. 
And in that review, he tells us that "if the wild assertions in 
Oliver Stone's movie are taken at face value, Americans will have 
to accept the idea that most of the nation's major institutions 
conspired together and carried out Kennedy's murder." (Wicker 
goes on), "In an era when mistrust of government and loss of 
confidence in institutions -- the press not the least -- are 
widespread and virulent, such a suggestion seems a dubious public 
service." [audience laughter]
 
So truth or not truth had nothing to do with it. He's *saying*, 
"The question is *institutional* *legitimacy*." Wicker 
understands the heart of the matter. A full revelation about the 
murder would be a serious attack upon the legitimacy of the 
dominant institutions of state and class -- the press, not being 
the least of those institutions, a faithful servant of it. The 
system that *New York Times'* writers faithfully defend.
 
Playing before mass audiences, the movie *JFK* did not finger a 
"cabal" of malevolent perpetrators, but, in fact, pointed the 
finger at the national security state *itself* as the murderer.
 
Damage control. You know, back in 1978 the House Select Committee 
reported, in fact (after an investigation), that there *was* more 
than one assassin shooting Kennedy. And there, therefore, was a 
conspiracy. In response, the *Washington Post* immediately 
editorialized, in 1978: "Could it have been some other 
malcontent, who Mr. Oswald met casually?" [audience laughter] (It 
gets better. It gets better.) [audience laughter] "Could not as 
many as 3 or 4 societal outcasts..." [audience laughter] "...with 
no ties to any one organization, have developed in some 
spontaneous way..." [audience laughter] "...a common 
determination to express their alienation in the killing of 
President Kennedy?" [audience laughter, applause] "It is possible 
that two persons, acting independently, attempted to shoot the 
President at the very same time." [audience laughter]
 
It is possible. It's not at *all* likely.
 
So sometimes, those who deny conspiracies create the most 
convoluted fantasies of all.
 
David Garrow, who wrote a biography of Martin Luther King, 
benignly, patronizingly, looks at *you*; at "the public mind". 
And he says that the evidence pointing to a conspiracy to murder 
Martin Luther King... [imitates Garrow] "Uh... No. A large... You 
see what it is, a large majority of the American people *do* 
believe in assassination conspiracies. That allows events to have 
large, mysterious causes, instead of small, idiosyncratic ones."
 
(I would say the *Washington Post* had the most mysterious cause 
of *all*, a few minutes ago.) [audience laughter]
 
[Resumes imitation of Garrow] "They like that; they like the 
large causes."
 
You see, but the question of conspiracy has to be decided by an 
investigation of *evidence*, not by *a priori*, unscientific and 
patronizing presumptions about "the public mind".
 
In any case, the evidence in King's assassination doesn't involve 
"large, mysterious causes", but very immediate actualities. And 
the investigators, like Peter Dale Scott and Harold Weisberg and 
Mark Lane: they weren't "impelled" by some "yearnings", you see? 
They were "impelled" by questions of evidence! By things that 
just didn't seem to make sense! By very immediate, empirical 
things which drew them into this, more and more. But which THESE 
PEOPLE, who never READ that evidence, don't have to deal with, 
and so they can fashion all these "theories".
 
The independent investigators demolished the Warren Commission. 
The first and most effective, perhaps, was Harold Weisberg, whose 
book *Whitewash*... and then the other one, by Mark Lane, *Rush 
To Judgement*... right there, terrific. Written 25 years ago.
 
Let's focus on a small part of the actual conspiracy. I can't, 
obviously, go through it all; it would take ages.
 
Let's start with Oswald. If you watched television this week, you 
again, for the 78th time, heard that Oswald was a "loner", an 
"incompetent", "not very bright". You heard that he was 
"emotionally disturbed". Gerald Posner got on there (turning 
instant psychiatrist) and he said, "Lee Harvey Oswald is a very 
disturbed young boy. He had a very disturbed childhood. And he 
was a 'passive-aggressive.'" [audience laughter]
 
I said, "[musing] 'passive-aggressive'... A 'passive-aggressive' 
assassin?!" [audience laughter] That explains why he used a rifle 
that couldn't shoot straight. [audience laughter]
 
He was also a "leftist" -- Alexander Cockburn has joined the 
"right" and the "center" and, in a column in the *Examiner* said 
that, he was a "leftist".
 
The truth is something else. Lee Harvey Oswald, all his I.Q. 
tests show he was of above-average intelligence. He was a bright 
guy, a quick learner. Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald, spent most of 
his adult life not as a "lonely drifter", but directly linked to 
the U.S. Intelligence community. At the age of 18, in the U.S. 
Marines, he had secret security clearance, and he was working at 
Marine Air Control in Atsugi Base in Japan. (Atsugi was a top- 
secret base, where the CIA launched some of its U2 flights and 
did other kinds of covert operations in China.) The next year, at 
the age of 19, he was assigned to El Toro Air Station, in 
California, with security clearance to work radar. And here he 
emerged... Certain strange things began to happen. He emerged as 
a babbling Russophile and Soviet Communist. He started playing 
Russian language records at blast level in his barracks. He 
started addressing his fellow marines in Russian. He read Russian 
books, and touted Soviet Communism as "the best system in the 
world." He called his fellow marines, "Comrades".
 
Now the U.S. Marine Corps, in 1958 [audience laughter] was not 
exactly known as a bastion of liberal tolerance and free thinking 
[audience laughter]. My buddy, Bernard Livingstone, wrote a book 
called *Closet Red*. He tells of his experiences in the Army, 
where they had to filter out anybody who had "funny opinions", 
who had pinko-ish opinions or whatever else, they had to be 
reported. That the Army constantly (and I'm sure the Marines), 
constantly surveilles anyone who might outspokenly or actively 
begin to say (or act certainly) in the way he [Oswald] did. But 
in this instance, Oswald's Marine commanders "didn't mind". He 
kept his security clearance. He kept all the radar records; he 
could see what was going in and out, and knew all about the 
things that were happening there -- a wealth of sensitive radar 
information and other highly sensitive information from sensitive 
bases, "black operations", as they were called.
 
Well if Oswald was a Soviet spy, or a Cuban spy (as some people 
now claim), he certainly had a novel way of building a cover. 
[audience laughter]
 
Other odd things began happening: In February 1959, Lee Harvey 
Oswald failed the Marine Corps proficiency test in Russian. Six 
months later, he was practically fluent in Russian. Only in 1974, 
a document that was dislodged from the Warren Commission, that 
had been secreted -- thanks to Harold Weisberg's legal efforts, 
[he] got the document out. It was shown that Oswald had attended 
the U.S. Army Monterey School of Languages. Now Monterey is not 
open to anyone who just happens to have a hobby, a language 
hobby. You go, only for serious training. And you are sent by the 
government and it must be related to government work in a 
language *picked* by the government, which is related to specific 
assignments.
 
So Oswald learned Russian at the U.S. Monterey School of 
Languages.
 
Another odd thing: Oswald was given an early discharge from the 
Marines, because his mother had injured her foot. [audience 
laughter] It's called a "dependency discharge"; that your parent 
needs you. A jar had fallen on her toe. [audience laughter] And 
he was immediately... He put in the request, and he got it within 
a week! His fellow marines were astonished at the velocity of the 
release. It also so happened that the jar fell on her foot a year 
before the discharge. [audience laughter] But she was having... 
It "wasn't healing right", you know?
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
{3} Harold Weisberg has written a book that rebuts Posner's *Case 
Closed*. The name of Weisberg's book is, I believe, *Case Open*.
 
{4} Referring to the ridiculous praise absolutely *heaped* on 
Posner's *Case Closed*, see for example *Time* magazine, January 
3, 1994, page 18 under the heading "1993 Winners & Losers", in 
the "Losers" column:
 
  ["Losers"] -- JFK Conspiracy Buffs: With the publication of 
  *Case Closed*, suddenly everyone agrees: Oswald did act 
  alone.
 
{5} Stone's movie, *JFK*, had excellent box office receipts. The 
movie played for at least *three* *months* in this area. It must 
be way up there as one of the all-time most popular movies; if 
anyone has any data on this, let me know.
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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