From server@firefly.prairienet.org Tue Apr 18 14:16:53 1995
	id OAA28378; Tue, 18 Apr 1995 14:16:22 +0200
	id AA27783; Tue, 18 Apr 95 07:02:47 CDT
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 60


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 60
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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.
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[...continued...]
 
MICHAEL PARENTI [continues]:
This was only one of a number of very strangely favorable 
treatments that the U.S. government began to give Lee Harvey 
Oswald. He then defected to the USSR -- but how? Phillip Melinson 
raises the question. To get to Russia in those days would have 
cost $1,500. Lee Harvey Oswald's bank account showed a deposit of 
only $203. He got (after he arrived in London, and was there), he 
left London and went to Helsinki on October 11, on a day when 
there were no available commercial flights that would have 
allowed him to make it in one day. He had some kind of private 
transportation, to get to Helsinki.
 
In Russia, he announced that he was renouncing his U.S. 
citizenship, and that he had lots of secrets that he was going to 
give to the Soviets. He even went into the U.S. embassy and 
announced that, and made sure they all knew it.
 
The Soviets didn't bite. They let him stay, but they at no time 
thought he could be an agent of any use to them. They kept him 
under constant surveillance.
 
He worked in the factory. He showed no particular interest in 
guns, but he belonged to the factory's gun club. He used to join 
in the rabbit shoots, and he could never hit the rabbit. Always, 
someone had to come behind him and shoot the rabbit while he was 
firing. Otherwise, they would've been there all day. It was a 
joke. He was a miserable marksman -- as he had been in the U.S. 
Marines. He had been flagged, again and again, on the... He had 
missed the whole target. [After] a number of times, you get the 
flag. So Lee Harvey Oswald showed... [he] couldn't hit the side 
of a barn.
 
Now if Lee Harvey Oswald was really a defector, and not a U.S. 
spy, then U.S. Intelligence could well have taken the view that 
his was one of the most damaging defections in history. Now 
what's done in all defections, especially those connected with... 
definitely those connected with government and military, is that 
there's a damage assessment. No damage assessment was ever made 
on Oswald's defection! This *did* come out, in the Warren 
Commission and the House Select Committee. Why was... There was 
no damage assessment! Guess it was just overlooked. I don't know.
 
After two-and-a-half years, he applies to *return* to the U.S. 
This is after renouncing his citizenship, announcing he was going 
to give away secrets! And instead of being grabbed when he comes 
out, and tried as a traitor, the U.S. accepts him back! And he 
says that he was never de-briefed! In fact, he was de-briefed, in 
Holland, in Amsterdam. But the CIA had no record of de-briefing 
him. Doesn't, "doesn't know" who he is, never touched him, was 
never near him. And their explanation before the [Warren] 
Commission was that "there were so *many* tourists, coming in and 
out." That "there was nothing, particularly, about him that would 
catch our attention." One might wonder, what is *needed* to catch 
your attention!? [audience laughter] A defector, secrets and all 
that. [audience laughter]
 
After the assassination, the CIA claimed that they suspected that 
he was a Soviet spy. They still didn't de-brief him. That makes 
it *more* curious.
 
He gets out of Russia, and what does the State Department do? 
They give him money. They give him money to travel back to the 
U.S. and get set up. They pay all his travel and moving expenses, 
and those of his wife! He's given back his passport, with full 
rights to travel *anywhere* -- and denounce the U.S. government 
again, someplace else! His wife is exempted from usual 
immigration quotas -- no waiting. No exclusion for having 
belonged to the Soviet Comsymal(?), which was the communist youth 
organization. Which is a violation of U.S. immigration laws. Yet 
she was allowed in.
 
Once back in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald settles in, under the wing 
of one George DeMohrenschildt, a right-wing Russian with CIA 
ties. And this begins a whole pattern that goes on in Dallas and 
New Orleans: namely, sort of "forays", short-lived forays out 
into the public eye as a "leftist". He starts a one-person "Fair 
Play for Cuba" organization in New Orleans -- never has another 
member! Never recruits another member. All his time in New 
Orleans and in Dallas, he never once contacts a single member of 
the Communist Party or any other "left" organization. Although... 
He writes lots of letters to the Communist Party USA and to the 
Socialist Workers Party -- two groups which, at that time, 
weren't even talking to each other. [Mimicking Oswald] "Dear 
Comrade, How are you? We fight forward, and we go on,"  "Yes, 
what should I do," and this and that. "Send me instructions," you 
know. [audience laughter]
 
He blazes a trail! Local TV, fist fights, inflammatory incidents, 
leaflets. One of the leaflets shows that his organization was on 
Camp Street, in the very same building that Guy Bannister had his 
office. (Guy Bannister was an FBI agent.) And a whole bunch of 
other Cuban emigre, right-wing groups were there.
 
And his personal relations were with right-wing, anti-Communist 
Cubans, or with right-wing crypto-fascists or CIA types or 
others: George DeMohrenschildt (as I said); David Ferrie, he was 
a friend of David Ferrie's; Robert Murrow(sp?), a right-winger. 
Very interesting credibility, because Murrow is a right-winger. 
He's a businessman who worked for the CIA. And when he was in the 
CIA, he was a pilot, and one of the guys he worked with was David 
Ferrie. It was known that David Ferrie was CIA. He also knew, Lee 
Harvey Oswald knew, Guy Bannister, and knew Clay Shaw.
 
So while he supposedly was this "leftist"... And if you ever 
heard any of the tapes of him speaking and explaining what 
communism was and what socialism was, it's laughable. It's this 
little rote, superficial thing. While he was a "leftist", in 
fact, all his personal associations were with right-wing people 
linked to the intelligence community.
 
He also knew Jack Ruby.
 
              -+- We Are Asked To Believe... -+-
 
Now they would have us believe that this man, who couldn't hit 
the side of a barn, took a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (whose sights 
were not even set)... An Italian weapon, by the way, which the 
Italians said: "The weapon that never killed anyone on purpose." 
[audience laughter] -- and he fired and killed the President of 
the United States.
 
[We are asked to believe] that he got a job, just at that time, 
at the Texas Book Depository -- three weeks before, when nobody 
knew that Kennedy's limousine was gonna pass right in front of 
the depository. He got a job right there and... fortuitously, 
happened to be up there that day.
 
[We are asked to believe] that he would forego shooting President 
Kennedy when he had a full body shot of him, coming right at him 
down Houston street, right toward the Texas Book Depository, 
where he could go at him like a shooting gallery that's coming 
closer and closer. Perfect. The *ideal* thing. He didn't shoot 
him then. He waited until the car turned at a 110-degree angle 
down Elm street. And as he went by, and only had his head, and a 
little portion of his shoulders. And then, firing through the 
trees, he rapidly got off three shots in a few seconds -- 
something which the best marksmen in the country were not able to 
emulate until after much practice and after the sights on the 
Mannlicher-Carcano were re-set and brought into a laboratory and 
fixed in there. And they had all sorts of remarks to make about 
the awful performance of this rifle. (By the way: right through a 
tree that was later cut down.)
 
We are asked to believe that a treasure of physical evidence -- 
the interior of the limousine, the presidential limousine itself, 
which would also have evidence -- bits of shrapnel, whatever 
else, from bullet parts, blood, lines of fire -- which was just 
"accidentally" taken, instantly torn out, destroyed, and totally 
re-built -- that this was *not* a deliberate cover-up.
 
We're asked to believe that Kennedy's brain just "disappeared".
 
[We are asked to believe] that the X-ray, which now shows a re- 
constructed head, with no exit wound, is, oddly, taken with no 
jaw! So it could be anybody's! You can't do any kind of dental 
identification to *see* if that X-ray *is* President Kennedy's.
 
[We are asked to believe] that the autopsy was just botched 
innocently.
 
We're asked to believe that Jack Ruby, a gambler and gangster 
with links to the Cuban exiles and an acquaintance of Oswald's, 
who once worked for congressman Richard Nixon (for the House 
UnAmerican Activities Committee in Chicago, when his name was 
still Jack Rubenstein... before he changed it to Ruby)... We're 
asked to believe that he just "took it upon himself" to kill 
Oswald, because he was so moved by the suffering that Oswald had 
caused the Kennedy family. (Although Ruby, later, in jail, 
repeatedly kept alluding to the fact that "You don't know the 
whole story; there's much more behind all of this; there's 
something really deep and sinister here" and all this. And he was 
just, simply, dismissed, by a media that was taking its cues.)
 
We're asked [to believe] that the 21 witnesses -- persons 
otherwise related to the case, in some close way, with some 
information, privy to some conversations or whatever else -- all 
of whom met violent deaths, were part of a colossal coincidence 
(like the one the *Washington Post* was talking about.)
 
[We're asked to believe] that later on, in 1978, the *second* 
round of killings that started, after the House Select Committee 
investigation -- 16 more, who died violently. They just 
"happened" to die, coincidentally, violent deaths. Including, one 
of them being George DeMohrenschildt himself: killed by a gun 
blast to the head, three hours after a House Assassinations 
Committee investigator had tried to contact him. (He was being 
set up for an interview... He was being set up for a lot more 
than that.)
 
George DeMohrenschildt was not only close to Oswald, but in his 
telephone book there was found an inscription or, I should say an 
insert: "To George 'Pappy' Bush". That he was a close friend of 
George Bush and there was a correspondence between them.
 
The Sheriff's Office in Palm County, Florida, found that his 
shooting was very strange. And it was ruled a "suicide".
 
William Sullivan, a third guy in the FBI, who was supposed to 
appear before the House committee... By the way: Sullivan was on 
CIA (according to Robert Murrow), he was on the CIA payroll. He 
was shot right outside his home by a man who claimed to have 
mistaken him for a deer. [audience laughter] He was charged with 
misdemeanor, and released into the custody of his father, a state 
policeman.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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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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