Thursday, December 20, 2018

Max Holland on Fred Litwin

TIME OUT for a brief reprieve to respond to my "research community" associate Max Holland and his opinions on Fred Litwin's new book - "I Was A Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak," a not to be taken seriously book that depreciates all of what I have been trying to do for the past 50 years - and that's to come to terms with the murder of President Kennedy. 

I would not normally bother to stop my on-going and truly comprehensive research into the assassination, but Litwin has made it personal, and I am responding in kind. 

The irony is, while Litwin and his minions like Max Holland and John McAdams continually poo poo conspiracy theorists - and I don't have a conspiracy theory to promote - and I have debunked more silly conspiracy theories than Litwin could imagine, it can be proven beyond doubt that the Warren Commission conclusion that one man alone killed JFK did not happen, so one of the 2,000 some conspiracy theories must be correct, as the event only happened one way. And it is our job as independent journalists and historians to determine how that historical event occurred, something that can be done, if only the effort is taken to do so. 

As John F. Kennedy himself said, problems that are created by man can be solved by men, and what occurred at Dealey Plaza at 12:30 pm. on November 22, 1963 was an event created by men and it is an event that can and is being solved by men. 

Max Holland prides himself as being affiliated with an Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence organization that should study such things, but he refuses - and for good reason - for applying normal counter-intelligence procedures to what happened at Dealey Plaza or even recognizing what happened there was a covert intelligence operation - and the only way to counter that is with a counter-intelligence operation, something that we are doing now. 

Fred Litwin is a joke, as is his book, and like Max Holland, I too want to know what is going through the minds of those like Holland - trained in the crafts of intelligence and counter-intelligence, who insist on non-application of these standard investigative procedures to the case. 

Well, just because Litwin and Holland don't want to recognize what happened at Dealey Plaza as a covert intelligence operation, doesn't mean that we can't, and apply the now internationally recognized procedures for countering such operations. 

And that's what we are doing. 

And EVERY TIME Max Holland or Fred Litwin, or Thomas Powers, or Phil Shenon, or Brian Latell post or publish something in the Mainstream Media that promotes such BS - I will respond and when I can't I hope others will, as they give us the opportunity to set the record straight. 


Bill Kelly 
December 20, 2018 

11 December 2018

I Was A Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak
Fred Litwin

NorthernBlues Books. 271 pp. $17.00.


By Max Holland

    One of the oddities about the Kennedy assassination research community is that very few people change their minds after having staked out their initial position. The aphorism, possibly apocryphal, that is attributed to the famous economist John Maynard Keynes—“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?—seldom applies.

BK: There is no such thing as the Kennedy assassination research community.
And certainly we should change our minds with the introduction of new information, something those who support the Warren Commission’s conclusions fail to do after learning what we’ve come to know in the past 50 years.

 MH:   But when it does happen, even short of going all the way, the consequences are often notable. Some of the most important contributors and writers in the field are former full-fledged conspiracy buffs, people who dramatically or incrementally changed their minds and were not embarrassed to admit as much. Paul Hoch, David Reitzes, Gus Russo, Dale Myers, and the late Gary Mack come to mind.

BK: And they’ve all done so for various reasons – Gus Russo after he had lunch with three CIA honchos and then got book deals –and decided to go with the Phase One Cuban Castro Commie Cover Story – that only other CIA officers and assets promote – (Brian Latelle, David Atlee Phillips assets, Phil Shennon et al)

Dale Meyers can’t tell the truth from the streets of Oak Cliff for being too cozy with suspects in the Tippit murder. Reitzes is untenable for being a illogical contrarian.

And I will ask Paul how he defended himself last Saturday in San Fran when attacked for the same
The late Gary Mack got a job at the Sixth Floor, that changed his mind, but he stood by the acoustical evidence and Badge Man – the photo of a cop with a gun behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll.

The best conversion example I can come up with is former WC attorney Sam Stern, who told the HSCA he does not have the same opinions now as he did with the Warren Commission, especially after the revelations of the destruction of the Hosty note and the emergence of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro – game changers for him, and he’s still alive. Why doesn’t Max interview him?

MH: Now Fred Litwin, in his new book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak, traces his transformation from a young, energetic conspiracist to the vigorous debunker he is today.
 
BK: The first thing that was debunked was the official Warren Commission story that one man alone killed JFK for his own perverted reasons – that has been proven wrong – so one of the conspiracy theories must be right – as it only happened one way.

MH: The result is a brisk, bracing, witty, and surprisingly comprehensive read, and one that ought to be considered by anyone in Generation Z who is intrigued by the assassination and thinking of joining the research community.

BK: If it is truly comprehensive then it will explain exactly what happened, how was JFK killed? And there is no “research community” to join.

 MH:   A caveat is required: Litwin favorably cites some of my work on the assassination in his text and source notes, so this review might not be regarded as disinterested. So be it.

    The great divide among conspiracists, of course, has always been the 1967 to 1969 investigation by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, whose own account of the probe later became the basis for Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. Litwin devotes the most pages to these closely bound-together milestones, and probably deservedly so. Whatever one might think of Stone’s movie, it has to rank as one of the most influential pieces of work to ever come out of Hollywood. Few, if any, films can lay claim to having instigated new law, although to be sure, the corresponding end of the cold war in the early 1990s was a necessary precondition. Nonetheless the John F. Kennedy Assassination Materials Act of 1992 only came about because of the controversy the film generated.

BK: After that back handed praise, we get to the nitty gritty dirt.

MH:  Litwin is merciless in his criticism of first Garrison, and then Stone—a stance which has garnered the author the attention of Garrison/Stone’s leading sycophants and apologists. Little of the substance of Litwin’s criticism is new, but his angle of attack is somewhat novel. He correctly stresses the homophobia underlying Garrison’s indictment of Clay Shaw, a prominent New Orleans businessman who happened to be a closeted homosexual. (Before finally fingering the CIA/military-industrial complex as the guilty party, Garrison proclaimed the assassination was a “homosexual thrill-killing”).

BK: Wait a minute, I read both of Garrison’s books – Heritage of Stone and On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, and neither has an ant-gay bent – and it would take a fellow homophobia deviates to focus on this aspect of the case – New Orleans is famous for being open to gays, and others in the case have been accused of being gay – including Oswald and Ruby and Ferrie. Those who want to know legendary investigative reporter Jack Anderson’s take on Garrison can read it from among the recently released files – one of my TOP TEN, though Mad Max couldn’t find a single significant document among those recently released.

MH: American mores have shifted dramatically since the late 1960s, and it is almost impossible to imagine a contemporary prosecutor getting away with the persecution of a vulnerable, if prominent, member of society because of his sexual preferences. Shaw’s homosexuality was reported at the time, but in retrospect, the role it played in his two-year ordeal was underappreciated. Of the two men, Garrison and Stone, it is difficult to decide which is more despicable. Garrison abused his office, while Stone cynically turned a demented demagogue into a hero styled after Gary Cooper, while depicting Shaw as some inchoate combination of an assassination ringleader/snooty sexual deviant/CIA operative.

BK: Shaw certainly wasn’t a CIA assassination ringleader – those New Orleans bozos who pulled off the theft of the Schulmburger bunker did not carry out the Dealey Plaza Operation, that was a professional job. And it was not Shaw’s homosexuality that is of significance, but his role as head of the Trade Center, his position with Permindex and whatever he did with Ferrie and Oswald in Clintion, Louisiana in the summer of ’63.

MH:    The chapter in Litwin’s book that came as the biggest eye-opener concerns the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which like the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in this country, aired documentaries on the assassination periodically. It is a well-known fact that the late Don Hewitt, a famed CBS producer who also founded that network’s 60 Minutes program, was an avid believer in a conspiracy. Nonetheless, Hewitt participated in several CBS documentaries about the assassination that rank among the best shows ever produced on the subject. The same cannot be said for the CBC and its version of Hewitt, Brian McKenna. Litwin, who is Canadian, traces how The Fifth Estate, CBC’s premier investigative documentary series, has repeatedly propagated what another CBC producer called, in an unguarded moment, “responsible sensationalism.” It is sobering to read that the nonsense about the assassination that is so routinely spouted domestically also finds credulous producers and audiences elsewhere.

BK: Yea, I too am interested in the Canadian connections to the JFK assassiantion. I'd like to see the CBC interviews with Ian Fleming, with Peter Dale Scott, and look closer into the Canadian aspects of the assassination – including the airport incident reported in McClean’s Magazine, the Quebec to Cuba Peace March – in which Oswald or an imposter is twice seen handing out FPCC leaflets, and Don Norton’s revelations in a Canadian paper. Of course nor Litwin nor Holland are interested in any of these incidents.

    If I have one criticism of Litwin’s book, it is that his own trajectory is only lightly described. He refers to his initial fascination, which occurred in March 1975, when Geraldo Rivera broadcast a bootleg copy of the Zapruder film for the first time ever on television. “Kennedy’s backwards head snap (as depicted in the film, after the third shot), intrigued me,” Litwin writes. “I had to find out more.” But aside from a critical article Litwin wrote for the student newspaper about a “sensationalist” assassination investigator named Rusty Rhodes late in 1975, and a reference to a later article by Litwin, which led a fellow conspiracist to accuse Litwin of being a CIA agent, we get few clues about the author's metamorphosis into a staunch defender of the official verdict.

    I would have liked a much finer description about how Litwin came to question his belief in a conspiracy: when he started to have doubts, why, how they grew, and what explained his credulousness in the first place. 

BK: Well I don’t think the CIA would have someone like Litwin on their payroll, though its quite clear that Max Holland has gotten his share of the CIA budget, as they pay him to write for their in house publications and he “won” the George Lucas award, after the CIA’s backing of the Catherwood Foundation was revealed and the the Lucas award replaced the Catherwood award.
And they say its financially viable to be a silly conspiracy theorists, when it is Holland, Litwin, Russo and Bugliosi who get published, while the truth is more elusive.


While I haven’t had the time to read Litwin’s book – as I am busy working with other independent researchers who are actually solving the crime to a legal and moral certainty, I will get around to it, especially now that Max Holland has praised it. As I have promised both Max and Fred, I will respond to everything they post or publish, to make sure that the real truth gets out beyond their truly perverted views. 

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