-Caveat Lector-
Adam Parfrey and others,
Here is a piece by Chris Ruddy on his website, www.ruddynews.com. For those
who suspect that Ruddy's usage of his impressives investigative skills begin
and end when it is good for his politics or personal profit (which appear to
be one and the same), there is quite a bit of evidence here.
Analysis: Blumenthal Outlines Radical Views in 1976 Book
By Christopher Ruddy
FOR THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
May 17, 1998
Does the U.S. government murder prominent citizens to promote its policy
interests?
Yes, if the implications of a book co-edited by Sidney Blumenthal is to be
believed.
Blumenthal, one-time writer at The New Yorker, is a chief White House aide
to Bill and Hillary
Rodham Clinton. Reportedly, Blumenthal masterminded the White House strategy
of blaming all its
scandals on a "vast right-wing conspiracy" led by people Mrs. Clinton said
were even accusing the
Clintons of murder.
Because of his own conspiracy thinking, Blumenthal has been nicknamed
"Grassy Knoll" by White
House insiders.
It is a title he has well earned, if his past writings are any indication.
Stanford University's library had but one copy of a book Blumenthal co-
edited in 1976 titled
"Government by Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to
Today." According to
the library card in the book, the book had never been checked out of the
library in its 22 years on the
shelf.
The book is worth checking today because Blumenthal is closely advising the
leader of the Free
World and it would be important to know what and how he thinks.
The world knows that Blumenthal is a radical left-winger. His book
demonstrates that. Its
introduction is written by former CIA agent Philip Agee, who became
something of an icon for the
left as he fled the country to find safe haven in Castro's Cuba and later
Europe.
Blumenthal writes the foreword and two of the chapters of this compendium of
left-wing conspiracist
thought. "There are conspiracies in history," Blumenthal writes matter-of-
factly in his foreword.
Much of the storyline that follows has been heard before:
* The CIA/U.S. military establishment killed John F. Kennedy to ease entry
into the Vietnam War.
"Conspiracy by Gunplay" tries to debunk much of the lone-gunman theory with
forensic and expert
examination of the Zapruder film.
* John Kennedy's brother, Bobby, was killed by similar right-wing forces.
Certainly Sirhan Sirhan
had not acted alone. Similar claims are made about Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s assassination.
* One chapter, "The Shooting of George Wallace," clearly tries to imply that
forces close to
then-President Richard Nixon attempted to bump off presidential candidate
Wallace in 1972. Nixon
benefited from the shooting that left Wallace in a wheelchair because
Wallace, who would have
siphoned right-wing votes, was eliminated from the race.
The paranoia that marks a true conspiracist is evident when the conspiracist
begins to believe that all
of his pet conspiracies run together, forming a unified conspiracy theory.
Thus, one chapter argues that the same right-wing anti-Castro Cubans who
were part of Nixon's
Watergate "plumbers" operation had links to the same people who killed
President Kennedy 10 years
earlier. Blumenthal's chapter "Cointelpro: How the FBI tried to Destroy the
Black Panthers" argues
that the FBI domestic surveillance efforts used against the Black Panthers
created the framework for
the Watergate operation. Fearing the power of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, the
Nixon White House
created its own in-house intelligence-gathering network. (Interestingly, the
Clinton White House has
sought to move domestic intelligence gathering under the White House's own
National Security
Council.)
Making cameo appearances in Blumenthal's book are current New York Times
reporter Jeff Gerth,
best known for breaking the Whitewater story in 1992. In Blumenthal's book
Gerth writes the chapter
titled "Richard M. Nixon and Organized Crime," which claims Nixon had secret
mob ties.
Jeff Cohen, who heads FAIR, a liberal media advocacy group, wrote the
chapter on King's death. At
the time of the book's publication, Cohen headed the Los Angeles chapter of
the Assassination
Information Bureau, a left-wing group that promoted theories about
Kennedy's, King's and other
deaths. Curiously, Cohen's FAIR group has lambasted conservatives, including
radio host Rush
Limbaugh, for engaging in "conspiracy mongering."
Blumenthal ends his book charging that Nelson Rockefeller's commission of
the 1970s, which
investigated the CIA's dirty tricks, was nothing more than a cover-up.
Rockefeller became a
convenient scapegoat for Blumenthal. Since he had inherited great wealth,
Rockefeller had to have
been a pawn of "the ruling class." For the radical left, the conspiracy
always leads there because the
conspiracy that bothers them the most is the capitalist system.
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