Robert Parry's Curious Seven Days In May reference to Obama

[EPIC1934]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/022009.html

This article is interesting, because it continues the necessary focus on the earlier excllent Gareth Porter article on Generals "bullying" Obama on Iraq (personally I have my doubts if this is real
bullying or is it psy ops ie collusion to provide cover for shafting the base one more time)

It is interesting that Parry makes more reference to Carter than to the man who facilitated the White House filming of Seven Days in May, JFK.

Also interesting is the lack of reference to clearly the most direct parallel to the Obama "Vs?" Patraeus conflice, namely Kennedy V. Gen Walker. Oh and that "Ultimate Cold Warrior", as Guru Chomsky labels JFK endlessly? He fired Walker on the spot. Sent him packing to Dallas where he later had a rather interesting "contact" with a Lee Harvey Oswald or 2.

Good article but with curious errors of omission.

[MinM]

1. The Moorer-Radford affair

Thanks, EPIC1934. Jim Hougan makes reference to a 'Seven Days in May' scenario in his book, "Secret Agenda",

and in this piece:

Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA

Strange Bedfellows

The Moorer-Radford affair is not usually considered a part of the Watergate story, though it deserves to be. The Nixon Administration learned of the Pentagon spy-ring in late 1971, but the affair did not become public until almost three years later. By then, the Watergate story was almost played out.

While president, Nixon was determined to keep the affair secret, telling Kissinger aide David Young, "If you love your country, you'll never mention it." But the Pentagon's chief investigator, W. Donald Stewart, was more forthcoming. Asked how seriously the affair should have been taken, Stewart replied with a rhetorical question: "Did you see that film, Seven Days in May? That's what we were dealing with..."

The film is about a military conspiracy to topple the president. A coup d'etat, in other words.

So it is interesting to learn that Mark Felt placed Yeoman Radford under electronic surveillance long after the White House learned of his activities, and even after Radford had been transferred to a dead-end military post 3000 miles from Washington. This suggests that Felt may have been more concerned with counterintelligence issues than he was with prosecutorial ones. (Radford was never charged with a crime.)

So why did Radford do it?...

http://www.counterpunch.org/hougan06082005.html

[EPIC1934]

2. JFK helps Frankenheimer

This is on JFK and his role in Seven Days In May. It is from what I consider the most important book on US history right now. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.(Curious thing about this book: although it has consistently outsold all of the competing JFK history books on Amazon since its release nine months ago. it is nowhere available in NYC. Not any bookstores, even the so called "aleternative left" ones yet these same stores put the new Mafia done it book by Thom Hartmann and Len Waldron in the front wiindow) Hmmm. I wonder if it has to do with JFK and the Unspeakable's unambigously Jaccusin the CIA? Daniel Ellsberg -- who knows a thing of two about that humble org, Also Marcus Raskin, former JFK insider who left to form the Institute of Policy Studies has strongly endorsed JFK and the Unspeakable Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

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Check out these words of JFK on the book Seven Days in May. They were uttered after the Bay of Pigs but before the Cuban Missile Crisis:

.... JFK said he would read the book. Hed did so that night. The next day
Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of thier seeing such a
coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis:

'It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would
have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President,
and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain unseasiness. Maybe
the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be
written of as the ususal military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then
if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be,
'Is he too young and inexperienced?' The military would almost feel that
it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of
the nation, an only God knows just what segment of democracy they
would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment'

Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs
it could happen.' Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning,
he concluded the an old Navy phrase, "But it won't happen on my watch."

On another occasion Kennedy said of the novel's plot about a few military
commanders taking over the country, 'I know a couple who might wish
they could.' The statement is cited by biographer Theodore Sorenson
as a joke. However, John Kennedy used humor in pointe ways, and
Sorenson's preceding sentence is not a joke: "Communications between
Chiefs of Staff and their Commander in Chif remained unsatisfactory for
a large part of his term."

Director John Frankenheimer was encouraged by President Kennedy to
film Seven Days In May 'as a warning to the republic.' Frankenheimer
said, 'The Pentagon didn't want it done. Kennedy said that when we
wanted to shoot at the Chite House he would conveniently go to
Hyannis Port that weekend. (JFK and the Unspeakable, pp12,13)

Now cut to Douglass overview of the Bay of pigs:

Four decades after the Bay of Pigs, we have learned that the CIA
scenario to trap Kennedy was more concrete than Dulles admitted
in his handwritten notes. A conference on the Bay of Pigs was held
in Cuba March 23-25, 2001, which included 'ex-CIA operatives, retired
military commanders, scholars, and journalists.' News analyst Daniel
Schorr reported on National Public Radio that 'from the many hours of
talk and heaps of decassified secret documents' he had gained one
new perception on the Bay of Pigs:

'It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, director Allen Dulles and
deputy Richard Bissell, had their own plan of how to bring the United
States into the conflict. It appears that they never really expected an
uprising agaist Castro when the liberators landed as described in their
memos to the White House. What they did expect was that the invaders
would establish and secure a beachhead, announce the creation of a
counterrevolutionary governemnt and appeal for aid from the United
States and the Organization of American States. The assumption was
that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American
involvement, would be forced by pubic opinion to come to the aid of the
returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in
to expand the beachhead.

' In effect, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation
that collapsed when the invasion collapsed' (JFK and the Unspeakable:
Why He Died and Why It Matters, p. 14-15)

Remember this the next time you read in the Corporate Media that the CIA is merely the tool of the president. It was not the last covert action the CIA
would take without presidential authorization. After reading Douglass' book one wonders if it even made the final dozen.
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