Kennedy: I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds

[mogster]

Quote from a page with this interview in April 1968 with Mort Sahl.

ARGO: Why is the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?

SAHL: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy's life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III. There's been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I'm afraid a great deal of our hope was interred with his remains.

ARGO: What is the long, hard night that America must go through that you've spoken of?

SAHL: She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism. If she can hang on long enough, Americans may yet live in the country in which they were born. And that is the country structured by Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.

ARGO: What is the renaissance following this long, hard night, that you also spoke about?

SAHL: We'll start pursuing the American dream again. I don't know if we'll ever realize it, but we're supposed to have the right to pursue it. And that's what this country is. It's an active exercise in man reaching his upper limit, as they used to say in the math department. And the renaissance will be that a ground swell of public opinion will flush out the rascals because the CIA has infiltrated every area of our national life. I'm afraid that the country they subverted best was the United States, be they in the various right-wing churches or be they in the Dallas Police Department. In fact, the CIA is the only organization I know that could penetrate the Birch Society and make them drift further to the right.

More
--------------------------------------------------
Interesting read, for sure.

From the Wiki:
"Morton Lyon Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Montreal-born actor/comedian/humorist credited with pioneering a style of stand-up comedy that paved the way for Lenny Bruce, Nichols & May, Dick Gregory, and others less famous. He also wrote some speeches for John F. Kennedy."

[mitchum]

1. Yet Sahl proceeded to write material for the republican party...

and still does. A goddamn shame.

[mogster]

3. That's interesting

I didn't know too much about this man prior to reading the interview, but saw the paragraph at wikipedia about Reagan.

But did Kennedy say that quote in the title? Amazing that this has slipped past my radar.

[shance]

4. I never could figure it out. It seemed like a breakdown of sorts.

What an enlightened, intuitive person he obviously is and/or has the capacity to be, and yet its as if he embraced an alter ego perhaps to cope with the reality of what is happening with our world?

It's what I have heard a lot of people did after Bobby Kennedy died. They just turned off, began instead focusing their energy into making money and never letting their hearts be broken again.

It's understandable, and its the consequence perhaps of letting ourselves be drowned in our sadness, grief and/or rage and not continuing the fight for justice especially for our best leaders who died at the hands of our own government. Its all too understandable the misdirecting our focus to money and seeking the shallow illusion of "success". Its what we've been conditioned and brain washed to do for decades. We should have truly had the revolution and the Intelligence agencies and governmental departments have done everything they can to dismantle the Progressive movement. Our disconnection and isolation from each other guarantees we won't succeed and those who abuse power WILL succeed. That is why our connecting more with our friends and neighbors, building more solid relationships and foundations, and building communities around us is so important.

Perhaps in many ways it simply all boils down to what is really important in life?

Is having a big house, an expensive car and a membership at the club, private school for the kids what life is all about?

I don't think so when you look at th real price that is paid for those things - namely all our time and striving to get them. Not to mention we can find so much emptiness and numbness around us these days in the midst of all kinds of bright and shining pretty things.

[mogster]

6. That's a good reflection, shance

I recognize several of those things in myself, now when following the political life of today closely. It's kinda too much, and when people you know won't believe you, it's even worse.

Here's some excerpts from one of his books, Heartland:

So then I went to the dinner. It was the first time I met Kennedy, standing there with those laser-beam blue eyes, looking very quizzical. He was curious about me, my age, my political posture. Shook hands, told me he appreciated what I was doing, and asked, "Have you got any more one-liners? This looks like a rough crowd." Bobby just sat on the sidelines and waited. I suppose that even though he was emotionally as loyal as he was to his brother, he was waiting his turn. In the crevices of his mind he was a lot like Hamlet. He must have wondered why it was his lot in life to break the doors down for this guy and to cut all the corners and be an outlaw of sorts and then be rewarded by people saying, "Jack, you're great, but I can't stand that rat who works for you." There had to be a jealousy—which I thought he contained admirably.
Afterward, we went to Kennedy's plane, parked at L.A. International Airport. He was on his way to Palm Springs with Sinatra and he called me to join him on the plane. When I got aboard he asked me to sit up front. The Senator said, "Where was Paul Ziffren four years ago?" I said, "I guess with Stevenson." He said, "Of course, a logical position," and I said, "How do you arrive at a logical position?" and he said, "You just think in terms of survival." Everybody was drinking Bloody Marys. Then Kennedy put his finger to his forehead, pensively, and he said, "Tell me, why do you like Castro?" He never let his ego stand in the way of his curiosity. I told him of my admiration for Castro and that a revolutionary, I thought, appealed to all Americans—well, not quite all, for Americans view South American revolutionaries as a joke, the Russian revolutionaries as a horror, and the American revolutionaries as heroes.
Kennedy asked me about a joke I told on television about him. He was grilling me, knowing the answers, but insisting on my telling them to him literally. I had said on TV that his father had said, "I'm putting you on an allowance. You're not allowed one more cent than you need to buy a landslide." "What does that mean?" Kennedy asked, relentlessly. I told him it meant his father was rich, for one thing. "How much do you think he has?" he asked. So I made a snap decision and said, "Four hundred million." He looked at me as if I were retarded and asked if I knew how much the Rockefeller brothers were worth. "Liquid," he said, "about ten billion." Then he looked at me and said, "Now, that's money!"

More excerpts here:
http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Heartland%20excerpts.html

[undergroundpanther]

2. Kick

Arrgh, The CIA are fucking fascist right wing control freak asshole sociopaths!! I hate 'em fukkking stiff-necked , dead hearted, militaristic, monstrous secretive, nasty manipulating evil, meddling,busy-bodied bullies! They live to fuck over, dominate, hoard, and ruin EVERYTHING in their fucking greed and warped desire to dominate others lives and exploit people. They are a menace to the true human spirit, a poisoner of true virtue, a threat to peace, a danger to all good people's lives.

[peacetalksforall]

5. But imo ihey aren't at the top of the heirarchy of those who want

to control us. I am really frustrated when people give so much power to the President - especially this President. I'm even frustrated with people and myself giving power to Cheney. I believe the heirarchy is the Baron Party and it all spreads down from there and not in a uni-line - more like branches off a willow tree (ignoring the beauty of the tree). There are parallels and off shoots of all the sub-branches and they link and bend together (sometmes) all the while doing work for the Baron Party. The CIA is only one. Who is to say that the CIA is worse than the DIA or the other intel's. And, is not much of the really dirty work done for us by intel agencies from other countries?

I think we need to understand the structure better and there is no one better than our own Republican Party to reveal to us their secrets because they keep messing up and trying to destory us and our Constituion with increasing and novel crimes that go wrong. They are becoming more and more transparent.

We are even cheering some in the CIA who are exposing acts and betrayals of others - brought out of silence by excess of control.

Yes, everything did change with the Kennedy assassination. I believe the CIA set him up with the Bay of Pigs. They spoiled the invasion and whether they did or did not know that the hate that would rise from that would last over four decades and would form one of the Republican Party's voting base is not clear.

It is possible that the CIA has had a right hand connection to the Baron Party. We do know that the CIA does not work for us. It works for the Baron Party - the nameless and faceless - those who have no need for us to know their names or show their face because so many people do their bidding and do show their faces like Cheney, Casey, Bush (both), Tenet, Goss, etc.

With each day we know more and in that way we may reach what Sahl is writing about.

We know that Latin America has suffered from the IMF, World Bank, the banking system, crooked leaders, US State policies, CIA, our military, and our and multi-national corporations. Now, they seem to be taking a stand. Maybe they will show us the way.

All praise to those who've had enough. Who knows though, they seem to be building prison walls all around us and they know when we have a pimple.

[DrDebug]

9. The alphabet agencies are their arms and eyes

Since 1963 the strength of the CIA and all the alphabets its spawned has continued to increase until the current quagmire. In a way it has become a willow with a 1,000 branches with many carefully hidden behind a facade and they keep adding new agencies like the Department of Heimland Sicherheit which was spawned and created by the neocons because they didn't have an equivalent of MI5, so they just created one.

The top of the hierarchy still consists of clans who noticed that the best way to control the world is by controlling the economy and make politics their tool to exert control. The cleans have kept their fortune in the clan for centuries and just want to keep and expand it. The trick is to keep themselves hidden from view a bit and let others do the bidding for them and have secret agencies to ensure that they remain in power.

In a way it are just a hunderd at the top and as we all know that fame and fortune doesn't make for happy people, because they are severely unhappy. The problem is that if you have everything, the only way is down, because the chances of losing are many times greater than the chances of winning. The only way to prevent that is by imposing fascism which is exactly what is happening.

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
- John Lennon

"I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."
- General Smedley Butler, War is a Racket (1935)

[Greeby]

7. National Security Action Memos 55, 56 and 57

"In 1961, right after the Bay of Pigs. Very few people know about this. I particpated in the drawing up of National Security Action Memos 55, 56 and 57. These are crucial documents, classified top secret. But basically in them. Kennedy instructs General Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs that from here on forward: The Joint Chiefs would be wholly responsible for all covert paramilitary action in peacetime. This basically ended the reign of the CIA. Splintered it, as JFK promised he would, into a thousand pieces. And now he was ordering the military to help him do it. This was unprecendented, I can't tell you the shockwaves that that this set off in the corridors of power in Washington." X from JFK (1991)

Typed up from the following Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9_AF7duS0

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. Wow. That video clip.

[rman]

8. He tried - little did he realize

just how powerful the agency is.

[happydreams]

10. And the guy he fired, Allen Dulles, mysteriously ended up

on the Warren Commission and guided it toward the lone gunman theory.