Tuesday, 16 May 2023 10:30

Does Tim Weiner Believe his own BS?

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Former New York Times reporter Tim Weiner is still marketing his ersatz ideas about the JFK case, which he borrowed from Warren Commission stalwart Max Holland. That concept is as phony now as it was when Holland dreamed it up well over a decade ago. Jim DiEugenio takes Tim to task again on it.


Robert Kennedy Jr. probably never expected the assassination of his uncle to take a prominent position in his campaign for the presidency. But it was almost predestined that he would be asked about the matter by some people in the media. He was, and to his credit, he did not dodge the question. On more than one occasion, including WABC Radio in New York, the query popped up. He answered honestly and courageously: He thought the CIA was complicit in the John F. Kennedy murder.

That is all that Tim Weiner needed to hear. He replied with the following tweet:

I cannot emphasize enough that this is a lie first promulgated by the KGB in 1967, and that RFK Jr is acting as a useful idiot for the Kremlin.

Hmm. Does this mean that both Ron Paul, a former candidate for the presidency , and Tucker Carlson, the former highest rated cable TV host, are also both “useful idiots” for the Kremlin? Why does Tim not say that if he thinks it’s the gospel truth?

One reason is simple: It is not true. This is a phony story put out by Warren Commission apologist Max Holland. When the ersatz Russia Gate winds were blowing, Max Holland decided to transfer the focus from Hillary Clinton and her accusations to the JFK case. And the horrid online ‘zine Daily Beast actually ran with it. I blasted Holland’s article to bits back in 2017. (Click here) I actually showed that this story itself, part of the Mitrohkin archives, was manufactured for the defecting Russian agent to curry favor with the British and American intelligence agencies he was seeking monetary rewards and solace from. Because the Mitrokhin ‘archives”, as Russian scholar Amy Knight noted, was a mildly ludicrous creation. In fact, in more than one instance, it was proven to be utterly false. But for someone like Holland, that did not matter one iota.

Tim Weiner used to write for the New York Times. He now writes for Rolling Stone. How that once proud and honest journal has fallen with his arrival. Rolling Stone was the place where Carl Bernstein published his epochal exposure of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird. (Click here) During the early days of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), Rolling Stone printed intelligent and penetrating stories about the JFK case. With the arrival of the NY Times vet, all that appears to be gone.

For this is the second time in less than 17 months that Weiner has trotted out this mildewed and utterly false story to detract attention from any real examination of the true circumstances surrounding the JFK case. Tim, why not answer these questions for us?

  1. Would the Magic Bullet, CE 399, ever be admitted into any court in America after a pre-trial evidentiary hearing?
  2. What happened to the baseball sized hole that disappeared from the back of JFK’s head, the one that 41 people saw and some drew pictures of for the HSCA?
  3. If Oswald killed Kennedy, as you seem to imply, why did none of the four secretaries on the 4th floor of the Texas School Book Depository see or hear him on the only stairs leading down from the 6th floor to the first after the shooting?
  4. If the evidence in the case is solid against Oswald why did autopsy photographer John Stringer, under oath, deny he took the extant pictures of Kennedy’s brain in the National Archives?
  5. If the Warren Commission was correct, why did Admiral George Burkley tell the interviewer at the Kennedy Library in 1964 that he did not wish to comment on their verdict? Geez Tim, maybe because Burkley signed a document which placed the back wound at the level of T -3 which would make it all but impossible to exit through the throat?

So Tim, why not ask your guru Mr. Holland about these? The man who made one of the worst documentaries ever on the JFK case, The Lost Bullet. See what excuses he tosses you and how he hems and haws as he tosses them. I could go on with about 40 statements just like this one and would love to have you reply to them in open debate. But I know you would never show up. The point is this: the Warren Commission was dead wrong. And you were dead wrong when you said that well, Lee Oswald probably got off a lucky shot. How can that be Tim if the ballistics and x-ray evidence portrays Kennedy’s head shot going from front to back? Geez did Oswald run around Dealey Plaza and shoot Kennedy from front and back? Love to hear you say that with a straight face.

For the record, there were at least four people who thought the CIA was involved in the JFK murder before Tim says the KGB put out a story about it. The first one was Bobby Kennedy. Within momnets of hearing his brother had been killed, he called John McCone, the CIA Director, and asked him if his agency was involved in this horror. One can read all about that in David Talbot’s book, Brothers. It is shocking to me that Weiner shows no knowledge of this at all.

After RFK, there was Los Angeles attorney Stanley Marks, German expatriate writer Joachim Joesten, and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. But beyond that, Garrison arrested CIA contract agent Clay Shaw before the alleged KGB story ever ran in the Italian leftist newspaper Paesa Sera. And let us not forget what President Johnson told his chief of staff Marvin Watson after reading the Inspector General Report on the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro, a report he commissioned from Director Richard Helms. He said that the CIA was in on the JFK murder. That deduction was based on the CIA's own report in the spring of 1967, not an Italian newspaper. (City Watch, article by Jefferson Morley, January 3, 2022)

Let me repeat that again so Tim can maybe understand it: Garrison arrested CIA contract agent Clay Shaw before the alleged KGB story ever ran in the Italian leftist newspaper Paesa Sera.

So how can Holland’s accusation be true? But beyond that, Garrison called the CIA covert security cleared Shaw in for questioning in December of 1966! (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 63). This was almost three months before the alleged KGB story ran.

In other words, there is no evidence at all that Garrison was ever influenced by the Italian article: to either suspect Shaw or to arrest the CIA agent. And if I use the terms CIA agent or covert security cleared, its because the declassified records of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) prove that Shaw was just that. (Davy, p. 95; Joan Mellen, Our Man in Haiti, p. 54). It would be nice if Rolling Stone would allow someone like myself, Oliver Stone, Jefferson Morley or John Newman to write about some of these new discoveries made by the ARRB relevant to the JFK case. But as I said, those glory days appear to be long gone for Rolling Stone.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is not the first person on the presidential campaign trail to say the Warren Commission was a pile of sludge. Al Gore did it when he was running for vice-president way back in 1992. And its an interesting story how that came about. When Gore first came to Washington as a congressman from Tennessee, he was asked a favor by a fellow Tennessean, Bud Fensterwald. Fensterwald was an attorney and founder of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington. He asked Gore for just a stretch of time—about 45 minutes every Friday—before he flew back to Tennessee. Bud asked Gore to drop by his office at that time and he would have some documents arrayed on a desk for him to read. He would not consult with him about them, he just wanted him to read them.

Congressman Gore agreed to the arrangement. After about a year Gore told Fensterwald: “You are correct. It was a conspiracy.’ And Gore never went back on this. In fact he said as much during that 1992 campaign. So by that accounting—Gore, Paul, and RFK Jr.—that makes three candidates for office who agreed the Warren Report is and was bunk.

One last point about RFK Jr. If Tim Weiner was a real reporter—which he is not on this case—he would have done something elementary to any journalism 101 class. He would have called Bobby up and asked him how he came to such a conclusion. Bobby would have told him what he told me. He was giving a speech in the New York area and was waiting in the green room to be called on stage. He noticed that Jim Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable was in the bookshelf. He read a few pages and later on he ordered the book. Like many people who have read that book he was duly impressed. So much so that he ended up calling Jim Douglass. Bobby was struck by Jim’s emphasis on Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University in the summer of 1963. So much so that the two ended up working on a very interesting article. It was called “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace”.

I saved the punchline for last. It was published in Rolling Stone on November 20. 2013. Would that happen today? I doubt it.

Last modified on Wednesday, 17 May 2023 15:43
James DiEugenio

One of the most respected researchers and writers on the political assassinations of the 1960s, Jim DiEugenio is the author of two books, Destiny Betrayed (1992/2012) and The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today (2018), co-author of The Assassinations, and co-edited Probe Magazine (1993-2000).   See "About Us" for a fuller bio.

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