One range of topics that I plan to write about at Substack is the USA’s relationship with various nations. I am certainly no foreign policy maven, but I have studied the subject, in various ways, ever since I began writing publicly in 1991. I also have strange personal connections to American foreign policy, beginning with my first mentor and the Vietnam War. But it also goes further back than that, as one grandfather served in World War I, the other served in World War II, and my father served in Korea before I was born. My brothers, uncles, and cousins were soldiers, and I nearly became one myself. Also, a close relative was a contract CIA agent who worked for Henry Kissinger, who nearly tried to recruit me into the “business.”
When I hit the books in 1990, after my life had been ruined by my free-energy revolutionary days, among the first subjects that I studied was American imperial behavior, as the war drums beat over Iraq. I began studying the work of Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, and Howard Zinn. I eventually corresponded with all of them and became Ed’s biographer. I read Ralph McGehee’s CIA memoirs and became his friend. None of them had anything nice to say about American foreign policy and they are all in my pantheon. It is easy to criticize other nations, but it is heroic to criticize one’s own, especially as it goes on imperial rampages and tries to silence dissent.
Noam, Ed, and Howard are/were Jewish. Noam and Ed in particular criticized Israel, which they felt a duty to do as Jews and Americans. I also have an odd connection to Israel and the JFK assassination, as the former policeman, Gary Wean, whose advice was critical in my springing my partner from jail, originated the “Israel did it” hypothesis of the JFK assassination. I am the only person on the Internet carrying Gary’s torch, so I have been in the middle of the JFK-assassination issue for a generation. As Israel commits genocide in Gaza and threatens to ignite a regional war that could lead to World War III (although our efforts in Ukraine seem likelier to accomplish that today), it is time to write about Israel a little.
There is a lot to unpack, but I’ll give a very brief account in this post and the next one. I have studied World War II and the Jewish Holocaust far too much over the years. What spurred me to write my war essay was watching Saving Private Ryan in 1998. I decided to help deflate American mythology around World War II, which is considered the USA’s “good war” to this day. I spent the summer of 1999 writing my war essay, and the emotional strain of it damaged my marriage and initiated my midlife crisis. To this day, I keep reading about Hitler and the Nazis, the Jewish Holocaust, and related topics. That probably will not end in my lifetime, and I am not sure what the attraction is.
The Jewish people have had a very rough ride over the millennia, as they survived the longest persecution of an ethnic group that I am aware of, going back to their Babylonian exile. All Jewish history before then is considered largely apocryphal by today’s scholars. Jews were scattered across Eurasia for millennia. Ashkenazy Jews have the highest IQs of any ethnic group, which is thought to have resulted from selective evolutionary pressures that prized “intelligence.” But it didn’t save them from the Nazi-inflicted Holocaust, other than fortunate people such as Einstein and others who emigrated beyond continental Europe before Hitler’s epic crimes were committed. Jews in the USA have a long, colorful history.
One my closest childhood friends was Jewish, was probably smarter than me, and came from a relatively secular Jewish family. His mother was in the London Blitz and his sister became a Christian. During the Vietnam War, his father nearly moved the family to Australia so his sons would not be drafted. He was very skeptical of the USA’s “Land of the Free” rhetoric. My friend was picked to live up to his family’s Jewish ideal of “my son the doctor,” but became a pharmacist instead. Most American Jews ended up on the East or West Coasts, and I knew many in my lifetime, as friends and colleagues. But none of them were radicals like Noam, Ed, and Howard were. Few Americans of any stripe are.
For all of the racism and bigotry that I was raised with, it was mostly directed at blacks and Hispanics, not Jews or Asians or Middle Easterners so much. Then I had my wild ride with Dennis Lee, and Gary’s advice was critical to the greatest miracle that I ever witnessed. Gary was no scholar, and his book was a cousin to the first book that Dennis wrote from behind bars: a chronicling of his odyssey, when he was slowed down long enough to write it. His reporting of his conversation with John Tower about the JFK hit has stood the test of time, and a major theme of his book was his run-ins with Jewish gangsters. They ruined his life and tried to kill him at least once.
One of Gary’s first jobs at the LAPD was putting Mickey Cohen under surveillance. Cohen was a Jewish mobster who ran the LA crime scene. Cohen began his career working for Al Capone and was close to Bugsy Siegel. One of Cohen’s protégés became a federal court judge, which was apparently common with Jewish organized crime. The original Watergate attorney contacted me about that judge several years ago. One of Cohen’s close associates was the terrorist Menachem Begin, who eventually became Israel’s prime minister and even won a Nobel Peace Prize, of all things. Cohen was also a close associate of Jack Ruby, who was not the small-time nightclub owner that the Warren Commission portrayed him as, but was a prominent Jewish mobster. Ruby also worked for Capone early in his career.
That situation is where the “Israel did it” hypothesis for the JFK hit has plausibility to me. When Gary had Cohen and Begin under surveillance, they were obsessed with JFK, and Cohen was behind introducing Marilyn Monroe to JFK, as part of an influence peddling and blackmail scheme. Intending to blackmail the sitting president took some brass. Israel was definitely a beneficiary of the JFK hit, but plenty of other interests wanted him dead, and my money is on the MIC and the Eastern Oligarchy, and the Rockefellers in particular. But who accomplished the JFK hit is not that important to me. What is important is that with JFK’s murder, the American presidency was permanently demoted. The clear message to all presidential aspirants was: “You are expendable.” All presidents since JFK were puppets and knew it.
I’ll end this post here, and the next one will be about Israel and my days of study, including what is happening today.