Bari Weiss, Eli Lake and JFK

That is some Free Press Bari

Bari Weiss, a staunch Zionist, began her career in journalism working for Haaretz and The Forward. She then moved over and became an editor at Tablet. In 2013 she became an op-ed and book review editor at the Wall Street Journal. In 2017 she left for the New York Times. There, she wrote about culture and politics and again was an op-ed editor.

While at the Times, she wrote several controversial columns, perhaps the most notable being “We’re All Fascists Now”. This criticized the left for being too critical of alternate viewpoints. That article had to be corrected because Weiss used a fake antifa Twitter account, one which had been previously exposed, at least a year earlier. (Alana Horowitz Satlin, Huffpost, 3/8/18) When editorial page editor James Bennet resigned after a thousand employees protested his publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s editorial urging the military to put down Black Lives Matter protests, Weiss quit five weeks later. She complained about pressures inside and outside the office over her work, particularly on Twitter. And how the Times failed to defend her.

In 2021, she compared what she had gone through to the travails of Galileo who was forced to recant his theory of the solar system by religious and political forces.(Financial Times, 10/22/2021) Let us not forget: Galileo was forced to deny that the sun was the center of the universe; his book on the subject was banned and future publication of his work was forbidden; and he was given a prison term which was later changed to house arrest, which he served under for the rest of his life. Pretty elevated company for a newspaper reporter.

She then went to work for the German newspaper Die Welt. She also opened up a Substack newsletter which came to be called The Free Press. This became a media company which today has about 25 staffers in New York and Los Angeles. It also has over 100,000 paid subscribers. (Sara Fischer, Axios, 12/10/24)

Eli Lake has worked for, among others, The Daily Beast and Newsweek. According to Ken Silverstein, Lake supported the mistaken belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the American invasion. (Harper’s, 8/20/13). In 2017, Lake was fooled by congressman Devin Nunes as to his source about journalistic errors concerning the Trump transition. The report did not come from an intel agency. It came from the White House. (Peter Weber, The Week, 3/31/17). Lake is a contributing editor to The Free Press. Through him, on February 19^th we got an example of journalism there.

The title of Lake’s long essay, which originated as a podcast, was “Why We’re Obsessed with JFK Conspiracies.” In tracing President Trump’s recent signing of an executive order on the JFK case, Lake used that order to begin an attack on Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. In doing so, he mischaracterizes both the film and the origins of the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act. He says for example that the film states that the entire US government was in on the plot to kill Kennedy. This is a mildewed charge which fails to differentiate between the plot and the cover up. For example, the film shows how the FBI participated in the latter. It also shows how the military participated in the cover up through its presence at the autopsy. But the film depicts the actual plot itself to be carried out by the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans. Several times during the film, Stone prefaces sequences as speculation. And parts of the long sequence with Mr. X in Washington--brilliantly played by the late Donald Sutherland—are clearly denoted as such.

But today, no informed person would deny that the FBI enlisted in the cover up almost immediately. Just look what they did with Lee Oswald’s activities in New Orleans. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 310-17) Or in the alleged General Walker shooting incident. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, pp. 49-59). And can anyone deny Col. Pierre FInck’s sworn testimony in New Orleans which clearly stated that the military brass at the autopsy interfered with the work the pathologists were supposed to be doing? (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second edition, pp.300-04) Perhaps this explains why neither bullet wound in Kennedy was dissected; when no less than Dr. Henry Lee told both myself and Oliver Stone this should have been done. Because without it one cannot determine bullet trajectory. (Pre-interview with Lee in Malibu by the author, and also interview outtake for the film JFK Revisited.)

As I demonstrated in a scene by scene analysis, in light of the declassified record, Stone and his co-writer Zach Sklar largely understated their evidence. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 189-94). Today, to use just two examples, the film would be even stronger in the areas of Kennedy’s intent to withdraw from Vietnam, and the horrible excuse for an autopsy. Both of these are dealt with in annotated form in the book accompanying Stone’s two documentaries. That book is entitled JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. I did not see any reference to the book or the films in Lake’s rather long essay.

In dealing with the origins of the JFK Records Collection Act, Lake talks about the hearings before Congress. And he does now differentiate, with Stone’s testimony, between the actual plot and the cover up. But he ignores the fact that there were more witnesses there than just Oliver Stone, e. g. Robert Blakey, Howard Willens, Louis Stokes, Herbert Parmet. And he also does not mention the fact that the legislation passed overwhelmingly.

But, more importantly, Lake does not delineate precisely how those hearings originated. At the end of Stone’s film, he attached a crawler which said that the files of the last inquiry into Kennedy’s death, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), are closed until the year 2029. This surprised and outraged many people. Why should the public have to wait 66 years to read all the information that the government had on the JFK murder? Made aware of this fact, they bombarded Washington with phone calls, faxes, letters and telegrams. This forced their elected representatives to take action. In other words, it was the citizenry of the USA who were behind this movement for government openness. That is somehow a bad thing?

And Trump should not have had to sign that recent executive order at all. Why? Because he should have declassified it all in 2017 as required by the original legislation. He backed down in the face of Mike Pompeo and the CIA. He was reminded of his failure by people like Andrew Napolitano and Joe Rogen. And they helped force his about face.

But in a belated discovery by attorney Andrew Iler, it turns out that all the files should have been declassified in 2017, when the act said they should have been. Why? Because before their term expired, the Board had issued Final Determinations as to when certain classified files should be opened. In other words, Trump did not have to extend the time limit like he did in 2017. The National Archives should have alerted him to this fact and quite legally he should have let everything go in October, 2017 as the JFK Act specified. One wonders: did Lake interview anyone for this article? Does he even know who people like John Tunheim and Jeremy Gunn of the Assassination Records Review Board are? Because they were given the task of carrying out the JFK Act. Andrew Iler interviewed them both.

About a third of the way through his essay, Lake says he thinks Oswald killed Kennedy alone. He admits that Oswald protested his innocence, that he had defected to the USSR, and Jack Ruby shockingly shot him on Sunday, November 24^th. He then adds that Ruby, being part of the Dallas underworld, started off the first stream of JFK theories, namely the Mafia did it. Which is not really true. The first theorizing was that the rightwing did it, e.g. author Thomas Buchanan. The second, much more popular one, was the CIA did it. This was fostered by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison and attorney Mark Lane. But in support of this Mob did it aspect, Lake writes that the Mafia helped get JFK elected in 1960, thinking he would support the overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba. This is false on both counts. As Professor John Binder and author Dan Fleming have shown, the rumors about the Mafia aiding Kennedy in the West Virginia primary and the Chicago general election are false. And Kennedy had two opportunities to overthrow Castro, during the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis. He did not.

Incredibly, Lake uses Gerald Posner’s discredited book Case Closed to show ”conclusively that Oswald fired the shot that killed the president” If one consults the book JFK Revisited, or the long version of Stone’s film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, the reader will see strong evidence that 1.) The fatal shot came from the front, and 2.) The idea that Oswald owned the rifle in evidence is dubious. And for anyone to believe the efficacy of CE 399, the Magic Bullet today, that is simply inexplicable. But if your agenda is to agree with the Warren Report, well I guess you have to.

Needless to say, Lake states that Oswald was a real communist. Without noting that, in the Warren Commission, there is the famous pamphlet by Thomas Lamont which Oswald was passing out in New Orleans. Hand stamped on that document was the address 544 Camp Street—which housed the offices of rightwing extremist Guy Banister. Several witnesses placed Oswald there and with Banister. (Destiny Betrayed, pp. 111-12). This crucial fact was covered up by the FBI, but Jim Garrison discovered it by walking down to the Camp Street address, as depicted in Stone’s film.

The question then becomes: What would a communist be doing in the midst of a bunch of rightwing loonies? If you do not describe the evidence you can avoid the question. But many people think that Oswald was really an agent provocateur. And this fits in with declassified files discovered by John Newman, proving that the CIA and FBI ran discrediting and infiltration campaigns against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Of which Oswald was the only member in New Orleans.

Lake then tries to imply that somehow Bobby Kennedy was in charge of Operation Mongoose—he uses the word “oversaw”--and also that part of its agenda was to kill Castro. The two men in charge of that operation—who Lake fails to mention-- were Colonel Ed Lansdale and CIA officer Ted Shackley. Shackley ran the day to day operations out of the CIA station in Florida, called JM/WAVE. And the declassified files reveal no plot to murder Castro with Mongoose. That was a separate operation run by the CIA itself. The ARRB declassified the Agency’s own Inspector General Report on those secret plots. There, on pages 132-33, one can read that they admit there was no presidential authorization for these plots--by Kennedy or anyone else.

A crucial point Lake leaves out about all this is the following. When President Johnson saw this report, given to him by CIA Director Richard Helms, it dawned on him that the Agency was likely involved with the plot to kill President Kennedy. (Washington Post, December 12, 1977). This is about the time that the man Lake tries to caricature, Jim Garrison, is thinking the same thing.

Lake also leaves out the inquiry of the official who was the original investigator into the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. That was Attorney General Robert Kennedy. When the AG heard his brother had been killed--after consulting with personal assistants and a Secret Service agent on the scene--he concluded there was a crossfire in Dealey Plaza. He immediately began investigating the CIA, the Cuban exiles and organized crime. (David Talbot, Brothers, pp. 3-12).

About a week later, RFK and Jackie Kennedy sent a message to Moscow through their representative William Walton. Walton was to tell the Russians that they knew a large rightwing conspiracy had killed JFK and Dallas was the perfect venue for such a crime. The message continued that Lyndon Johnson was too business friendly to continue John Kennedy’s attempt at détente. But Bobby would resign, then run for office, and then run for the presidency. At that time the quest would continue. (Talbot, p. 32)

Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev needed no convincing. As he told journalist Drew Pearson, he did not think Oswald did it. Fidel Castro made a speech five days after the murder saying the same. French president Charles DeGaulle knew Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy. (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pp. 566-68) That is quite a roster that agrees with both Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. Lake leaves them all out.

Message to Bari Weiss: that is some Free Press.