Tracing the history of mind-control experimentation by the US and its allies from World War II onward, Michael Le Flem reveals the depth and extent of human behavioral programming undertaken for more than two decades by the CIA, which, as has come more and more to light, nearly certainly furnishes the backdrop against which we should understand Sirhan's actions on June 5, 1968.

The history of the Vietnam War is invariably delineated by historians as a continuum of escalating involvement from the administrations of Eisenhower through Nixon. This essay by Prof. Norwood challenges that notion by demonstrating how the vision of John F. Kennedy was consistently and vehemently opposed to conventional warfare there.

As with many things, Jim Garrison was the first investigator to elucidate a three-sided conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, the three participants being the CIA, the Cuban exiles, and the Mob. He had done this unearthing during his inquiry, but he formally announced it in a famous cover story for New Orleans Magazine in 1976. The Church Committee's exposure of the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro filled this in with the figures of John Roselli and Santo Trafficante. And it also outlined the close relationship between CIA officer Bill Harvey and Roselli. Tony Summers made this triangular plot a feature of his book Conspiracy, first published in 1980. In the nineties, Fidel Castro's chief of security, Fabian Escalante, began to publish and speak on the subject of JFK's murder and he also advocated for this view of the plot.

Paul Bleau here synthesizes the decades-long history of cooperation between Cubans, organized crime, U.S. intelligence and corporate interests, and expands it into what amounts to a visual essay in order to dispel the notion that such a partnership was too complicated to have been behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

Michael Le Flem elucidates the terrible power play that engulfed Congo and took the life of Patrice Lumumba with it. With the newest information, he shows us how a democratically elected, constitutional government was wrecked by Belgium and the CIA before it got off the ground.

Michael Le Flem finds this brief book on one of the most important figures in the history of United States psychological warfare and propaganda, Time-Life managing director C.D. Jackson, an engaging, nuanced and timely addition to Cold War historiography.

One of the lesser appreciated programs instituted by President Kennedy, the Alliance for Progress, intended as a way of freeing Latin America from the yoke of U.S. and European entrepreneurial exploitation, encouraging its economic independence and broadening political participation and self-determination, like nearly all of his foreign policy strategies, met with hostility at home and was reversed subsequent to his assassination, as author Michael Le Flem discusses.

Part 2 of the interview by David Giglio of Our Hidden History with Jim DiEugenio, covering 1963-1975.

The following interview was conducted by David Giglio of Our Hidden History with Jim DiEugenio about his four part review of the Burns/Novick PBS documentary The Vietnam War. But it goes beyond the material in that series and uses information recently declassified by NARA.  Part 1 covers 1945-1963. (Click on the image for the audio.)

By Vincent Bevins, at: The Atlantic

The best evidence for the triumph of neoconservatism, including over PBS, is to compare the 1983 series, Vietnam: A Television History, with the Burns/Novick version. The former is more honest, more hard-hitting, and more complete on the facts of the war. In a very real way, that comparison tells us how the Nixon/Kissinger view of Vietnam and the world eventually eclipsed JFK's, concludes Jim DiEugenio.