Tuesday, 29 April 2014 14:58

Master Class with John Hankey, I: A Note for the Hankey Noviates

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More replies to Hankey from Seamus Coogan.


Jim DiEugenio and I had no idea what we would kick up when I wrote my first article for CTKA. Since then my name and CTKA's have been nearly synonymous with John Hankey. I do not know how I feel about that. I personally prefer that people discuss my article on James Bamford, or JFK and the MJ-12 hoax. One thing I do know is that Hankey hates being associated with Jim, CTKA, and myself. Considering how bizarre Hankey's work has been of late, I really don't know how to interpret that. This present essay was going to be short piece. But it ended up as a three-part essay discussing the latest hilarious installments in Hankey's (and Jim Fetzer's) career.


Here are the three Hankey related articles and a reply to one of Mr. Fetzer's silly articles.

"The Dark Legacy of John Hankey"

"Onwards and Downwards with John Hankey"

Hankey/DiEugenio Debate Murder Solved

DiEugenio's Review Update of "Dark Legacy"

Coogan Reply to Fetzer at Deep Politics Forum

There are another three new additions (including this) I shall link to later.


Veterans Today a new Hankey Haven

In Part I, we learn he has teamed up with Jim Fetzer and written a spectacularly ridiculous article on the silly "Veterans Today" site. We discuss his new positions and get feedback from Joseph McBride. In Part II, to celebrate the 50th last year he debated a tape recording of Jim DiEugenio and still lost the argument. Part III discusses his interpretation of the Zhou En-Lai assassination attempt and his delusions concerning Prescott Bush, whom according to Hankey, was the real power behind the CIA.

Fetzer, Hankey's Ally against CTKA Oppression

CTKA, essentially set Fetzer's JFK agenda in all of this Hankey imbroglio. And almost anything we criticize Fetzer seems to admire e.g. Philip Nelson, Russ Baker. So much so, he writes about us much at Veteran's Today. At last count, he has at least five articles defending the honor of numerous jokers we have attacked. He also has two Hankey inspired essays.

The first article "Was George Bush Involved in the Assassination of JFK?" was a belated reply to the Bush articles we have posted here. Hankey co-authored the piece with Fetzer. My reply to Mr Fetzer's lame critique is linked above. You will note that Mr Fetzer could not reply to any of my questions concerning his own argument against me. Furthermore, the reader will see Fetzer asked Jim to call me off in the very fight that he started, with his silly article.

Hankey: The Gift That Just Keeps Giving

John Hankey's central illusion revolves around a certain FBI memo which, according to him, contains mystical properties. These properties have elevated GHWB into the realms of Kennedy assassination kingpin. Nevertheless, the person who discovered it has recently challenged Hankey's interpretation of the document.

Before I get to that tasty morsel, let us explore some new Hankeyian standards.

First, perhaps in reaction to CTKA, he has dropped many of his bogus angles. To list all of the stuff he has changed since we began tracking him closely back in January 2010, is just plain boring. He is still misappropriating Mark Lane's work badly, so badly he now believes Lane's Rush to Judgement was the book that mentioned the Hunt and Bush connection. Consider the following:

"But then Mark Lane, in Rush to Judgment, did the fabulous work of demonstrating, and in fact persuading a jury, that E. Howard Hunt, a major lieutenant in the CIA's "misguided anti-Castro Cuban" program, was in Dallas and involved in the assassination. With this background - with this framework to guide the researcher-it was then possible to assemble the evidence linking Bush to Hunt."

The book he is discussing is not Rush to Judgment, It's actually Plausible Denial. If he had said this in an interview, I could understand; we all make mistakes live. What I do not understand is he actually wrote this down and has included a photo of the reprinted 1992 version. Everyone knows Rush to Judgement was based off Lane's posthumous defense brief for Oswald. Hankey's excuse will be there is some mention of the Hunt case in a new edition of Rush to Judgement. Which is ludicrous as it is hardly the book's topic. Here is a shot of his comment.

Table 1: Hunt's Trial Main Point of Rush to Judgment

seamus 01

Hankey simply does not know the contents of the book. Anyhow, what is scary is my examination of John Hankey's new angles has barely started. After this short essay, I have an interview to annotate and Bill Corson to straighten out.

Bogus George Bush, the Vengeful Nut Sack, and Ed Lansdale

Hankey now leaps onto Russ Baker's book. He is trying to pull Russ's old line about Bush using his political campaign in 1963 as a figleaf for his covert activities that day. Hankey has never really pushed this angle too heavily. Indeed, I recall he initially dismissed the Bush outside the depository angle, and I admired him for that. Yet he now clutches at straws about an old statement from Roger Craig discussing the arrest of an "Independent oil operator from Houston."

"Jim also asked me about the arrests made in Dealey Plaza that day. I told him I knew of twelve arrests, one in particular made by R. E. Vaughn of the Dallas Police Department. The man Vaughn arrested was coming from the Dal-Tex Building across from the Texas School Book Depository. The only thing which Vaughn knew about him was that he was an independent oil operator from Houston, Texas. The prisoner was taken from Vaughn by Dallas Police detectives and that was the last that he saw or heard of the suspect."

Considering how many oilmen from Houston there are to call him "Bush" is slightly selective. Indeed, Hankey's expert analysis begs some questions...

  • Vaughn offered no physical description whatsoever. How could anyone know who this man was?
  • In Hankey's debacle of a debate, he insists GHWB was arrested with a "frigging gun in his hand" departing dramatically from his VT article.
  • If Bogus Bush got arrested outside the Daltex building why is he supposedly outside the Texas School Book Depository un-cuffed.
  • Why does the blurred image not give any indication of a bloke in a suit and tie, Bogus
  • George's white shirt would have stuck out in the shadows?
  • Would Russ Baker approve of this take on his ID?
  • In the Garrison book, On the Trail of the Assassins (page 205-206). Garrison describes the arrest of two men one was arrested running out of the Daltex building was picked up by Police and disappeared. This is supposedly a panicked GHWB in Hankey land. The other man arrested was inside the building, Jim Braden, whose real name was Eugene Hale Brading. He claimed he was there on oil business and was based in LA. He was obviously lying if so why didn't bogus George give a phony business are we led to believe the police took his real name.

Hankey has now added the alleged photos of Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza that day into his lexicon. Jim DiEugenio is a little more skeptical concerning photo identifications in Dealey Plaza than I am. I have always been a little more open to the idea some images may depict Ed Lansdale and another depicting Orlando Bosch. However, I happily sit on the fence with these images, my belief in a conspiracy does not hinge on their being in these photos.

Hence, where I agree with Jim is that for every balanced observation of a suspect there are a host of irresponsible writers making all kinds of discoveries. An example of cheapening the Lansdale ID is the addition of an individual who is clearly not GHWB. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg; it seems as if every major U.S. Cold War era crook can be identified as being there, not to mention every character in the Oswald saga.

Another problem is some like to have their cake and eat it with any photo or film. A case is Fetzer's hypocritical and goofy OIP (Oswald Innocence Project). Fetzer insists upon the veracity of the Lansdale and Bush images. Yet if the conspirators supposedly rubbed Oswald's face off the steps at the TSBD (a main point of the OIP) then surely, the defacement of suspects like Lansdale and Bush to protect their identities would be a matter of routine.

Hankey rounds off another emphatically poor performance with Bruce Willis' belief in a conspiracy. This is another favourite party trick of his. Bar a celebrity having the balls to discuss the topic. Willis is cosmically irrelevant to JH premise about anything what Bruce Willis believes about a conspiracy. Yet, the maestro somehow has the temerity to call the mass of evidence we use to bury him under irrelevant?

Hooke, Lies, and Stinker

Much of this information the sophomoric Richard Hooke discussed in his laughable article "Did George Bush Coordinate a JFK Hit Team", it will be covered in my upcoming review of Phil Nelson's book. Nevertheless, he is worth a quick mention as it was Hooke's coloration of the Altgen's image that gave us the multi headed blue nut sack called Bogus George and identifying George 'W' Bush himself in Dealey Plaza! Now if that is not ridiculous enough, Hooke also claims Mac Wallace was a Skull & Bones man alongside George Bush. Hankey once had a real fetish for the Skull & Bones angle before CTKA came along.

Hooke's evidence is a photo of someone who looks vaguely similar to Wallace. After looking around, I deduced the person to be one the following individuals: John Erwin Caulkins, William James Connelly, Jr, George Cook III, Richard Elwood Jenkins, Howard Sayre Weaver, and one Richard Gerstle Mack.

Well as it turns out, I was able to contact the relatives of Mr. Gerstle Mack.

"Dick was a member of Skull and Bones and was my uncle. He is the 3rd person on the left in the Skull and Bones photo you all are speculating about." (Email Gerstle and Sloss Family Reunion 8/4/2014)

I was then given the rundown on who Gerstle Mack was. He was one of the first Jewish people to join Skull and Bones. He didn't rule the world either. He invented a baby carrier called the "Hikeapoose." The Bush family would help him out with his medical expenses in later life. Wow, he sounds, and looks like Mac Wallace doesn't he?

Hooke, a man truly qualified to stand beside Fetzer and Hankey, has no evidence of Wallace attending Yale; dare I say there is no evidence of Wallace at Yale. Furthermore, Bonesmen are all tapped from the same year. Most of the lads back in the day were blue bloods that had familial connections to previous Bones members. Wallace was born in 1921, and George in 1924. Hence, it is impossible for Wallace and Bush to have been playmates.

There is a good takedown (bar the incorrect date) of this ludicrous scenario at the "Oswald Innocence Campaign is a Fraud."

"Just long enough for him to be accepted to Yale in the first place, of which there is no proof, and then accepted into the Skull and Bones society, of which there is no proof, just long enough to be photographed for the 1947 edition of the Skull and Bones society? And then he said, okay, I got into the photograph, bye-bye, and went back to Texas? He didn't stick around and graduate from Yale? He decided the Univ of Texas at Austin was a better school?"

I could not have said it better myself.

Hankey is now trying to forge himself something of a new identity as an anti-LBJ did it researcher. Unfortunately his reputation has been ruined by his inane dabbling in the Bush zones. From what I have seen, he has been cribbing a lot of his anti-LBJ stuff from CTKA anyway. Nevertheless, this is not the point. The main issue is Fetzer's acceptance of Hankey's stance.

Addendum: John Please Read The Following

Here it is my grand finale... at least for Part I anyway.

John Hankey has long been fixated with the supposed mystical properties of the discovery by Joseph McBride of a Bush/CIA document. But Hankey has misconstrued this memo and Mark Lane's book "Plausible Denial" that published it so often and so badly, he has created his own nearly solipsisitc unvierse.

Mark Lane

Answering questions on a 2/4/2012 thread at the Education Forum Mark Lane said the following concerning Bush's non-appearance in Rush to Judgement, the Hoover/Bush memo, and E Howard Hunt's role that day.

"No, I did not mention George Herbert Walker Bush in Rush to Judgment. I did report in Plausible Denial (pp. 329-33) the facts about Bush, the former director of the CIA and later president, and his suspicious engagement which demonstrates that he had been involved in the CIA before the assassination of President Kennedy -- a statement that he falsely denied -- as well as his likely involvement during 1961 with the CIA's planned Bay of Pigs invasion. I was asked why I have not spoken much about that subject. I published it in full in the New York Times bestselling book, Plausible Denial, and I discussed it during lectures on the Kennedy Assassination. Since I was not asked by network TV to discuss anything in Plausible Denial, I did what I could."

Lane also commented on E Howard Hunt's role. Note he does not back the idea of Hunt being a sniper. Or actually being in Dealey Plaza that day despite the Trento memorandum, Lane appears to believe it was a limited hangout.

"I don't know where Hunt and Sturgis were during the shooting, but I know they were in Dallas the day before the shooting helping to plan the operation. If they had any sense of self preservation, they got out of town before the shots were fired."

Now ain't that a kick in the head for Hankey's hypothesis all based on Lane's book?

Joseph McBride

The Deep Politics Forum is a fascinating place with some crackling reseaerchers, including Joe McBride. McBride is a jouralist/author in the vein of the illustirous Jim Hougan. In The Dark Legacy of John Hankey I quoted the following from Joe:

"Bush's duties with the CIA in 1963 - whether he was an agent for example or merely an "asset" - cannot be determined from Hoover's memo."

At the DPF I emailed Joe at the start of the year and asked him about Hankey's use of the document that he (McBride) had unearthed. This is what he said in reply: "I have read the Hankey piece. It is bizarre what he has done with the information."

If you do not believe me John, contact Joe. I am sure he would love to hear about how after all the hard work he did identifying it as GHWB, that it was actually you who destroyed the idea of the memo not referring to him. Can you remember saying the following...

"I will give myself props for destroying Bush's claim that the memo did not refer to him."

Prop away John, prop, prop, prop away, and deny you ever said it.


Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Last modified on Saturday, 22 October 2016 18:16
Seamus Coogan

Seamus Coogan is one of a number of JFK assassination researchers hailing from New Zealand and Australia.  He has devoted considerable effort to ferreting out and exposing unfounded and sensationalistic or far-fetched conspiratorial hypotheses.  His most notable contributions include those on John Hankey's JFK II, on Alex Jones, and on the Majestic Papers.  He  has also reviewed numerous books for this site.

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