The Assassination and Mrs. Paine

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This article describes the unusual beliefs of one of Max Good's "featured" experts:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-assassination-and-mrs-paine-strange.html

Strange understates it. He makes Garrison seem reasonable.

So his evidence, in part, that Michael Paine - not Ruth but Michael - was involved is this:

"His [Michael's] father was George Lyman Paine, a leading Trotskyian of the West Coast. Michael Paine works for Bell Helicopter. That’s secret clearance! You don’t get that without a quid pro quo! He’s an agent! You know that immediately."

Well, try and untangle that gibberish. Let's see Paine's father was a Trotskyite and that means he, Michael was what exactly? How does that connect him to the assassination? And you don't get a security clearance without a "quid pro quo"? From who? What's the quo? What do you get? Lots of people who work on government programs get security clearances. It's required. That doesn't make them agents; and agent for who, the CIA, the Pentagon?

This is not strange, it's insane. Typical Garrisonite conspiracy thinking. But I think even Garrison had his limits.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Strange understates it. He makes Garrison seem reasonable.

So his evidence, in part, that Michael Paine - not Ruth but Michael - was involved is this:

"His [Michael's] father was George Lyman Paine, a leading Trotskyian of the West Coast. Michael Paine works for Bell Helicopter. That’s secret clearance! You don’t get that without a quid pro quo! He’s an agent! You know that immediately."

Well, try and untangle that gibberish. Let's see Paine's father was a Trotskyite and that means he, Michael was what exactly? How does that connect him to the assassination? And you don't get a security clearance without a "quid pro quo"? From who? What's the quo? What do you get? Lots of people who work on government programs get security clearances. It's required. That doesn't make them agents; and agent for who, the CIA, the Pentagon?

This is not strange, it's insane. Typical Garrisonite conspiracy thinking. But I think even Garrison had his limits.

Wasn't it JFK who said "we're in nut country now?" That's the way I felt when I read Salandria's piece. He is often held up as this amazing guy who wrote all these great articles, but I don't see it. I'm sure he was a smart and good man but that's where it ends for me.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Wasn't it JFK who said "we're in nut country now?" That's the way I felt when I read Salandria's piece. He is often held up as this amazing guy who wrote all these great articles, but I don't see it. I'm sure he was a smart and good man but that's where it ends for me.

I've also heard/read about Salandria as being one of the "wise men" of the conspiracy movement, an accomplished lawyer and serious person and not some guy in his underwear in his basement staring at photos of the assassination and seeing Howard Hunt or Lansdale or George Bush lurking in the background. Then we read these claims from him? His reasoning. It's bizarre. It's an indicator of how they've gone off the rails if he and his thinking is considered the gold standard.

To them and to Salandria, it's not about the assassination, the actual shooting; it's about the subversion of democracy, about how JFK threatened the "real rulers" of America and it was for that that he was struck down. Stone captured this thinking perfectly with his movie (of course, it's his thinking too). So they search and search for evidence that supports this view. Some CIA operation, some Cold War intrigue, some figure....anything that they jam into their explanation.

Anything here meaning roles (and not minor ones either) for Michael and Ruth Paine in the assassination. They must - they just must - fit into this somehow. But to do so we have these claims about Trotsky and security clearances and quid pro quos and Ruth's note taking and her sister and a calendar and this or that meaningless "factoid". To us it's nothing; but to a conspiracy mind it has to be evidence of something more. There are no innocent explanations. There are never innocent explanations. There can't be innocent explanations. Otherwise this house of conspiracy cards falls apart.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Good analysis Steve.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Good analysis Steve.

As you know, this is often like re-fighting the Cold War and debating the legitimacy of the US's response to the Soviets. The conspiracy believers (certainly the Garrison believers like Stone et al.) think all of those post-war actions were unjustified, that they were done by essentially fascists who used the imagined threat from Moscow to hijack America and attain power. JFK threatened them and their power and they killed him in response.

Then everything is reverse engineered from this vieow to prove their conspiracy.

Things large and small are used to support it: Michael had a security clearance that shows he was an agent, Ruth went to Nicaragua to monitor pro-Sandinistas, David Phillips was seen with Oswald who he controlled, JFK was going to leave Vietnam, normalize relations with Castro, dismantle the CIA....these are the big things and the small ones that are all evidence of the conspiracy.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Are some critics of Ruth Paine prejudiced?

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-assassination-and-mrs-paine-are.html

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Are some critics of Ruth Paine prejudiced?

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-assassination-and-mrs-paine-are.html

Where did David Talbot come up with the evidence for this claim?:

"I interviewed both Michael and Ruth Paine for my book The Devil's Chessboard. As I wrote, they were both well-known to former CIA spymaster Allen Dulles, who made a practice of using "white mice" like them."

Where is the evidence that the Paines were "well-known" to Dulles? A Quaker housewife in Ft. Worth, Texas was "well known" to Dulles? "White mice" means what here? I'm not familiar with that term.

I know I'm repeating myself but this is the problem with the JFK assassination conspiracists, the political types who see the Cold War as a lie. Talbot is a text book leftwinger, an anti- anti-communist like Oliver Stone who sees a sinister "secret state" running American foreign policy (and some domestic) during the Cold War. In this version the threat from the Soviets was an illusion, a fable foisted on the American people and used by these fascist like people for power. They really do think the Cold War was caused by us and not Moscow. Morley, Oliver Stone, Garrison and his followers.....

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Their "evidence" is that Michael Paine's mother knew Mary Bancroft who was a mistress of Dulles. But the actual evidence that Ruth or Michael knew Dulles is zero. White mice? I don't know-maybe Talbot thinks they were experiments that Dulles was running? Again-no evidence.