Vince and Arlen, both high profile Philadelphia lawyers, were often at odds, especially over the Warren Report, which Arlen Specter helped write, and which Vince Salandria dismissed as the blatant cover-up of a state crime - the assassination of the President. After nearly a half-century of intense and often bitter bickering, shortly before Specter died, he met Salandria for dinner at a Philadelphia restaurant and they decided to bury the hatchet. No sense carrying this feud into eternity.
The late Arlen Specter in Philadelphia
Vince Salandria Forgives Arlen Specter - and Thanks Him for Saving the World and His Life.
Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012 by Vincent Salandria
John Judge
This thoughtful and provocative piece comes from an early
and brilliant Warren Commission critic and lawyer Vincent Salandria, author of False Mystery, which he introduced as
the Keynote speaker at the Dallas COPA conference.
He has taken the position for years that the visible facts
in the case were transparent from the start, without ever being officially
confirmed. In his view, we already know who killed President Kennedy and why,
but to admit that to ourselves would lead to an imperative for action with
unknown consequences. He continues these themes in this recent piece sent to us
for public consumption.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania
passed away recently after a long battle with cancer and never recanted his
conclusions about the single bullet theory he propounded for the Warren
Commission to explain multiple wounds in President Kennedy and John Connally on
November 22, 1963 .
-
John Judge
On
We met, shook hands, and seated ourselves at a table. I thanked him for suggesting having lunch with me.
I told him that I viewed his work on the Kennedy assassination as very likely having saved my life. I also wanted him to know that if I had been given his Warren Commission assignment, and if I knew then what I know now about power and politics in our society, I would have done what he did.
Of course, as a pacifist peace activist with socialist
leanings, such as I was and am, I would never have been selected for Specter’s
job with the Warren Commission. Arlen Specter was neither a pacifist nor a
peace activist. He was a lawyer.
I believe that Specter did not know that after the
assassination of President Kennedy he was no longer a citizen of a republic but
rather was a subject of the globally most powerful banana republic.
But if I had been chosen for his assignment, i.e. to frame Lee Harvey Oswald as Kennedy’s killer, I would have done what Specter did. As a lawyer I would have had been obligated to serve the best interests of my client, the
I told Specter that the American people could never have accepted my view of the assassination as a covert military-intelligence activity supported by the
The
If the
Oswald, a
Specter asked me what I thought was the reason for the assassination. In reply I asked whether he had read the correspondence between President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. He had not. I explained that my reading of the correspondence convinced me that Kennedy and Khrushchev had grown very fond of one another. I saw them as seeking to end the Cold War in the area of military confrontation. They were in my judgment seeking to change the Cold War into a peaceful competition on an economic rather than military basis, testing the relative merits of a free market and command economy. I saw the
I told him that I concluded that there was also a conflict between Kennedy and our military on the issue of escalation in
I said that I believed the assassination was committed at the behest of the highest levels of
I explained that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the
Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot. We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth. In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth.
Specter uniformly maintained a courteous, serious and respectful demeanor, as did I. He asked me whether I had talked to
At that dinner I informed Lane that I was interested in Oswald as a likely
I did say that later, Lane got a jury to decide for Lane’s
client who had said that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas
on the date of the Kennedy assassination. Lane’s client had been sued for
libel. He described the case in his 1991 book Plausible Denial.
In 1964, after his work with the Warren Commission was completed, Specter had been honored for this association at a meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He asked me what I remembered about that event. I told him that I attended with my copy of the Warren Report and directed some questions at him regarding the shots, trajectories and wounds in the Kennedy assassination. After the meeting some of my colleagues at the bar asked me to write an article. That night I did so. I sent the article to Theodore Vorhees, the Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and asked him to have it published. He sent it back and asked me to tone it down. I did so. He got it published in The Legal Intelligencer.
Specter recalled that in our confrontation I had accused him of corruption. He said that he had asked me at that time whether I would change the charge to incompetency. I had refused. I told him that I could not change it to incompetency because I knew then from his public record, as I know now, that he was not incompetent. My charge was reiterated in the Legal Intelligencer article, which described the Warren Commission’s work as speculation conforming to none of the evidence. I said the Warren Report did not have the slightest credibility, committing errors of logic and being contrary to the laws of physics and geometry.
Specter, during our 2012 lunch, asked me whether I thought that the Warren Commission was a set up. I answered that probably not all of the Commissioners knew it was a set up, but that Dulles and Warren knew. I also told him that I thought that McGeorge Bundy was privy to the plot. Specter did not respond to this.
I explained that I did not discuss with friends my view of the assassination and my conception of how controlled our society is. I said that I did not discuss with my friends matters such as we were discussing because people are just not ready to accept my view of the assassination and the tight control over our society. I said that I had nothing to offer to people in terms of solutions to the mess we are in. I related how last year, when I had a blood condition and thought I was going to die, my big regret was the mess of a society we were bequeathing to our children.
Specter commented: “
I offered an example of how out of control the society is. I pointed out that he had been against escalation in
I told Specter that I knew there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy notwithstanding his single-bullet theory because the holes in the custom-made shirt and suit jacket of Kennedy could not have ridden up in such a fashion to explain how a shot from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository Building, hitting Kennedy at a downward angle of roughly 17 degrees, and hitting no bone, could have exited from his necktie knot. I told him that Commission Exhibit 399 was a plant.
I admitted that I had coached Gaeton Fonzi before his interview with him on the questions that he should ask Specter. Specter asked me where Fonzi is. I told him that he lives in
I told Specter that my very smart wife does not accept my political thinking regarding the nature of the power in control of the country and the world. Specter asked me about my wife. I told him that she is Jewish. She is a graduate of
I suggested to Specter that he was selected to perform the hardest assignment of the Warren Commission because he was a Jew. The government could have selected a right WASP lawyer for the job. I said that I had received less criticism for my work on the assassination than he had received for his work on the Commission and as Senator. He related how in
So how is it that Arlen Specter’s work on the Warren Commission saved my life? If I had been successful in arousing public opposition to the
The Warren Report quieted the public. And as it developed, I was completely ineffective. There was no need to dispose of me. So, I consider my life was saved by the effectiveness of Arlen Specter’s work and the ineffectiveness of my own.
As we were leaving the Oyster House I gave Specter a copy of James W. Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable. I said it was the best book on the assassination, and that it was dedicated to a friend of mine and me.
Specter was smiling broadly as we left. I told him that he had a great smile, but that he did not sport it often in public. I asked him whether he was in good health. He said he was, and seemed optimistic about his well-being. I don’t know whether he was then aware of his illness. In dealing with his protracted struggle against very serious afflictions he displayed remarkable fight and courage.
Knowing what I know now, and being then, as now, committed to historical truth, I would have not changed my earliest statement that the Kennedy assassination was a crime of the
I know now that the U.S.
public never did want to accept the U.S.
warfare state as the criminal institutional structure that it is. I know now,
that even if the U.S. public ever was ready to accept the true historical
meaning of the Kennedy assassination, that there are and have been no
institutional structures open to them with which they could hope to countervail
successfully the Kennedy killers, the enormous power of the U.S. empire and its
warfare state.
I know that my efforts to convince people to oppose Kennedy’s assassins were feckless.
But was the effort of a small community of people to
establish the historical truth of the Kennedy assassination valueless? I think
not. I feel that historical truth is the polestar which guides humankind when
we grope for an accurate diagnosis of a crisis. Without historical truth, an
accurate diagnosis of the nature and cause of crisis, we would have no
direction on how to move to solve societal disease.
Knowing what I know now, would I change my harsh criticisms of Arlen Specter?
Yes, I would.
Specter was a superior lawyer who enlisted his services to
the U.S.
government. The Warren Commission Report, through its lies, served to calm the U.S.
public in a period of great crisis. If any serious domestic or foreign effort
had been made to counter the coup, the weaponry commanded by the state
criminals would have resulted in catastrophic loss of life.
Therefore, in my judgment of Arlen Specter I defer to the
wisdom of Sophocles, who said: “Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; but where
truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably is pardonable.”
Vincent Salandria bio
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