Critical Reaction to History Channel's JFK Declassified

John Newman:  This was embarrassing for me to watch. It's another Phil Shennon special. Get ready for the Ken Burns documentary. They are propaganda extravaganzas that RFK got his brother killed and almost set off WWIII. Journey on.

Stuart Wexler:  Reading tea leaves from the "future episodes" clips I focused on the reference to a "safe house." The only thing approaching a potential safe house I am aware of is Harlandale Street. Well from what his interview is claiming, he is going to go there but somehow finagle it to tie back to Castro, even though Alpha 66 was militantly anti-Castro. If somehow he solidifies the Harlandale angle, that would make the show somewhat worthwhile. But if all he is going to do is recycle stuff Paul H. has been saying since the early 70s, and then somehow push it back to Castro, he will be embarrassing himself.

(As Larry Haapanen said), there are many similarities between this program and the one the same team did on Hitler escaping to South America after WWII. I see many if those similarities.

1) Am alarming willingness to take credit for research and discoveries other people already made.
2) A nasty habit of jumping to the most sinister possible interpretation of anamolous events and discoveries.
3) Proceeding to the next stages and conclusions as if #2 is a "done deal"

On the other hand, HH did get access to some people, documents and facilities that no one had before, to the extent I could find in follow up investigation. I did not buy their core argument about Hitler faking his death at all, and they only pushed me from "highly doubtful" to "vaguely plausible" that someone like Martin Borman faked his death. But a tertiary argument, that escaped Nazis and Nazi sympathizers really were proactive, if perhaps delusional, about pushing for a 4th Reich, wound up being a lot more believable than I previously thought.  So I will watch the rest of the JFK series yelling at the TV and holding my nose.

Larry Hancock:  That TV show on the History channel was totally embarrassing, it’s very hard to respect anyone associated with it.especially so since all the work was done by others ages ago.

Ed Tatro writes:  The show is full of assumptions and fallacies and absurd deductions – could haves – may haves – might haves – might prove – “All the pieces are starting to fit together” ramblings.

Based on a postcard of a bull fight arena in Oswald’s possession, these guys speculate that Oswald met secretly with KGB personnel there.

They show actors playing Russians as silent, sinister characters throughout the dramatization.

They refer to the documentation that Oswald met with Valeri Kostokov to convince their audience of an Oswald/KGB plot. Moreover they give the audience the impression that this Kostikov data is newly declassified information and never researched previously by anyone in the world. They actually show the men finding out all by themselves via computer searches that “Kostin” is Kostikov with references to Department 13 and assassination squad data.

No consideration is offered to cite a motive for Oswald or for the Russians to want JFK dead. No consideration is given to consider Oswald’s actions as an intelligence representative of the US government in any fashion.

These men make reference to the story that the FBI kept meticulous records of everything in Oswald’s possession, an inaccurate assertion which implied that the FBI had conducted an honest investigation. They continually insist that the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald and any suspicious characters in Mexico City forced the Russians to cleverly meet Oswald without detection.

The History Channel has reached a new low in disinformation. The links are incredibly juvenile and fallacious in its entirety.

The preview of episode two suggests that there is a document signed by J. Edgar Hoover, (That bastion of intergrity), in which Oswald admitted that he was going to kill Kennedy. The document was flashed quickly and the threat is shown in quotation marks.

The fact that this garbage is being broadcast now just prior to the release of more previously classified documentation in the fall is no accident.

It was difficult to watch this Orwellian hogwash. But it is proof that the propaganda machine is alive and well despite the passage of nearly 54 years.

Jeff Morley :

http://jfkfacts.org/jfk-declassified-history-channel-overlooks/ - more-25095

"Declassified documents reveal that Oswald met with the Cold War enemies of the United States, both Russia and Cuba, only eight weeks before JFK’s assassination."

This claim, made by the producers of new History Channel docu-series JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, is not new. The claim may just be promotional hype for the series which begins tonight and runs through May 30. But, from long experience with JFK documentaries, my fact checking antennae are tingling.

It is not too soon to say the History Channel’s claim is potentially misleading.

What is Misleading?

JFK authors and researchers have long called attention to the importance of understanding the trip of accused assassin Lee Oswald to Mexico City six weeks before the assassination of JFK  in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Oswald, a leftist, wanted to travel to Cuba and then to the Soviet Union. Seeking a visa, Oswald spoke with various Cuban and Russian officials–some of whom were actually intelligence officers.

This is all well known. Investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez journalist Anthony Summers, and historian John Newman, among many others have written in detail about these events.

I wrote about Oswald’s encounters in Mexico City in my 2008 book, Our Man in Mexico. And I will write about them in my forthcoming biography of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton.

If presented as a revelation in 2017, the claim that Oswald met with “enemies” of the United States is a species of archaic Cold War propaganda.