M.C. Piper
Final Judgment : Must Read
Wed Nov 19 14:30:01 2003
198.215.16.182

Michael Collins Piper's Response To My Critical Summary
Posted to alt.conspiracy.jfk  on 2 September 2001

To Whom It May Concern:

The Good Doctor Rahn has published a "critical summary" of the SECOND EDITION of my book FINAL JUDGMENT: THE MISSING LINK IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY on his website. He has also posted it on this newsgroup. This is my formal response.
I have a few remarks, by way of a preface to my response to Rahn, however.
I regret that, unlike Rahn, I don't have all sorts of fancy academic titles after my name (although I did get an undergraduate degree), but I do have to say, if anyone cares, that a number of well-known academics have praised my writing and research skills in other areas outside the "controversial" topics of 1) the JFK assassination and 2) U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world.
However, I suppose, that when one dares to mix the two topics, it sets a writer up for some real name-calling and heavy-duty thrashing, which is precisely what I have experienced (even from people who SAY that they are interested in "the whole story" of the JFK assassination).
I have discovered that, in some respects, you are "allowed" to place the blame on any and all possible suspects with the notable exception of Israeli intelligence which did indeed have a very good reason to want JFK out of the White House and replaced with an "Israel-friendly" president such as LBJ (a topic explored in full detail in my book, based upon the writings of the following:

1) Seymour Hersh: The Samson Option
2) Andrew and Leslie Cockburn: Dangerous Liaison
3) Avner Cohen: Israel and the Bomb
4) Stephen Green: Taking Sides

In any case, as anyone who has actually bothered to read my book from beginning to end (and that evidently doesn't include Dr. Rahn, by his own admission) knows full well, I do not place absolute singular blame on the Mossad per se.
It is important to note that Rahn's review of FINAL JUDGMENT was apparently based on the second edition, printed in 1994. The second edition was 335 pages in length and had 677 footnotes. The fifth edition of the book, released in 2000, is a grand total of 760 pages, featuring 1114 footnotes, along with 36 pages of pictures and illustrations.
(One of the illustrations photographically reproduces hand-written attacks on JFK by "Si" Kenan, one of the founders of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee--AIPAC--the lobby for Israel. These personal documents of Kenan, which are in safe storage, were literally slipped through my office mail-slot just before the fifth edition went to press.
Accompanying the anti-JFK ravings were other personal documents of Kenan (dating back to 1976) which verify that the handwriting and the documents were his--or otherwise they are very masterful forgeries of a wide-ranging number of documents, even including personal financial records of Mr. Kenan. I have to believe that the documents must have been grabbed by some intelligence agency, possibly the CIA or even Mossad or God knows who, and that after someone heard about my book they decided to provide them to me.
The very existence of these documents PROVES that the israeli lobby was hostile to JFK, contrary to the general perception--even among some JFK assassination researchers--that JFK was a "fan" of Israel of some sort.
In any event, Mr. Rahn has obviously not seen the substantially larger and enhanced FIFTH edition of FINAL JUDGMENT, which brings to a total some 30,000 copies of all editions of the book now in circulation. I am going to send him a complimentary copy of the FIFTH edition in hopes that he will read it from beginning to end, rather than dismiss it with a sarcastic comment about my mother as he does in his "critical summary" below.
Now, let's look at this "critical summary" of FINAL JUDGMENT.
Mr. Rahn writes:

CRITICAL SUMMARY

"Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Controversy"
Michael Collins Piper (1993) The Wolfe Press, Washington, 335 pp.

There are four basic things about this strange book
PIPER RESPONDS: The use of the word "strange" is an obvious attempt to bias the reader of the summary in the first place. However, Webster's Third New International Dictionary says that strange can mean "new, unfamiliar" "not before known, heard or seen." In that regard Rahn is correct, because FINAL JUDGMENT is the first book ever to explore, in depth--in perhaps excrucating detail, more than anyone really wants to know--the theory that Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, played a hand alongside the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Crime Syndicate (which includes the subset known as "the Mafia") in the assassination of President Kennedy.

that every student of the JFK assassination should know. First, it proposes that Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad was the driving force behind the assassination.
PIPER RESPONDS: Yet, Rahn does not point out that the book explores the Mossad and Israeli lobby connections of many of the key, commonly "recognized" players in many of the diverse JFK assassination theories. That is what I call "the tie that binds" in the assassination conspiracy: the fact that so many people, in the CIA, the "right wing," the military-industrial complex, the FBI, and organized crime (often incorrectly called "the Mafia") had intimate and significant ties to the Mossad.

Second, the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up were so large as to contain something for everybody.
PIPER RESPONDS: If Rahn had read my book--any edition of it--he would have noted in the "Conclusion" that I say precisely the opposite: that the actual numbers of participants in the planning (and execution) of the assassination were very small in number: perhaps no more than 20 people in the actual planning itself. Those whom I implicate were all closely connected at the highest levels of the CIA, the Mossad and organized crime. And the more I look at things, the less I think it is likely that commonly-accused "conspirators" such as Giancana, Marcello, and Traficante were actually directly involved in any planning whatsoever. As far as the cover-up is concerned, my book documents the little-known (but very real) connections to Israel and to Permindex (that spooky permindex) and to the Mossad of several key figures on the Warren Commission and in the major media. To say that "the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up were so large as to contain something for everybody" is quite simply a total misrepresentation of my book and its thesis.

Third, Michael Collins Piper offers not a shred of solid (physical) evidence for any of this.
PIPER RESPONDS: I have been the first to admit, from the beginning, and in the book, that there is no forensic evidence to PROVE that the Mossad had a hand in the assassination. However, there are those who will argue that there is no forensic evidence to PROVE that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed THE assassin or ONE OF the assassins. What "evidence" that does exist pinning Oswald has been dissected at length from the beginning and most people find it lacking.

And fourth, the book convinced Piper's mother.
PIPER RESPONDS: How cute of Rahn to bring my mother into this. I'm sure he uses that line with his students. It's probably good for a laugh, but it's dirty pool at the least. She was mentioned in passing in the acknowledgments to the book and as I have pointed out in response to Rahn in another posting, and as I have mentioned elsewhere, I think the fact that my mother--who is indeed my worst critic--read my book and found it convincing is significant.
Why is my mother's opinion significant?
My mother is a reasonably intelligent woman, pretty well read in a lot of areas--probably much better read than most Americans--and she has read many of the other books on the JFK assassination. When I first described my thesis to her in about six or eight sentences, she said, "I don't know about that."
Then she read the book and commented, "It makes as much sense to me as anything else I have read on the subject." And that is precisely the average comment of the average person who has read the book (and who has read other books on the subject).

Point three, the total lack of solid evidence, is a consequence of the coexistence of upwards of one hundred conspiracy theories, many of them mutually exclusive, which means that the evidence for none of them can be solid. That in turn follows from the complete absence of strong evidence for conspiracy in general in this assassination-had such evidence existed, it would have been shouted from the rooftops many years ago, and someone would have long since won a Nobel prize for it, to say nothing of reaping millions from the book and the blockbuster movie. The lack of such an occurrence should make us view each new conspiracy offering with extreme skepticism. More strongly, the total lack of hard evidence for conspiracy requires us to approach all proposals about conspiracy with the time-tested working hypothesis that they will not contain any hard evidence.
PIPER RESPONDS: This is a mouthful from Rahn. But it's all about "theories" in general and does not address ANYTHING in FINAL JUDGMENT at all. In addition, Rahn's suggestion that someone would have "shouted" from the rooftops, etc etc is highly unlikely. Anyone who really did have inside knowledge about the conspiracy was either smart enough to keep his mouth shut or was silenced.
One reader of FINAL JUDGMENT described my theory to Walter Cronkite at a personal meeting with the famed broadcaster who said, "I can't think of any group--with the exception of Israeli intelligence--that would have been able to keep the JFK assassination conspiracy under wraps for so long."
It should be noted that E. Howard Hunt privately offered a certain journalist based in Canada the "whole story" of what he knew about the JFK assassination in return for $14 million. The journalist asked Hunt why $14 million. He said: "That is what I've calculated I would need to protect myself for the rest of my natural life," or words to that effect. This incident involving Hunt has never been reported, but I got it second-hand from a well-known JFK assassination investigator who got the story from the journalist who got the offer from Hunt. The journalist in question later wrote an entertaining piece about Hunt in a recent issue of a popular magazine that left the reader to believe that Hunt was indeed "involved" or otherwise "connected to" the events surrounding the JFK assassination. The journalist did not mention Hunt's offer. It should also be noted that the journalist was working for ANOTHER publication when he first intereviewed Hunt and received the offer. The story of Hunt's offer was not mentioned in the final published article that appeared in another publication.
Anyway, the point is that at least one person has offered to "tell". There are others who contend that Frank Sturgis also gave a written confession to involvement in the assassination. In addition, Marita Lorenz says that Sturgis confessed to her. There is also the confession of James Files. There are those who doubt these stories, but if even ANYTHING any of them have said is true about their connections to the JFK assassination, then--as Rahn has said--somebody HAS shouted or otherwise "whispered"--if not from the rooftops.

As for Piper's mother, he notes that she has always been his severest critic. If Mama now believes his book, it must be true.
PIPER RESPONDS: We've already talked about my mother. Then to call her "Mama" is the ultimate. The next thing we know, Rahn will be wondering if "Mama" nursed me correctly or whether she nursed me at all. Is Rahn one of these Freudian types or something. He's starting to get absolutely Bevilaquian here! (No wonder they get along so well.)

Michael Collins Piper proposes that the Mossad was at the center of a very large conspiracy and cover-up.
PIPER RESPONDS: Again, I say that it was a very SMALL conspiracy and cover-up.

It starts with JFK during the first years of his presidency sufficiently angering the CIA, the Mafia, and Israel that they all wanted to kill him. The reasons for the anger by the CIA and the Mafia have been advanced for many years (failure to fully support the Bay of Pigs operation, wanting to make peace with Castro, and wanting to scale down the Cold War or end it entirely, etc.);
PIPER RESPONDS: Finally, Rahn got something right!

the reasons for Israel's anger have been overlooked until now, according to Piper,
PIPER RESPONDS: Note the phraseology: "according to Piper." A deliberate attempt to make it appear as though all of the documentation I provide regarding JFK's bitter relationship with David Ben-Gurion AND Ben-Gurion's successor are all just "according to Piper." No, in fact, it is according to the following sources, which I will repeat for the record:

1) Seymour Hersh: The Samson Option
2) Andrew and Leslie Cockburn: Dangerous Liaison
3) Avner Cohen: Israel and the Bomb
4) Stephen Green: Taking Sides

These books did not come out until the late 1980s and into the 1990s, so up until that time there was very little published information about JFK's relationship with Israel. So, yes, according to Piper, --and it's true-- there was very little information about JFK's relationship with Israel and therefore no one who was looking into the JFK assassination had any reason to look in the direction of Israel since many people believed the popular claim (largely put forth by the israeli lobby, that "JFK loved Israel and the Jewish people." etc etc. Sure, that's why he was determined to stop Israel from building the nuclear bomb and that's why top jewish leaders threatened to cut off his re-election money in 1964 if he didn't back off.

and center around Kennedy's desire to create a balanced Middle East policy and to thwart Israel's nuclear ambitions. Israel feared that these changes would threaten the survival of their nation.
PIPER RESPONDS: The sources cited above verify all of the things that Rahn summarizes about my foundation for the claim that the Mossad would have had an interest in removing JFK from office.

So they decided to kill him.
PIPER RESPONDS: Yes, I do believe that the Mossad did play a hand alongside the CIA and the Lansky Crime Syndicate. I believe that the Permindex grouping (well known to JFK researchers) was a part of the conspiracy and that you will find Mossad connections--intimate connections--at all relevant levels. Frank Sturgis did work for the Mossad as early as the late 1940s and well into the 1960s. Fact fact fact fact fact.

Israel turned to the Mafia to help, through kingpin Meyer Lansky and what Piper calls the "Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate."
PIPER RESPONDS: As time goes by, I find less and less reason to believe that "the Mafia" was a major player really and that is made clear in subsequent editions of the book. Meyer Lansky, however, was part of the permindex crowd through his relationship with the Banque de Credit Internationale of Geneva, run by Rabbi Tibor Rosenbaum, a major Mossad figure.

Along the way, they also involved West Coast mobster Mickey Cohen,
PIPER RESPONDS: Although Mickey Cohen is mentioned in the book in regard to intrigue against JFK, the book does not specifically say that Cohen was involved in the assassination conspiracy. If you had read the book, Dr. Rahn, you would have seen that.

Jack Ruby,
PIPER RESPONDS: Oh yes, Jack Ruby. You've heard of him. And yes, according to FBI documents, Ruby had connections to Israel through gun-running back to the 1950s. In addition, Ruby had a connection to israel through his friend and attorney Luis Kutner, who was a major intelligence figure with ties to the Mossad. And--get this--Ruby met with Lawrence Myers the night before the assassination. Myers was often called a "Mafia" figure but he was also linked to a company implicated in illegal arms smuggling to israel.

• Final Judgement : Review — Francine Peckinpah, Wed Nov 19 14:42