Mark, Jose, and John Lennon

It was 33 years ago this Sunday that John Lennon was gunned down outside the Dakota apartments in New York City. He was shot at 10:50 p.m., pronounced dead at 11:20, and by midnight the grim news was going forth to a shocked world. Most Americans heard the news that night from Howard Cosell who made the announcement during ABC’s Monday Night Football. I had spent most of that day in bed with the flu and had fallen asleep during a repeat of The Tonight Show. In one of those eerie moments when I was drifting between sleep and consciousness, I heard a bulletin from NBC News which said Lennon had been killed by “a local screwball.” In those pre-Internet days, my first instinct after digesting the news was to turn on the radio. A station that generally veered to the middle of the road was playing “God,” the rarely heard blasphemous centerpiece of the Plastic Ono Band album. It was then that I knew I wasn’t dreaming

The doctor on duty at Roosevelt Hospital Emergency Room that night said that though Lennon‘s killer claimed to have no previous experience with firearms, each of the bullets in his prey’s body were right on target and destroyed the arteries that carry blood to the heart. Of course, the alleged killer was easily apprehended since he made no attempt to flee, having decided to sit down and read The Catcher in the Rye while waiting for police to arrest him. Identified as Mark David Chapman, he fit the now familiar profile of the "lone assassin." That was the initial clue that he might have been a patsy, another of the CIA’s Manchurian Candidates, brainwashed into taking the fall for a killing that he may or may not have committed and which was planned by other parties.

In retrospect, it should have seemed obvious back in 1980. In Rolling Stone’s special issue memorializing Lennon, all but one player on the scene that night in December 1980 was identified.

It was Jay Hastings, an off-duty doorman, who futilely tried to fashion a tourniquet to prevent the massive bleeding after Lennon stumbled into a nearby office. Two police officers, Jim Moran and Bill Gamble, carried Lennon’s wounded body into the patrol car that took him to Roosevelt Hospital. The city’s medical examiner, Elliott Gross, was identified, as was Richard J. Nicastro, deputy chief of Manhattan detectives, Dr. Stephen Lynn, who made the official announcement that Lennon was dead, and even A. Burton, the hospital’s director of public relations.

Who was missing?

In Rolling Stone, he was identified only as “The doorman stationed outside” and “the other doorman.” He was the one who identified Chapman as the assailant. As Lennon, in his persona of Dr. Winston O’ Boogie, wrote on the back cover of his 1975 greatest hits collection, Shaved Fish, “A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.” The silence concerning “The doorman stationed outside” continued until 1987 when People magazine identified him as Jose Perdomo.

Who was Jose Perdomo?

In The Illuminati Zone, William Fevers reports that Jose Jacquin Sanjenis Perdomo “was a Cuban exile who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, the failed CIA operation that much of the evidence suggests was led by George H. W. Bush, former CIA director and the vice-president elect at the time of Lennon’s murder.” In Let Me Take You Down, author Jack Jones writes that Chapman frequently discussed the Bay of Pigs with Perdomo while the alleged killer was stalking his prey at the Dakota. Before embarking on his doorman career, Perdomo was on the CIA’s payroll where he worked with Frank Sturgis, the convicted Watergate burglar employed by Richard Nixon, the president who wanted Lennon deported and encouraged the FBI to harass him in the early ‘70s. Sturgis is also believed to have had a hand in the Kennedy assassination.

If Chapman had no previous experience with firearms, Perdomo almost certainly did.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that Perdomo, the CIA agent and Dakota doorman, was the true assassin on the night of December 8, 1980. Perdomo said it was Chapman. The police said it was Chapman. The news media said it was Chapman. Hell, even Chapman said it was Chapman. The only ones who would say it might not have been Chapman are “conspiracy theorists,” and the same people who tell us it was Chapman would also say that “conspiracy theorists” are kooks and crazies. Let's get it straight: It was Chapman.

Say it with me:

It was Chapman.

It was Chapman.

It was Chapman.

Now go back to sleep.

Brian W. Fairbanks

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Those darn Bushes

Shortly after 9/11, former president George W. Bush writes in Decision Points, he found strength and solace from his White House team, wife Laura, and – this was news to me – “My brother Marvin and sister Dora . . . (who) stopped by frequently for meals.”

Brother Marvin? Sister Dora?

Never heard of them.

I have heard of Prescott Bush, his granddaddy, who he called “Gampy,” but what I heard doesn’t quite gel with what George W. says about him: “He was well known in Greenwich as a successful businessman with unquestioned integrity. . . “(9). He is also well-known to those who know more about history than the media and whitewashed textbooks tell us, as a Nazi sympathizer who collaborated with some other wealthy families to oust FDR and put a dictator in his place, a rather nasty episode that Naomi Woolf and other writers have exposed and which can be found in official (but unpublicized) government records.

Then there’s daddy George Herbert Walker Bush, the kind of job hopping flunky who epitomizes what’s wrong with “public service.” It’s no longer a secret that “Pappy” Bush went directly from Skull and Bones to the CIA and there’s a paper trail that ties him to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Shortly after becoming vice-president in 1981, he was very nearly promoted to the top spot when John Hinckley Jr. took a shot at President Reagan. Even the mainstream media managed to let it slip that Hinckley’s brother was scheduled to have dinner with Neal Bush that evening. Less well-known (but detailed in The Illuminati Zone) is the long business association that the Hinckleys had with the Bush family.

Like father, like son.

© 2012 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Goodbye 2011

Turn on the TV or radio, or log onto the Internet, and you can’t avoid the numerous remembrances of 2011, including tributes to those who bid adieu to this world in the year about to end. The deaths of Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Taylor received the most attention, but I’ll miss Peter Falk the most (Hail, Columbo! And The In-Laws!). Others who passed on this year include Jerry Lieber, who with Mike Stoller wrote “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” and many other rock ‘n’ roll classics, actor Cliff Robertson, and Sidney Lumet, who directed more than his share of great movies, but who I will always remember for Network, the most prescient film of the 1970s. Christopher Hitchens discovered, as everyone does in that final moment before death, that there is a God, but the revelation came too late for him to write about. Too bad. Imagine the book that could have resulted. What title would he have given it? Maybe something on the order of Uh-Oh, God Is Great, After All or Guess Who I Met in Hell?.

Barack Obama interrupted regular programming to tell us that Osama Bin Laden, the supposed mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks (but actually the scapegoat), had been killed, but no one saw a picture of the corpse. Then there was Muammar Gaddafi, dragged through the streets of Libya and murdered by his own people, undoubtedly with an assist from the CIA which has played a role in numerous revolutions during its 64 year history, including this year's so-called Arab Spring. The CIA was the secret hand behind at least two major revolutions in Iran. In 1951, when Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, the agency, with backing from the likes of David Rockefeller, mobilized Iranians who were hostile to the ruling powers and had him overthrown. Mossadegh was replaced with Mohammed Roza Pahlavi, the Shah, who would be ousted himself in 1979. In his memoirs, the Shah expressed the belief that the CIA was involved in his overthrow, too. In his place, the Ayatollah Khomeini took charge, turning Iran into the stronghold of Islamic radicalism that it remains today. Egypt’s recent revolution brought the Muslim brotherhood to power there, and now that Quadaffi has been kicked to the curb and killed, a more extreme Muslim government will almost certainly take the reins in Libya, a guarantee that events in the Middle East will continue to make headlines in 2012 and beyond.

The year 2011 was a dismal one on all fronts with more than a few of the “birth pangs” that the Bible warns are a sign of the end-times. The events in the Middle East may have the most damaging consequences in the long run, but don’t tell that to Japan. The earthquake that rocked the country in March registered an 8.9 on the Richter scale, assuring it a place as one of the worst natural disasters in history. In Luke 21:11, Jesus warned of the last days that “There will be great earthquakes in diverse places.” Those who dismiss Bible prophecy as so much superstitious claptrap would argue that there have always been earthquakes and natural disasters, but shortly after the 8.8 earthquake in Chile on February 27, 2010, World News and Prophecy put it in frightening perspective:

“If we look at the 12 strongest earthquakes registered in the world since measurements of them began some 300 years ago, four - or a third of the list - have occurred within the last six years.”

I don’t know which of those 12 earthquakes dropped off the list following this year’s disaster, but it’s now safe to say that five of the worst earthquakes in history occurred within seven years.

What does the world have in store for 2012?

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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The Err to Gore Vidal

In the February 2010 Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens cast his critical eye on Gore Vidal, a man whose “tough-mindedness” and “subversive wit” he greatly admired. When participating in a panel discussion on the life and work of Oscar Wilde, Hitchens recalled the moderator proposing that Vidal was the Oscar Wilde of our time, “and, really, once that name had been mentioned, there didn’t seem to be any obvious rival.”

If one had been looking for Gore Vidal’s successor, Hitchens didn’t have any obvious rival either, and even now, with his voice permanently stilled, no rival seems likely to emerge. Vidal himself once championed Hitchens as his heir, but then came 9/11. The attack on New York and Washington D.C. had many ramifications, the most serious of which - the shredding of the Bill of Rights and the shedding of blood in Iraq - Vidal addressed in his controversial pamphlets, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War. One of its more frivolous results was the end of the two writers’ mutual admiration society.

Suddenly, Hitchens regarded Vidal as a “crackpot” for proposing that the Bush administration had advance knowledge of the attacks and took merciless advantage of them to justify an invasion of Iraq and the suspension of many of our civil liberties. Hitchens wrote that “if it’s true even to any degree that we were all changed by September 11, 2001, it’s probably truer of Vidal that it made him more the way he already was. . .” As an example, Hitchens referred to Vidal’s previously stated belief that Franklin Roosevelt ignored warnings that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, knowing that such a tragedy would rally support for America’s entry into World War II.

Prior to 9/11, Hitchens was seemingly on the political left, contributing to such progressive publications as The Nation. A closer look at some of his activities suggests that the heart of a right winger was beating in his chest years before that day in 2001. While the left marched in step, supporting Bill Clinton even as he was impeached for lying under oath in the Monica Lewinsky case, Hitchens joined the conservative choir, admirably so in my view, by condemning him, writing a book, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton.

Hitchens didn't really change after 9/11. As he said of Vidal, “it made him more the way he already was . . .” Hitchens' words, which I replaced with an ellipsis - “and accentuated a crackpot strain that gradually asserted itself as dominant” - perfectly describe Hitchens himself who told USA Today that 9/11 was “an attack on America and its ideals.” George W. Bush had said that the terrorists “hate our freedom.” Different words expressing the same ridiculous sentiment.

Hitchens, the self-described contrarian, became an unofficial publicist for the Bush administration and its policies. Since he wasn’t on the government’s payroll, he was free to make statements that were more inflammatory, such as his description of the enemy as “Islamofascists.” Hitchens, like most Bush cheerleaders, failed to acknowledge that U.S. involvement in regions where we have no business being involved was, as Patrick Buchanan has stated, asking for trouble.

It’s a pointless argument, however, since the facts support the claim made by Vidal and others that the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the attacks. Of course, Hitchens, like others in the mainstream media, ridiculed such beliefs as unworthy of anyone but a “crackpot.”

Hitchens appears to have been something far more dangerous than a crackpot. He was a disinformation specialist. They come in all shapes and sizes, all colors and creeds, and can be found on the left, right, and in the center of every political party. Hitchens, I stated previously, “wasn’t on the government payroll,” but many journalists are secretly employed by the CIA, and have been since the days of the company’s forerunner, the OSS. In a 1977 article in The Washington Post, Carl Bernstein reported that the CIA’s “assets” included employees of virtually every major newspaper, magazine, and TV network, all of whom could be called on to do their bidding. Whether or not Hitchens was one of them, he certainly supported their agenda, something the true contrarian, Gore Vidal, never did.

In attempting to explain why Hitchens demoted him from idol to crackpot, Vidal told an audience that “I didn’t die. I just kept going on and on and on.”

And on he goes, a man without an heir, but he never really had one in Hitchens. Sure, they were both witty and had a gift for words, but Hitchens worked hard to counter Vidal’s most important message. Perhaps when Vidal called Hitchens his heir, he forgot to use the spellcheck. He may have meant “err.”

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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