Out of habit, we generally ease off the throttle when we see a red light a block away. This infuriates drivers behind us who often pass, often recklessly, making obscene gestures, even though they see the same light ahead. We also usually stop at traffic lights a few feet before we have to, allowing enough room, given the time of day (and the time of this event was early morning, still more dark than light) to monitor the green light for traffic going the other way. When it turns yellow, we ease forward, knowing in a second or two our light will be green. Also, out of habit, and an instinct for survival, we glance to the left to make sure nobody is busting the light.
Thus, it came about last week that such habits may have been a life saver. Our light had just gone green, and as we began to hit the gas we saw a car coming like a bat out of hell. It went through the intersection accelerating, as light busters usually are, going at least 50 mph in a 30-mph zone. Had we been in the same kind of hurry as the light buster, bolting forward in anticipation of a green light when we saw the other guy’s yellow, we would have been hit on the driver’s side door by a speeding car. An acquaintance of ours, a highly respected citizen, was killed in exactly that fashion a few years ago.
One’s primitive instinct at such an intersection of modern madness is to chase down the car who could have killed you and shoot the driver before he (or she) kills somebody. Under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, this should be acceptable. Why not shoot somebody who is trying to kill you? Fortunately, we do not have a gun. Instead, our thirst for revenge is what you are reading.
Let us join the chorus of those attacking those who would get rid of red light cameras. Especially the politicians, who look at studies that show a serious reduction in fatal, red light collisions but still insist the law does not work. They say it only increases rear-end collisions when cars stop suddenly. That just proves the value of the cameras. The cars behind the cars that stop were obviously planning not to stop. And they bitterly resent the driver ahead who impedes their mindless pursuit of whatever they were pursuing by as much as two minutes.
Those advocating repeal of the cameras seem to resent the fact that they generate money for communities. So what? If you can improve safety and generate revenue, so much the better. We think that rather than eliminate cameras, Florida should expand the concept by using similar technology to curtail speeding. Those signs that tell you your speed at special locations, such as entrances to airports, should also have a “gotcha” pop-up advising that a ticket has been earned. Repeat offenders should get increasingly higher fines. Chronic offenders, those who get 10 or more tickets a day (and some would), should suffer the fate of William Wallace in the film “Braveheart,” who, for the crime of wanting freedom for Scotland, was gruesomely executed by an English king. And he wasn’t even speeding.
Compounding the red light camera debate, some politicians have suggested raising the speed limit on interstates, which would only encourage those who routinely go 85 mph in 70 mph zones to speed up to 95, or even faster. We once asked a European woman who was a notoriously fast driver how fast she drove. “As vast as zee car vill go,” she said. We get the impression she is not alone. One enterprising reporter took the time to check the driving record of a legislator advocating higher speed limits, and found he had a record of speeding tickets.
One wonders if further enterprise would reveal conflicts (think campaign contributions) on the part of legislators who oppose red light cameras and push for higher speed limits on roads already dangerous because of wild drivers. But it is uncharitable to think they might be on the take. The charitable view is that they are just morons.
There have not been passenger trains on the Florida East Coast Railway for 50 years, but if all the ideas being planned for that historic transportation corridor come to fruition, in a few years it could become one of the busiest passenger railroads in the country. Which is already creating some anxiety as deep thinkers foresee a clash of transportation interests. Land vs. water.
The FEC tracks have not been seriously modernized since Henry Flagler brought them along Florida’s east coast in the 1890s. On northern railroads, the appearance of the automobile 100 years ago prompted an extensive rebuilding of the railroad rights of way, either by elevating tracks or lowering them in ditches to avoid the inconvenience and danger of grade crossings. That was a 20th century solution.
The FEC has many such crossings, dozens in Broward County alone, and they include a number of increasingly busy waterways. Therein lies the problem. Marine interests line the rivers and canals near the drawbridges of the railroad. Every time a bridge goes down to permit a train to cross, traffic on the river comes to a halt. It has been bad enough for years as long, slow moving freight trains take minutes to traverse waterways. But now the marine industry, a very big part of Florida’s economy, faces the prospect of many more trains obstructing rivers and canals. The bridge lowerings will not be as lengthy, for passenger trains can pass in seconds, but there will be many, many more of them. And just getting the old bridges open and closed takes minutes, presenting a challenge for boats stalled in strong currents.
All Aboard Florida, the planned train from Miami to Orlando, will have 32 trains a day. That is twice the traffic currently on the railroad. And when Tri-Rail and possibly Amtrak switch trains to the FEC corridor, where they should have been all along, the impact on the boat people will be considerable, and it has them worried.
The Palm Beach Post and Sun-Sentinel recently carried reports about the concerns of the marine industry, but the collision of interests will not be so bad to the north, for Tri-Rail will mostly use the FEC tracks in Broward County, where a connecting track between the two railroads already exists in Deerfield Beach. But from that point south, look out. Downtown Fort Lauderdale is the most obvious problem. The New River is busy with marinas surrounding the railroad lift bridge and many facilities lie to the west. And imagine Broward Boulevard, just two blocks from the river, if three rail services all begin using the same tracks. Crossing gates will be popping up and down like jumping jacks.
The problem has been somewhat foreseen. Recently the CSX, which now carries both Tri-Rail and Amtrak trains, and the FEC announced plans to switch some freight traffic to the more westerly CSX, where many grade crossings were eliminated when I-95 was built years ago. The CSX tracks also have a recently built bridge which takes passenger trains high over the New River, but the grades involved are too steep for long freight trains.
A solution similar to the high bridge for Tri-Rail on the CSX tracks will be required. Either a bridge, or, ideally but expensively, a tunnel going under both the river and Broward Boulevard. Tunnels are rare in Florida because of the water table, but one is now under construction at the port of Miami. A complication in Fort Lauderdale would be the location of a new station near Broward Boulevard, which would obviously require underground platforms. On the other hand, envision the opportunity for office and residential construction if blocks of the railroad were underground. Think downtown Manhattan or Philadelphia where tracks were lowered years ago and and shining cities rose above them.
The use of the FEC for passenger service is a great idea, but it presents great problems. Welcome to the 20th century.
For starters, 1 percent seems kind of silly. It makes it sound as if everybody else is broke. Why don’t we see more stats on the top 25 or 30 percent, because those numbers will tell what happened to the middle class. It moved. Up. A little family history. Our mother had eight great grandparents, which is normal. Four of them died at the time of the Irish famine between 1845 and 1850, which is not normal, except that in that age life expectancy was far lower than today. People worked hard in often dangerous jobs. Many expected to be semi-invalids before they reached the age of Social Security, which did not exist then anyway. Our mother died living with a son in tony Rye, N.Y. Would that not be a step up from her great grandparents?
Our father’s family history is somewhat vague. They may have lost people in the famine as well, but we can only trace the family to the 1860s. His father was a stone mason, and Dad dropped out of high school to help support the large family. That family became a lot smaller when three of them died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Our father had three sons. Two of them were Ph.D.s. with careers in engineering and economics. They surely were better off than those relatives who died in their 20s.
Even though he went to work as a teenager, our father probably qualified as middle class for that era. Not only were iPads unheard of, many people did not even have telephones. Yet in the 1930s he did surprisingly well with a large company at a time of depression. When cars were a status symbol, he owned one in 1929. He was by then solidly middle class, or perhaps even upper middle class. That changed when Dad lost his job at the beginning of World War II. Nobody kept such records, but we may have slipped back a rank, possibly to upper lower middle class. Dad did not have a car from 1942 (you couldn’t get gas during the war; aircraft carriers hoarded it all) until the mid-1950s. During much of that time he went to work by bus from one side of the city to the other. Mother also worked part-time, doing market research surveys. All of us went to college, two on scholarships, one by working at night while taking classes by day. It is safe to say that by normal measures, all have escaped middle class, and at worst are lower uppers today. And given prudent estate planning, our progeny are not likely to go down, nor should their grandchildren.
It was that way with just about all our friends. Most came from row house or duplex neighborhoods. Today they entertain grandchildren at vacation homes on the Jersey shore. It is hard to think of any among dozens of childhood acquaintances who are not living well above their parents’ status. They surely are in the top 30 percent. That’s what happened to the middle class.
Now we hear that those in the lower classes are stuck there. And we read of poor souls raising grandchildren (where are the mothers?) without help from husbands, if they exist, who are in jail. How can any family upgrade itself in those conditions? And when we hear horror stories of those who can’t afford a house, we wonder if they can afford nice cars, fancy TVs, myriad electronic gadgets (updated annually) and all the modern conveniences without which life is not worth living. None of those necessities were necessary for our previous generations, for they didn’t exist.
What did exist was a wish to take advantage of opportunity, to stay in school and go as far as one could, to do without things that weren’t essential. Mostly, it was the desire for a better life than those who came before you, and to do what it took to get there.
We were working on a story on Larry King for the Sun-Sentinel’s now departed Sunshine, the Sunday magazine. After his TV show King crossed the Potomac into Arlington and did a two-hour radio show that ran until after midnight. It was mostly about sports. During one of the commercial breaks he asked where we went to school. We barely got the word “La Salle” out when he said, “I can see Tom Gola in the Garden now. La Salle had sleeves on their uniforms. What a ball player.”
They are telling stories like that today – at least those who remember college ball from the 1950s – in the memory of Tom Gola who died Sunday after a long illness. John Wooden, the great UCLA coach, called him the greatest all-round player he ever saw. Wilt Chamberlain once said he wasn’t Philadelphia’s best basketball player; Tom Gola was.
The man put La Salle on the map. Gola led La Salle to an NIT championship, at the time more important than the NCAA tournament. Two years later his team won the NCAA, the first championship game televised, and the following year La Salle was runner-up to San Francisco, which had Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. Gola was an All-American four straight years. He still holds the NCAA record for rebounds. As a student sports writer at La Salle, we advanced his height every year, whether he grew or not. We maxed him out at 6 feet, 8 iches. In fact, he was slightly under 6 feet, 6 inches, and that got him in the Army when the height limit was exactly that. Gola just seemed like a giant on the court, and his true height makes his rebounding feat all the more remarkable.
It was his speed that created the illusion. He was flat out fast – Philadelphia 440 champion in high school (Wilt Chamberlain was the same a few years later), and won the state 880. His hands were just as quick. Think Larry Bird when it comes to passing.
Some of us had the chance to see Tom Gola play in both high school at La Salle High, La Salle College and in the NBA - also as a La Salle coach for a team that went 23-1, but was not eligible for post-season play. He was an emergency coach, when the previous coach got us in NCAA trouble. Gola had a day job and just showed up for practice. He had a wonderful team that included Larry Cannon and Ken Durrett. Asked about his success, Gola said: "I had the horses. All I did was hand them the ball.
Larry Cannon, who lives in Florida, met with our La Salle alumni board a few years ago. Asked about Gola as a coach, Larry said: "He knew not to over coach us."
In 1957, just after Gola graduated, our ROTC camp was in Oklahoma. We were with fellows from all over - Stanford, the Big 10 schools, Auburn, NC state, VMI, Princeton - and they all seemed impressed that we had gone to La Salle. None of them knew our campus at the time was barely more than a large square block, and that our enrollment was fewer than 2,000. It is hard to imagine anyone who did more for any school than Tom Gola did for La Salle. Maybe John Harvard or Cornelius Vanderbilt, or Knute Rockne - but none of them could go to their left, and rebound.
There was a good piece on Philly.com about how Tom Gola revived basketball in New York after the point shaving scandals of the early 50s. They hurt the NY college programs, among the country's best at the time. Then came Gola, who played in the Garden and was a great hit with NY fans and the press.
It is often forgotten, but there was another all-round player in the Gola college era. Maurice Stokes at St. Francis did not get as much attention, but he was in the same class as Gola, and was a great pro for three seasons before a head injury ended his career. Ironically, it was the kind of injury Tom Gola suffered much later in life. Stokes died in 1970.
In his later years, Tom Gola vacationed in Palm Beach. He loved golf, and few pros at our country clubs would not recall him.
Another little story. At La Salle we had an English prof, who was a nerd’s nerd. In his senior year, when Tom Gola was player of the year, Gola stood up to answer a question in Dr. App’s class. Dr. App was from Lawrence Welk territory, where people sounded foreign born.
“Vista Gola,” Dr. App said. “You’re such a big vellla. You should be on zee basketball team.”
We were on the way up to Notre Dame to see a game. This was maybe 20 years ago. She was reading a book and something came up about football.
“Is a punt a kick?” she said. We answered politely.
“And is the second half as long as the first half?”
“Actually, in most sports it is longer. In football they have all kinds of time-outs and substitutions and stuff. Lots of incomplete passes. Players run out of bounds. Fake injuries. Anything to stop the clock. Basketball’s the same.”
“Why do they do that?” she asked.
“Gives them more time for commercials. Advertisers sell more stuff. Teams raise rates. Players make a few million more.”
The years have passed. Most things age, but not her grasp of the fundamentals of economics. It was late during the recent season of the NFL and a game was on.
“What’s the line of scrimmage?” she asked.
“That’s just the line where they scrimmage. Three hundred pounders line up and butt heads, to make sure they are all punchy by the time they retire.”
“Who’s that yelling all the time?”
“It’s the quarterback. He’s calling signals.”
“What are signals?”
“That’s telling them when the play begins. And they also change the plays all the time.”
“Why?” she asked.
“The quarterback looks over the defense, and sometimes he sees something he doesn’t like, or something he does, so he changes the play. It’s called profiling. If he’s right and throws a touchdown pass, the coach is pleased and he makes a few million more the next year.”
“Is that Peyton Manning you can hear yelling?
“It’s not Winston Churchill. Don’t you recognize his accent?”
“He’s just going hup, yup, dub, tub. How do they know what he means?”
“It’s a secret language. It was invented by the Navajo Indians. All the players have to learn it.”
“Does he keep it up the whole game?” she asked.
“He better not go home. But he only does it when he’s on the field. Notice Tom Brady is not doing it on the sidelines.
The camera was on Tom Brady. He had his helmet off.
“Brady’s good looking,” she said, perceptively.
“You ought to see his girlfriend. Actually, all quarterbacks are good looking. That’s one of the requirements for the job. At the beginning of the season the coach looks over his team and picks the best looking guy and hands him the ball and says, “Sweetie, go play quarterback.’ It’s a tradition. They have to be handsome because they get on magazine covers all the time. Goes way back. Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung, Daryle Lamonica, Craig Morton, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Dan Marino – and in this century, Troy Aikman, Kurt Warner, Joe Flacco, Steve Young, John Elway – they’re all cute as a bug’s ear.”
“Who are you rooting for?” she asked.
“Nobody really. We don’t have a dog in this fight. I usually go with the best uniforms. In this case San Francisco. I like gold helmets.”
“Is this the championship?”
“ One of them. You asked the same thing last week, and the week before that. But this isn’t the big championship.”
“When will it be over?”
“It’s hard to say. They begin playing in July and they just keep playing until Dan Marino is in assisted living. Or they run out of advertisers. Their goal is to be like the NBA – start next season before the current one ends.”
The game finally ended. Somebody won. But she couldn’t figure out who. She felt sorry for the quarterback who was crying.
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| An overgrown golf course. |
Stage two, some years later. Development is sold out, golf course is not used enough to justify its existence, or the developer just doesn’t want the cost of maintaining it now that it has made its bucks. Developer sells out. New developer comes in, neglects the golf course, and goes to the local authorities to get permission to abandon the course (which it has already done) and replace this community eyesore with hundreds of new homes, invariably with far greater density that the original plan. Just about everything the original buyer paid good money for is gone.
It is naturally disturbing to those who invested for golf course settings and see the value of their homes threatened. So they fight. Right now there is a good one going on in Boca Raton. Mizner Trail Golf Course in Boca Del Mar is going to the Palm Beach County Commission for the fourth time in eight years, trying to get permission to build a bunch of homes on the course. Those opposing the change want a park or something that keeps the land open. The problem, of course, is who pays for it.
This time the developer has some support from members of the community. Forgive the cynicism, but such groups don’t carry much weight here. Obviously, some are sincere people who think anything is a better neighbor than an overgrown tract (like the one pictured above), and a closed club that needs police surveillance to keep out culturally inadequate strangers. Still, there is a suspicion their motives are always genuine, that they are getting something in return for undercutting their neighbors. We saw this recently in Fort Lauderdale when dozens of young people in T-shirts showed up in support of a controversial building in which they had no obvious stake. Usually such Hessians can be traced to ties to the developer, or a construction company that might benefit from a favorable ruling.
It is not just defunct golf courses that create controversy for those intent on preserving what they paid for. In order to protect old residential neighborhoods from increasing traffic, cities have been closing off once-busy cut-through streets, greatly increasing the livability (and property values) in the neighborhoods affected. Fort Lauderdale started doing this with downtown neighborhoods in the 1980s. Those neighborhoods were once – we are going back decades now - on the fringes of the downtown, but development on the finger islands, the beach and far to the west have put them in a vise, squeezed on all sides by traffic moving east and west.
Some suggest opening up the closed streets, but what then do you tell those who have moved to those neighborhoods precisely for the combination of tranquility and convenience? Colee Hammock, Beverly Heights and Rio Vista in Fort Lauderdale are good examples of single-family residential sections that have seen a number of old dwellings replaced by some of the city’s most beautiful homes, worth now in the millions. New buyers usually invest in improving their purchases, expecting that their neighborhoods can only improve.
At a recent meeting sponsored by the city to discuss the downtown bottleneck, residents complained that a bad situation will get worse with all the new high-rise construction that is underway, with little thought given to how those thousands of new residents will get around. A golf-course setting in suburban Boca Raton and historic residential neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale may seem to have little in common. But they do.
The big news today is that the college football season is finally over, and the pros will finish up when the ice melts on the Delaware. Also, the search for a new president of FAU is heating up as two prominent politicians have been named among the top ten finalists. Jeff Atwater and George LeMieux are both dedicated public servants, illustrated by the fact they are willing to take a job that pays only $345,000.
The Miami Herald reported that Dick Schmidt, a great FAU supporter, is wary of having a politician in that job, and we always respect his opinion because he used to pal around with our board chairman, and also his late father said we did a good imitation of the late Foy Fleming, whose brother helped get FAU started way back in the 1960s.
Back on topic, keep in mind that Frank Brogan, former and highly respected president of FAU, has been accused of being a politician, but many forget he started as an educator. We know that for a fact because we interviewed him when he was superintendent of schools in Martin County back in the 1990s. He was considered one of the bright young men in the Stuart area, which he proved when he made it up to the majors.
Also remember that by nature college presidents are also politicians, which was proved by Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Dwight Eisenhower at Columbia and many others. Of the two politicians declaring for this job, only one, Jeff Atwater, spent some time at Notre Dame. And speaking of Notre Dame, don’t forget that its former great president, Father Ted Hesburgh, was such a consummate politician, always traveling for the public good, that he was often compared to God. When president of ND, they used to say “what’s the difference between God and Father Hesburgh?” The answer: "God is everywhere. Father Hesburgh is everywhere but Notre Dame."
Back on topic – $345,000 is minimum wage for a campus job these days, but it is still enough to attract people who want to be dedicated public servants. The job at FAU has unusual challenges, the main one being to keep teachers from saying crazy things, and also deciding what the football uniforms should look like. The great Howard Schnellenberger is said to have designed their first uniforms, with white helmets. He is also widely credited with inventing the famous two-tone “U” which is universally identified with the University of Miami. This despite the fact that the University of Scranton is also known as “the U” – at least in Scranton. Their football coach is paid nothing, mostly because they don’t have a football team.
Anyway, somebody changed the Schnellenberger look at FAU. Recent publicity has shown the football team in dark blue helmets, almost a black and white change from the past, and while not ugly, it is hardly a way to build tradition. Back on topic, it is none of our business, but why do they publicize the salary being offered for a college president, especially at a state-supported school? Whatever happened to competitive bidding? In that spirit, we throw our helmet in the ring for this job. As a great American, and also a taxpayer, we will take this job for a mere $300,000. Admittedly unqualified, we will then find some great young educator who is willing to work for $250,000, and keep the rest as a lobbying fee. For $250,000 you get what you pay for, and you probably won’t get a politician.
It is disturbing is that most reports make it sound as if this population growth is good news. But it is not good news for the Everglades, the general water supply, air pollution, traffic, etc. Making things worse is the fact that recent studies show that rising ocean levels are reducing the amount of land available for these new people. Within a few years the Florida Keys will be a memory, and smugglers will have to go as far as Port Salerno to find dry land.
Of course, there will be islands here and there in Broward County, in places such as Pine Island Ridge (which has prepared itself by choosing the right name) and the coastal ridge that bounces up and down the Gold Coast. People lucky enough to inhabit that ridge are already cornering the market on sea planes.
All is not lost for 2014, however. Balancing this dire report comes the welcome news that serious efforts are being made to control the population, at least enough that we won’t be threatening Texas for No. 2 for a few more years. Two wise legislators have proposed that Florida’s speed limit be raised to 75 miles per hour. This means that people who now drive 85 miles an hour on I-95 will feel free to gun it up to 95 or 100. It also means we will have a lot more accidents, causing maddening traffic jams on our roads. This is good because such congestion breeds road rage, and people will shoot each other at a higher rate. The death rate from accidents will be enhanced by the shootings.
We think legislators would be wise to consider other methods of creating chaos on the roads. Do away with red lights, which would end the fury over red light cameras. Also eliminate stop signs and speed bumps. Throw out these archaic laws against drunk driving, or driving cross-eyed from abuse of banned substances. Make it legal for drivers to shoot people who get in their way. The epidemic of hit and run incidents could be curtailed if people did not think they were going to jail for being whacked, or afraid of being deported.
As we prepare for the challenges and uncertainties of a new year, it is time for thoughtful legislators to forget petty politics, cross party lines and unite for the good of our great country. These ideas for population control may not be the whole answer, but you gotta start someplace.
We live now by polls. We are reading polls about elections that are a year way, and about polls on candidates who are not even candidates, and may never be. It might be a wise idea to have everybody who is interested get together every so often and stand in a line to circle the name of the person they would like to have as president of the United States or school board member, or head of the National Polling League. Just do it one time, and we would not need weekly polls.
We once thought the late humorist Art Buchwald lacerated polls forever when, during the Vietnam War, he commented on a poll among Americans on the subject of bombing Hanoi. Some people favored bombing Hanoi, some were against it, and some had no opinion. It was silly, Buchwald wrote, to ask Americans about bombing somebody else. Why not poll the people actually being bombed in Hanoi? So he did. The results were that 40 percent of the people in Hanoi enjoyed being bombed, 35 percent disliked being bombed and 25 percent had no opinion. Those numbers may be a bit off because Buchwald is gone and can’t be polled on the subject.
So it is with Christmas. On the eve of that international holiday (or holy day), some people object to an international holiday for just one religion, or rather one religion that has hundreds of sects, thanks to malcontents such as Martin Luther and Henry VIII. Others object to the people who object to Christmas, especially when they oppose religious symbols in public places, or insist on using the term “holiday tree.”
We haven’t seen this week’s poll on the subject, so we will make up our own numbers. One hundred percent of people are in favor of Christmas presents, if they are on the receiving end. Of those, 65 percent don’t mind them being called Christmas presents, 20 percent prefer holiday presents and 15 percent have no opinion.
With that, have a merry and sober Christmas holiday.
The recent revelation that the missing Coral Springs man, Robert Levinson, was on a CIA mission when he disappeared in Iran, comes as a surprise to everyone except those who knew him. His reputation at the FBI was that of an excellent agent with unusually valuable contacts. But he was also something of an adventurer. Insiders did not believe he was a private eye chasing cigarette change on an island off Iran.
Some people, however, may be surprised that Levinson was not working directly for the CIA, but rather a rogue group of analysts within the agency that had no authority to send him off doing whatever he was doing. Others would not be surprised at all. They would not even be surprised if the “rogue” story itself is bogus, to conceal involvement of those higher up in the agency. Several people involved were fired, so the CIA can say it canned those whack jobs, let the case rest.
If one wonders about the cynicism here, note that this comes close to the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, which over the years has been increasingly linked to the CIA. Almost from the time the Warren Commission Report appeared, cynics suspected a government conspiracy, followed by a second conspiracy to cover it up. Among them was Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker. He, and others in Washington, had been shocked to learn that the CIA, in theory an intelligence gathering agency, had made itself an action arm of the government, facilitating the overthrow of governments, and causing people to be murdered. Without authority.
His position on a Senate intelligence committee gave him grounds for suspicion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. intelligence figure. In 1976 he hired Gaeton Fonzi, at the time a partner in Gold Coast magazine, to try to prove it. As we reported recently, Fonzi, working in Florida with the anti-Castro Cuban community, found a link between Oswald and a high-ranking CIA officer. The same CIA man, Fonzi learned, was also connected to assassinations of foreign political leaders, and the coup in Chile that resulted in thousands of deaths of political dissidents. He also worked with Fonzi’s main source in attempts to kill Castro, attempts which the CIA said at the time it knew nothing about.
Other researchers jumped on Fonzi’s discovery, and over the years, bolstered by gradually declassified documents, and testimony of witnesses long silent in fear, what once seemed unthinkable has become believable. If the CIA did not orchestrate a presidential murder, it did everything it could to cover it up, including lying repeatedly to Congress and its authorized investigators such as Fonzi. Would the CIA lie? Did it lie for years about Robert Levinson, until his distraught family forced the truth into the open?
The word “rogue” was used 40 years ago to describe the group, all CIA types whose names have been widely published (now that they are all dead), who were suspected in the JFK murder. John McCone, the man at the head of the CIA at the time, told Robert Kennedy himself that the CIA was not involved. The truth is he was appointed by the Kennedys to replace Allen Dulles, who the Kennedys distrusted, and McCone surely didn’t know. He would be the last to know. He was only the boss, and a boss the rogues could not trust. But not so Allen Dulles. He helped launch the CIA and ran it for eight years. He had to know what it was doing. He wound effectively running the Warren Commission and pinning the blame on an alleged lone nut, ignoring any evidence to the contrary. He thus protected the “rogue” element in his own agency. That’s just being loyal, covering for people who had no authority to murder a president.
At least in the Levinson case, people got fired. In the Kennedy case, they got promoted.
