{"id":216280,"date":"2022-07-11T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=216280"},"modified":"2022-07-08T03:44:27","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T02:44:27","slug":"the-assassination-and-mrs-paine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/07\/the-assassination-and-mrs-paine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Assassination and Mrs. Paine"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 Jul 2022 – <\/strong>A Review Essay of Max Good\u2019s Documentary Film<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Human duplicity is a marvel to contemplate.\u00a0 This riveting documentary is an excellent example of such cunning in action, not on the part of the filmmaker who is eminently fair, perhaps overly so, but on the part of some of those who appear in the film.\u00a0 It demands that viewers use every skill in their possession to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth about the involvement of a woman named Ruth Paine (and her husband Michael) in the assassination of President Kennedy.\u00a0 In many ways, it is akin to sitting in a jury box, listening to trial testimony from witnesses for the defense and prosecution and from a few whose slippery words seem meant to create uncertainty and never-ending debate about Paine\u2019s innocence or guilt in the president\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

The film will be an eye-opener for anyone unfamiliar with Mrs. Ruth Paine\u2019s fundamental role at the heart of the president\u2019s murder; and for those knowledgeable about her, it will be greeted as an important contribution to the case.\u00a0 I believe it is not just a must watch for those interested in JFK\u2019s assassination, which is the key to all subsequent American history, but for anyone trying to unravel today\u2019s tapestry of lies and propaganda spewing out from the mainstream media (MSM) that go by different names \u2013 CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, etc. \u2013 but all of whom speak for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The basic equation is: CIA = MSM.<\/p>\n

Since many people are adept at lying, they think they are good at sniffing out lies in others.\u00a0 This is highly questionable.\u00a0 We live in a country of lies, from the top down and the bottom up; propaganda and the everyday lies that grease the skids of social intercourse. Deceptions that deceive no one. Lying is the leading cause of spiritual death in the United States, even as devotion to truth is embraced as a national platitude.\u00a0 Even when such fealty to truthfulness isn\u2019t professed or implied and the lying is admitted, as with ex-CIA Director Mike Pompeo\u2019s 2019 remark<\/a> about the CIA at Texas A&M university \u2013 \u201cWe lied, we cheated, we stole\u201d \u2013 such treachery is uttered proudly and with a chuckle. It\u2019s what everybody knows and pretends they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

There are some intellectuals, like Noam Chomsky<\/a>, who likes to say that many who lie believe their own stories because of their institutional affiliations \u2013 e.g. journalists for the BBC, The New York Times, CBS,<\/em> etc. (but not the Defense Department-funded MIT where he spent his career) \u2013 because such institutions require that the employees they hire have internalized the script in advance.\u00a0 But they don\u2019t call it lying, for it is built into the socialization process that leads to positions within such institutions. So they are only doing their jobs and lack awareness of any duplicity. They are innocent of their own complicity in censorship and propaganda in stories they report.\u00a0 They have no knowledge of the fact that their mainstream employers have long been proven to be mouthpieces for the CIA, M-16, etc.<\/p>\n

Focused exclusively on institutional analyses, Chomsky denies these people a place for individual freedom and consciousness, as he does with his long-held absurd assertion that JFK\u2019s assassination is of little importance and his denial of the clearly documented facts about how Kennedy took a radical turn toward peacemaking in the last year of his life, a metanoia that led directly to his death.<\/p>\n

He is correct, however, that such MSM people don\u2019t need to self-censor, for their jobs require them to play the game according to the censorship rules under which they were hired, but he is very wrong to claim they therefore believe what they say. That assumes these people are very ignorant, which they are not; that they just obliviously do their jobs and collect their pay.\u00a0 He fails to distinguish between playing dumb and being dumb.<\/p>\n

It would be more accurate to say that they live in what Jean Paul Sartre calls \u201cbad faith\u201d (mauvaise foi<\/em>), for \u201cthe essence of a lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding \u2026. The ideal description of a liar would be a cynical consciousness, affirming truth within himself, denying it in his words, and denying the negation as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t lie to yourself, for that would mean you were two people.\u00a0 But you can lie to others.\u00a0 And you can play dumb.\u00a0 It\u2019s called acting.\u00a0 And of course many journalists and academics hold dual positions, since they secretly work as assets for the intelligence services.<\/p>\n

I begin with these thoughts about lying because a good number of the people who appear in The Assassination and Mrs. Paine<\/em><\/a> have no ostensible institutional affiliation but may be working in some capacity for an invisible institutional paymaster who calls their tunes.\u00a0 No names required.\u00a0 They implicitly present themselves as disinterested pursuers of truth, yet viewers are forced to assess the veracity of their claims, including those of Ruth Paine who appears throughout, answering Max Good\u2019s interview questions.<\/p>\n

Much has been written and filmed about the JFK assassination. \u00a0Most take a broad perspective. \u00a0This film is quite different because it approaches it through a personal focus on a woman named Ruth Paine who, for those who may not have heard of her, was the key witness against Lee Harvey Oswald at the Warren Commission (WC) hearings where she was asked more than five-thousand questions (her husband Michel was asked 1,000 or so).\u00a0 She is the woman who invited Marina Oswald to live with her in her home in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas, where Lee Harvey Oswald also spent weekends from late September 1963 up until the morning of the Assassination on November 22, 1963. \u00a0Her testimony led to the WC\u2019s conclusion that Oswald, and Oswald alone shot, the president.<\/p>\n

The Assassination and Mrs. Paine<\/em> is Max Good\u2019s second full-length documentary.\u00a0 He came to the subject after reading a section (pp.168-172) on Ruth and Michael Paine in James W. Douglass\u2019s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, <\/em>a book considered by many to be the best on the JFK assassination.\u00a0 <\/em>He felt the Paines\u2019 story shouted out for a documentary, and when he discovered that Ruth Paine was still alive, in her late eighties, lucid, and living near him in a Quaker retirement home in California, he contacted her and she agreed to be interviewed, something she has done for 59 years, always protesting her innocence, even though over the decades researchers have uncovered much evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n

Her ex-husband, Michael, also lived at the home but has since died.\u00a0 There\u2019s a brief interview of little consequence with him in the film since his memory was going, but I should note that he too is a crucial figure in the assassination story.\u00a0 Both he and Ruth have always denied involvement in the plot and coverup, yet much evidence connects them to it.\u00a0 Michael Paine\u2019s involvement is artfully suggested by the film\u2019s title \u2013 \u201cMrs. Paine\u201d and not simply Ruth Paine, a woman acting alone.\u00a0 The Paines, who have claimed they are pacifists, might best be superficially described as unassuming, liberal Quaker\/Unitarian do-gooders, whose wealth and astounding family and intelligence connections would make heads spin, if they were known.\u00a0 The film exposes many of those connections.<\/p>\n

The fundamental undisputed facts are as follows. In February 1963, Ruth, who spoke and taught Russian, was invited to a party by George de Mohrenschildt, a White Russian CIA asset who was \u2018babysitting\u201d Lee Harvey Oswald at the request of the CIA.\u00a0 There she met Oswald.\u00a0 Soon de Mohrenschildt would go to Haiti and Ruth would establish a relationship with Lee and Marina Oswald.\u00a0 In September, Ruth Hyde Paine visited family in eastern Massachusetts on Naushon Island, owned by the Forbes family. Michael Paine\u2019s mother, Ruth\u2019s mother-in-law, was Ruth Forbes Paine Young, from the blue-blood Forbes family of Boston.\u00a0 She was friends with the CIA\u2019s Allen Dulles since her best friend was Mary Bancroft who was Dulles\u2019s mistress.\u00a0 They had stayed on the island.<\/p>\n

From Massachusetts, Ruth drove to New Orleans to pick up the Russian speaking Marina Oswald and the Oswald\u2019s belongings to bring her back to Dallas to live with her. It\u2019s a small, unassuming house, but there was room for Marina and her children because Michael Paine had conveniently moved out in the spring, allegedly because of marital problems, but would move back in the winter after the assassination and Marina\u2019s departure. Ruth says she did this to help a woman in need.\u00a0 On her long road trip south, she made numerous stops, including at her sister Sylvia Hyde Hoke\u2019s house in Falls Church, Virginia.\u00a0 Sylvia worked for the CIA, as documents have confirmed, and her husband worked for the agency\u2019s front, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), yet to this day \u2013 and in Good\u2019s interview in the film \u2013 she claims not to know where her sister worked.\u00a0 Ruth\u2019s father, William Avery Hyde, also worked for U.S. AID in Latin America and his reports went to the CIA. From her sister\u2019s house, Ruth proceeded to New Orleans where she picked up Marina and took her to her house in Irving.\u00a0 In mid-October, again out of alleged kindness, she got Lee a job in the Texas School Book Depository, despite calls to her house from an employment agency offering him a much higher paying job.\u00a0 When asked about this by the Warren Commission, Ruth gave an evasive answer.\u00a0 Then when JFK was killed, an empty blanket roll that allegedly held Oswald\u2019s rifle was found in the Paines\u2019 garage.\u00a0 And Ruth claimed to have found a note \u2013 the \u201dWalker Note\u201d that was used to show his propensity for violence \u2013 and a letter also allegedly written by Oswald to the Russian Embassy that was used as evidence of his guilt.\u00a0 There is much more of a strange and suspicious nature involving Ruth and the Oswalds.<\/p>\n

The Paines have always said that Oswald killed Kennedy to make a name for himself \u2013 the little man kills the big one syndrome.\u00a0 They repeat this in the documentary.\u00a0 Ruth says of Oswald, \u201cHe realized he had the opportunity to no longer be a little guy but someone extraordinary.\u201d \u00a0But as Jim DiEugenio (one of the finest and most informed commentators in the film) says, if that were so, then why did Oswald always claim he was innocent, a patsy who didn\u2019t shoot anyone.\u00a0 Those who wish to kill to make a name for themselves obviously claim credit, but the Paines seem not to get this.\u00a0 Their claim makes no sense, yet they both repeat it in the film.<\/p>\n

And although the film\u2019s focus is on Ruth, not Michael, there are other undisputed facts about him worth noting.\u00a0 As previously mentioned, his mother was Ruth Forbes Paine Young.\u00a0 After divorcing Michael\u2019s father, Lyman Paine, his mother married a man named Arthur Young.\u00a0 Among other strange facts about Young, he was the inventor of the Bell helicopter, which was the prototype for the infamous Huey helicopter used in Vietnam.\u00a0 Those helicopters were produced at the defense contractor Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, Texas where Michael, the pacifist, worked through his connection to Arthur Young.\u00a0 He had a security clearance; when the Warren Commission asked him what type of clearance, he said he didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 One of his cousins, Thomas Dudley Cabot (the Boston Cabots), was a former president of the United Fruit Company, and another, John Cabot, worked for the State Department where he exchanged information about the CIA-United Fruit coup d\u2019\u00e9tat against Jacobo Arbenz. Later, he was president of the CIA front company Gibraltar Steamship Corporation that leased Swan Island in the Caribbean for the CIA, where the agency set up Radio Swan that was used during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, among other things (see pp.193-208 in James DiEugenio\u2019s Destiny Betrayed<\/em>, second edition, for important information on the Paines).<\/p>\n

All this factual background on the Paines doesn\u2019t definitively prove anything about them, but it is essential to assess their credibility, and watching The Assassination and Mrs.Paine<\/em> is all about doing that.<\/p>\n

The question about Ruth that the film asks is whether she is a truthful, na\u00efve, Quaker do-gooder or a CIA asset, a pawn, or someone in deep denial (whatever that is).<\/p>\n

She has her defenders and they appear in the film along with well-known supporters of her and the Warren Commission\u2019s conclusion that Oswald did the deed alone:\u00a0 Max Holland, Gerald Posner, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Jack Valenti, Michael Beschloss, and Peter Jennings.<\/p>\n

From the so-called prosecution side we hear from: Jim DiEugenio, Dr. Gary Aquilar, Dr. Martin Schotz, Vince Salandria, and Sue Wheaton.<\/p>\n

Paine\u2019s defenders make sure to bash Oliver Stone and his film, JFK<\/em>, and Ruth claims Stone never contacted her about her portrayal in the film.\u00a0 Stone denies this and says she would not talk to him.\u00a0 But she makes it clear that she is a big fan of various Network TV specials that support the WC, especially the London mock trial with Gerry Spence and Vincent Bugliosi, and a Peter Jennings ABC special.<\/p>\n

Ruth Paine is given a lot of screen time between her defenders and accusers.\u00a0 As I said, Max Good is more than fair, perhaps too fair.\u00a0 Paine is a cool character who only rarely gets a bit flustered.\u00a0 She\u2019s been doing these interviews for a long time, and is either a good actor or an innocent bystander, as she says, \u201cI\u2019m kind of na\u00efve \u2026. But I think it\u2019s a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After giving both sides their say \u2013 and a few others, whom I won\u2019t mention, who make lawyerly-like slippery statements \u2013 Bill Simpich interjects that there is \u201csomething about the Ruth Paine story that simply doesn\u2019t jell.\u201d\u00a0 Good then proceeds to ask Ruth a series of hard questions that viewers will find very interesting.\u00a0 But he never lets the audience know what he has concluded about her guilt or innocence.\u00a0 He is impartial to the end.<\/p>\n

I am not.\u00a0 For before watching the film, I knew a great deal about the Paines and their roles in the assassination and its cover-up.\u00a0 I completely agree with the Philadelphia lawyer Vince Salandria, one of the earliest and most brilliant critics of the official story, when he says \u201cYou can\u2019t close the circle without the Paines.\u00a0 There is no way they can be innocent.\u00a0 No way.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he added the film\u2019s penultimate statement about the assassination:<\/p>\n

There is no mystery here.\u00a0 It\u2019s all self-evident.\u00a0 It was a coup.\u00a0 It was designed to be a false mystery and the debate would be eternal and why<\/strong> it [killing JFK] was done \u2013 forgotten. In order to commit yourself to truth here, you\u2019re changing your real identity from a citizen of a democracy to a subject of a military empire.\u00a0 A big step.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ruth Paine, however, gets the final word.\u00a0 Regarding all the claims about her involvement with the CIA and the Oswalds: \u201cNonsense. Absolute nonsense \u2026. I am interested in truth \u2026. I\u2019m a very independent person.\u00a0 Nobody tells me what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

I highly recommend that people watch this important film and reach a verdict based on the evidence it provides, and if they need more, to read the works of Douglass and DiEugenio mentioned earlier, among others.\u00a0 As good as a film can be, it is only as good as the sources it relies upon.<\/p>\n

Human duplicity is a marvel to contemplate.\u00a0 The Assassination and Mrs. Paine<\/em> will force you to do that.\u00a0 Don\u2019t miss it.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: Behind the Curtain<\/a> – email: edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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