YOU HAVE TO WAIT FIFTY YEARS FOR THE FACTS. (1)

May 29, 2017  I just watched a CNN program about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was reminded of discussions with my significant other over 40 years ago.

Conversations with Jack
4-29-73

J   I don’t believe that stuff in Rush to Judgment. 
B  Did you read it, Jack? 
J  I didn’t need to.  The whole theory is ridiculous. 

B   I read it in conjunction with that Esquire article, and there was a picture of a man in the doorway of the Cuban embassy who was identified as Oswald.  It looked more like Jack Ruby to me.

J  You believe that if these things happened as this Mark what’s-his-name claims they did, that Oswald had to be working for the CIA?  Is that the only answer to it?

B   I don’t remember.  I just don’t think it was Oswald alone.  There were too many strange things that happened.  It seems bizarre that Ruby was so anxious to talk in prison and he made a plea, a desperate plea that he had things he wanted to say, and shortly afterward he died of cancer in the hospital.  They wouldn’t let him talk.

J   Who wouldn’t let him talk?  What about all the times he could have talked between the time Oswald did it—

B  Just like those Watergate conspirators, he must been assured, don’t worry, you’ll just do a little time.  I’m sure he was hired and paid to kill Oswald and figured, all right, it was going to be worth it.  Instead he was made a scapegoat.

J   Do you believe he died of cancer?

B   I suspect he was murdered in some way.

J   By the government, by agents of the government.

B   By whoever these conspirators were.

J   Oh, they might not have been associated with the government.

B   Might have been.  Maybe they were Communists.  I’ll bet you’d believe that.

J   Well, I told you what I believe.

B   The Warren Commission.

J   You disbelieve the Warren Commission? [Yes].  You believe this guy Mark Lane .

B   The Warren Commmission's report is like the Bible, Jack.  It ain’t necessarily so.

J   Nor is Mark’s book necessarily so.  Why don’t you look at that whole thing—

B   It’s convincing, that’s all.

J   Well, it’s more than convincing, you’re sold, and you know it.

B   In conjunction with some other things I read at the same time, I found it convincing.   I got pretty steamed up about it and some of my friends—well one of them, Jean Sears, read the Esquire article and allowed as how it was creepy.  Most of them didn’t even want to read this stuff.

       Do you think when you read historical tales or see movies where there is a lot of conniving and treachery going on in the past, do you think it’s made up?

J   I have to understand your question better before I can answer it.

B   I feel as if you would say, Oh yeah, well that’s something that happened 50 or 100 years ago. Yeah, maybe that’s true.  But if it’s happening now, you just don’t want to believe it.

J   I don’t know what you’re saying,  If you’ll ask me something directly, I’ll be able to think  about it and give you an answer.

B   Well, I guess I’m thinking of Shakespeare, where brothers kill brothers or fathers kill sons, and there’s plotting for power.  I don’t think Shakespeare wrote about things that were totally imaginary.  I think he wrote about human beings, and human beings can be power-mad and unscrupulous when they get the opportunity.

J  There are human beings who are power-mad and unscrupulous, no question about it.  I just can’t believe Earl Warren would cover up a thing like that, if he knew it.

B   You wouldn’t have believed that Mr. Mitchell would have covered up Watergate, would you?

J   Why not?  I don’t compare Mr. Mitchell to Earl Warren.  I don’t know Mr. Mitchell.

B   I think a few weeks ago you wouldn’t have believed that of somebody in a position of importance and authority.  If I’d said I bet you Mr. Mitchell covered this up, you wouldn’t have believed it.

J   Well, the only thing about it is that I wouldn’t have believed he would be that dumb.  
B   I think you’re going to say that a lot, as more and more comes out.  You might even come to say that about your wonderful president.

J   I have a feeling you’re going to be disappointed if he isn’t involved.

B  I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised. It would go along with what my impression had been about him, and if it does turn out he was involved and he gets impeached or he resigns, hurray.  Should someone like that be up there?

J  You’re not answering my question.  [What?]  How you’re gonna feel if it’s found that he is not involved.

B  I think it will be found that he’s not involved, whether he is or not.

J (laughter)  Oh, how can I win with you, then?  I can’t.

B  It’s like Rush to Judgment.  Nobody’s gonna believe it whether it’s true or not.
J  You’re never satisfied.  You people are never satisfied at the fact that they’ve taken all those 500,000 troops out of Vietnam and that won’t be enough for you.

B  Of course not, because the war is still going on.  We’re doing the same thing in Cambodia.

J  We don’t have troops in Cambodia.

B  No, but we’re keeping up the war.

J  Well, then, it’s not the same thing, is it?

B  The Vietnam thing started on a smaller scale, so this is actually continuing on a worse scale than when we first got involved in Vietnam.

J  In other words you think we should make a treaty with a nation, and if they don’t live up to the treaty, so what.  We did make a treaty with a nation, and they’re not living up to the terms of the treaty.

B  They say we’re not living up to certain things we said.

J  Are they saying that?  I wasn’t aware of that.

B  Oh yeah.  You don’t read the parts of the paper where they say there were 110 violations on our part—not South Vietnam’s, but the United States’.

J  No, I didn’t read that.  What were we doing?

B  I don’t know.  It didn’t say.  I forget who accused whom first, but I don’t believe things are as black-and-white as you do.

J  I don’t believe they’re as black-and-white as you do.

B  All I know is, by believing the way you do and as most people do, an awful lot of innocent people have been killed.  And I don’t believe that same number of people would have been killed if we had kept our noses out of it.

       Here we are, so chummy with those terrible Communists that we’ve been so afraid of for years.  That wonderful Mr. Nixon and his wonderful four years, it was a marvelous move to make friends with the Chinese and the Russians.  After his talk all through the years about how terrible they were.

J  Shows you how flexible he is.

B  Too bad somebody didn’t get flexible a little sooner.

J  This is accepted as the thing to do by both parties.  I don’t see why you can’t look at the whole thing and say, Well, both sides of our government are advocating that we do this.

B  I think it’s fine. [No, you don’t think it’s fine.]  I do!  I just wonder why they didn’t do it sooner.  [You don’t think it’s fine.]  Of course I do!

J  Then why do you talk like it isn’t fine.

B  Because I think it was long overdue.

J  Well that can’t be helped.  Nixon did it in his first four years.

B  I just think it was the logical thing to do a long time ago, and now because our president has done it, our wonderful president, everybody like you falls right in line behind him.  All of a sudden it’s fine to be buddies with the Communists.  Before that he was saying how terrible they were, we should have nothing to do with them, they were wicked people—and here you are, right along with the president, ‘cause that’s what the president says.  You don’t think for yourself.

J  (laughter)  I can’t say the same about you, dear.  You certainly think for yourself.  Do you think it’s gonna be easier to convince you of the other side than it is me?  You’re always telling me how difficult I am to convince.  Don’t you think you would take as much or more convincing?

B  I just wish you would read Mark Lane’s book [I will read it] (He never did), so that you’ll understand what I’m talking about.  .

       So maybe if you read this book, something will happen, maybe you’ll understand to some degree and say, Gee, poor Barbara, she’s been taken in, but I can see that he does weave a pretty good set of fairy tales together.

J  Do you think this thing is too big for the whole Congress, that they wouldn’t dare do anything about Mark Lane’s book?  They’ll do this much on a little thing like Watergate, yet you think they’d do nothing about Lane’s allegations.

B  Read it.

J  I’m  gonna read it, and I’ll also read where each little part was refuted, so who are you gonna believe, the government and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or some guy named Mark Lane that writes a book. You’re gonna say, I believe Mark Lane because that’s the side you choose to believe.

B  I’m gonna say I found it very convincing.

J  Okay, but you’re not gonna change your mind no matter what happens.

B  I will always be suspicious.  I will always think that things were not the way they appeared.

J  That’s the cynicism.  You’ll always be suspicious.

B  I will always be suspicious that they covered things up.  If these people hadn’t tattled, nobody would have known all they’re finding out about Watergate.

J  They did tattle, didn’t they?

B  Yeah, they did, but there are probably lots of times things happen, and the people don’t tattle.  They get bought off.  But the heat got a little too hot, and it looked as if somebody was going to have to serve more time than he thought he was going to, and so they began to sing.  How many times do things go on, and you don’t hear about them because people don’t tattle.

J  A lot, but not about a presidential assassination.  You can’t compare the two.

B  Well, wait’ll you read about the people that died, the mysterious circumstances under which they died.

J  I don’t understand what you’re saying.

B  Witnesses.

J  Somebody killed the witnesses, you’re saying.  This is what the book led you to believe, this is what the book is implying.  Somebody kills other humans because President Kennedy was assassinated—

B  There was a conspiracy, and the conspirators couldn’t do everything perfectly, it wasn’t the perfect crime, so there were witnesses who could expose things they were trying to hide.

J  Why would the government try to squash this thing if it wasn’t the government that was involved?

B  I’d like to ask you that.

J  So you’re saying they tried to squash it because it was the government that was involved.

B  I think it’s possible.

J  Yeah, but you must think more than that, Barbara.  You either buy this guy’s theory—

B  I simply do not buy the single-bullet, single-assassin theory and everything Mark Lane questions.

J  Does that lead you to all this other stuff?

B  No, but it sure makes me very skeptical about the Warren Commission.

J  The whole Warren Commission because of a book.

B  No, the single-assassin theory, which is what they built up, and it doesn’t really make sense.

J  Well, all right, so maybe there wasn’t a single assassin.  Does that mean the government has to be involved?

B  You just asked me the question as to why all this would be squashed unless the government was involved.  
J  I’m not saying that it’s being squashed, to begin with.  I’m asking the question about what you think.

B  Well, why did all those people die, do you suppose?

J  Why did all these people die?  I don’t know why they did.

B  Well, wait till you read it.  Read it as if it were fiction and you’ll find it fascinating.

J   Do you know why they died?

B  I think they were eliminated because they knew too much, and they were talking too much, and then an awful lot of people that had more to contribute wouldn’t talk any more because they got so scared.  Every day they were reading about somebody that had the same sort of information they did, and suddenly these people were dead.

J  And you think that the Warren Commission knew all these people that died and said, Well, they died because somebody killed them, or they died natural deaths, or what?

B  I don’t know what the Warren Commission has to say about these people.  I know there’s a lot of people they have nothing to say about because nobody saw fit to question them.  There were some people that wanted to be questioned, that had information, and nobody went near them.  They indicated that they had information, and the CIA just didn’t bother to meet with them.

       Then people began getting too nervous to give information because those who did make a fuss and said, Look, I saw this, and such-and-such happened . . . there’s the Grassy Knoll bit, and other things were covered up, like a whole new sign post replacing the old one.  Something that possibly had bullet holes in it, a bullet dent, disappeared the next day, and another sign took its place, very quietly.  That’s the sort of thing that’s in this book.

J  A stop sign disappeared and was replaced because it had bullet holes in it.  Is that what you’re saying, that it wasn’t part of the investigation?

B  I don’t remember exactly because I read it so long ago, but something like that happened.  On whose authority was this done?  Suddenly something that was part of the crime scene disappears.

J  Why didn’t he follow this up and say, This sign has disappeared.  What have you done with it and under whose authority did you replace this sign?

B  Well, these are things I suppose he found out during the course of researching the circumstances, which would take weeks, months of talking to people, then to write the book, and who’d listen to a lightweight like him, anyway?

J  Oh, the sign didn’t disappear.  Somebody said the sign disappeared.  One of his witnesses said that there was a sign that disappeared.

B  There are photographs that show the area before and after.  I might have this mixed up with the Esquire article.  I’ll try to find that, too.

5-22-73

[TV news in the background] 

J   This McCord to me is a great guy, a great, great guy.  I like him. 

B   And Caulfield corroborated most of what he said.

J   I believe it.  I believe everything he says.  If anything he says isn't true, it's because he's honestly mistaken. He’ll say, "To the best of my memory," or something like that.  He's a beautiful guy.

    And that fellow that says, "Nothing to worry about here, I got McCord."  I don't think it's a reflection on McCord.  I think it's a reflection on the people who gave him his instructions, his orders.  Like Mitchell.  I have to admit that I don't think as much of Mitchell as I previously did.  I don't know if I've mentioned that, Hiyo. You're not gonna gloat, are you?  This doesn't make you right in other areas, you understand.

B (laughter) I know that, darling. 

J  I'm not completely succumbing. 

B  I know that, too. 

J  Except with you.  I have a high regard I haven’t told you about lately. 

B   Jack, if they really did some of the things they did, like sabotaging Muskie, and who was the other one that they were nervous about?

J  Well, I thought it was Muskie.

B  There was one other one that they suspected somebody had sabotaged, done something to sabotage his presidential chances.

J Who, possibly who?  I can't imagine.

B There was somebody else that...anyway, they wanted McGovern to be the opponent because they figured he had the least hope of getting in.

 J Well now, they agreed with the younger element there, they wanted McGovern, too.

B   I mean the Republicans wanted McGovern.

J   Yes, yes, yes, but they agreed with the younger Democratic element.  [Who agreed?]  The Republicans, because they both wanted the same candidate.  [Yes, but for different reasons.]  They took a view of McGovern as, as [being a real loser] as being a real loser, absolutely.

B   And they were right.

J   I think the whole thing was pretty disgraceful.

B   I've been hearing lately, and I'm not surprised, that Democrats have done a lot of underhanded things, too.

J   I think if this is the type of person that Nixon can think highly of, he's had it.  I don't care whether he knew anything about it or whether he had any part of it, but if these are the kind of people that he chooses to be his White House element, he's sadly lacking.  He really is sadly lacking.  I'm sure he knows it as well as I do.

B   I just wonder if this sort of thing has gone on, on both sides.  I don't like to resort to what a lot of people are saying, "Oh well, you know politics is dirty and war is hell" and excusing things on that ground [Yeah, that's not being sensible.], but it does make me wonder if both government parties resort to trickery like that.

J   But this is what we're faced with.  This is what we know, and that's what you have to deal with.  What you know, not what might be.

B   It's not that I'm excusing it.  It's just that I'm cynical and I just can't believe [Don't say that.  Are you cynical, Barbara?] that all the wrong is always on one side.  [Are you cynical?]  Even though it happens to be apparently on the side that--[Barbara, are you cynical?]

   I don't think it's bad to be cynical, if by being cynical you are motivated to try to do something about the things you're cynical about.

J   Do you think you'll always remain cynical?  Do you think there'll be something that will turn you around, or do you think being cynical is a basic trait with you?

B   I would be more cynical if nothing were being done about Watergate, if it were just being glossed over and forgotten about.

J   Yeah, doesn't it give you a good feeling to know that this can come out?

B   It does, and there are things I'm not cynical about.  I'm pleased that they're making a serious investigation.  I'm not cynical about that.

J   I think the worst thing a person can be is cynical.  Not the worst thing, no, there could be a lot worse things, but it's terrible to be cynical.

B   On the other hand, it's stupid to be naive and Pollyannaish about things, too. [I know it, I know it.]  I don't think you should be destructively cynical.  I think you can be constructively cynical and just not swallow everything that somebody says just because you're impressed with an authority figure.

J   No, but I don't think you have to label it cynicism, Barbara.

B   Well, all right, maybe you and I are just quibbling over meanings, then.  [Maybe, I hope so.]  In fact, a woman talking to Paul Benzaquin today ended up with some comments that sounded pretty good to me...she said, "I guess I'm cynical," and he paused and said, "Well, I think there are a lot worse things that a person can be today than cynical."

J   Well, of course, of course.  [They have reasons to be cynical.]  They can be talking sensibly, though, and you can be open-minded.

B   I'm cynical about things like trying to make any war that we get into, like the Vietnam War sound like we have holy, pure, beautiful reasons for it.   I think that the average American loves to swallow that, and it's a line of crap and I don't believe it.  I don't believe that our motives are always that pure and beautiful.  So if you disagree with that, okay.

J  (laugh) Why do you say those terrible things about me?

B   Because I think I have a right to be cynical.  Maybe you believe everything that comes out of Washington and the White House [I don't think you should believe everything that comes out of Watergate.], such as excusing our involvement in Cambodia.  We're getting into Cambodia, and they're giving us the same malarkey they gave for all these years when we were in Vietnam.  Stop your noise, people, don't fuss about this, we're on the verge of victory, for God's sake.  Where have we heard that before?  We’re getting fed the same story again. Be quiet, you Peaceniks.

J   You say you heard something from somewhere that says we're on the verge of victory, but what's the source, Barbara?

B   Nixon said that . . .for people to stop rocking the boat about Cambodia, and Congress to stop giving them a hard time and threatening to withdraw funds.  We'll get the money somewhere else, so we can keep on bombing, in order that we can have peace. And he claims he's on the verge of having this be a victory.  I thought we were through in there!  Who wouldn't be cynical?

J   You don't have to label it cynicism.

B   Okay.  Let's call it something prettier.  [hohoho]  Dubious? (laugh).

J   Yeah, that's right.  I would have used it if I'd have thought of it. 

B   How about, I have me doubts.

5-25-73

B   Did you ever hear of a guy named Gary Null?  He was on Benzaquin’s show.

J   I think I have.  Or am I thinking of Maryknoll?

B   He's written a lot of books about nutrition, and he's just written a new book about the conspirator who saved the world.  It's about Nicholas and Alexandra.  For years and years there've been rumors that they were not killed and that somebody got away and....

J   What was the name of the child, the girl?

B   Anastasia .  [Yeah].  Well, he got into this eight years ago to check out this huge sum of money like two million dollars that disappeared.  And he was accepting the story that they'd been assassinated and wasn't even thinking of questioning it, but the more he got into investigating the money and the more people he talked to, the more evidence he shows in this book that not only did the whole family escape, so those horrible pictures of the slaughter must be of somebody else, or they faked it.

   And he went on to say that not only did Nicholas escape, but he is the most famous spy in the world, and he gave his name.

J   Who is the greatest spy in the world?  [Nicholas]  How old is he?  [He'd be like 92 now, I guess.]

B   And then he goes into what I've talked to you about before and of course you don't believe, with the sinking of the Lusitania, how this was an incident that was concocted to get us into the war and that the passengers didn't know it, but it was loaded with ammunition.

J   Barbara, when you say that, "This was concocted to get us into the war." what do you mean?

B   This is what my opinion is, based on things that I've read.

J   Yeah, but what do you read?  I mean, you just used the word concocted, and that's it.                 

B   Well, Churchill has been quoted as saying we need an incident to get America into the war.  We need her help and [what ship is this?]—this is World War 1, not Roosevelt.  [What are you saying Churchill for?] I've got him mixed up with Pearl Harbor, which he also got us into.  Both wars.  England knew Pearl Harbor was gonna be bombed, according to his evidence, two days before it happened.

J  Now do you believe because he says this that. . .[I gotta read it, but I...]  But even if you read it, dear, even if you read it. . .

B   I've read so many other things that you have never read on these subjects.

J   Yeah, but supposing a man comes up and says one day or half a day, or a quarter of a day.  If he says that, you believe they knew it before it happened.

B   Well, evidently he found documents of some kind, records of conversations or letters [Why evidently?  Why do you say evidently?]  I don't know 'cause I haven't read the book.

J   Well, if you read the book, and he says I've got documents, you believe it, that's all he has to say.

     {voices have been rising}

B   Well, let's not discuss it [Jesus!]. I called the show and asked him about the Kennedy assassination [Oh, he must have something on that].  I said you got into everything else, you must have something on that [Yeah, sure, he's got that].  He said, Oh yes I do, but I've been asked not to disclose it, ever, and I have agreed not to do it ever.

J   He's a windbag.  He's got Kennedy, he's got World War 1, he's got the Nicholas and Alexander [the whole works].  He's full of old shoes, Barbara.

B   Well, I've read too many things from too many sources [Yeah, and he's got 'em all.] and I think this is the way things are done.  I think they fool the people....

J   Why are you so ready to believe everything to the contrary?  That's what amazes me.  Everything.

B   Because I think this is the way the world is run. 

J   Why is it because somebody says this ship was sunk and it was a conspiracy and this and that,  that you right away latch onto it?

B   Look, if you ever read these things.  You don't read them.  You don't read a goddamn thing, Jack.   [Oh, if I read them, does that mean I have to believe them because I read them?]   If you read them, you might be impressed.  LISTEN JACK, I AM NOT A MORON, AND I DO ONE HELL OF A LOT MORE READING THAN YOU DO.

J   Of course you're not a moron, dear.

B   ALL RIGHT, THEN LET'S NOT DISCUSS IT.

J  (laugh) Yeah, okay, okay, we won't discuss it.  I thought we were going to discuss it.

5-27-73

B   This same guy that’s written the book, The Conspirators Who Saved the World, did I tell you he was a nutrition expert?

J   Who?

B   Null.  The guy who wrote the book we fought about.  Gary Null. 

J   You never mentioned that before.

B   We had a big fight about it.  He’s the one whose book wrapped up all the things that I think are possible.  The Lusitania, Pearl Harbor . . . what was the other thing?  Say something, Jack. (laugh)

J   He wrote a book on all these things? 

B   Oh, and the assassination, the alleged assassination of Nicholas and Alexandra.  He has information also about the Kennedy assassination, but he was asked not to write about or discuss this, and he agreed not to.  And like Justice Warren, he says there’ll be much more known.

J   After he’s dead for forty years?  He, himself?  Hah!  He attaches an awful lot of importance to himself, doesn’t he?

B   Not necessarily after forty years, but whatever the date is that the American public is going to be allowed to learn these secret things that supposedly are protecting the Kennedy family from further hurt.

J   What does that mean?  Nobody knows what that means?  [No, right.  Nobody knows.]  I don’t even believe it.  I don’t want you to think I believe it.

B   I don’t either.  I think they’re just using that as an excuse to keep things secret.

J    I think he’s using it as an excuse not to tell a lot of the things that he doesn’t know anyway.

B   Who’s this?  Null, you mean?  [Mmm.]  Well, all he’d have to do, if he doesn’t know anything, would be to quote Mark Lane and the Esquire article. 

J   Who’s he quoting?  Is it the same old jazz?  You know, he can go in and get all the background information of everything that was ever written about this stuff—I resent these individuals that go around writing books and have secret knowledge of all this junk!

B   Well, this other junk is going to be printed, and I suppose the Lusitania story will be similar to what we read in the Globe today. 

J   Of course it will! Exactly! Now why should this man take credit for all the information that’s available anyway?

B   He’s not taking credit, he’s compiling it into a book.  And I think there’s been another book written entirely about the Lusitania.  [He’d have you think that he has covered all this stuff.]  I think it probably touches on what his main theme is, which is about Nicholas and Alexandra and how they were really not assassinated and the missing two million or billion dollars or whatever it was.

J   Well, what’s his point?

B   The point is that there are all sorts of secret—[No, I mean about Nicholas and Alexandra.  What is his point?]  I don’t know, I haven’t read the book.  But I think the reason that these other things would come in is because there are big deep secrets that certain key people know in different nations.  They feel if the public knew about them, there could be pandemonium.  So they feed the public pap—

J   Why would there be pandemonium about Nicholas and Alexandra?

B   Just like there’d be pandemonium in this country if it turns out the there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.  Can’t you imagine that there’d be pandemonium?  Just because you don’t happen to live in Russia, “Why would there be pandemonium?”  Well, maybe there would be in Russia. 

J   You don’t believe that, angel. 

B   I don’t know.  I haven’t read the book!  I don’t know!

J    Well, there couldn’t be pandemonium about a thing like that in Russia.  [Well, why?]  If you were talking about something that was relatively recent . . .

B   If it turned out that the royal family was not really assassinated—

J   Who would give a hoot these days whether the royal family was or was not assassinated?

B   Who would give a hoot whether the Lusitania had munitions on it or not?  [Nobody! Absolutely nobody!]  That’s right.  That’s why you have to wait for fifty years to find out the facts.  Back then they would have cared.  We wouldn’t have gotten into World War One. 

J   I say who gives a hoot about Alexandra and Nicholas today?  Nobody.

B   All right.  So it’s very interesting to find out what may be the facts, if this book is true.  Back then people would have given a hoot.  Whoever was in power or whoever wanted them annihilated—

J   “If this is true.”  I’m glad you said that.  I’m glad, because you’re getting a little wild there.

B   I’m not saying it’s true.  I just think a lot of things come out years later when they’re  allowed to leak out because the public will say, as you say, “Who gives a hoot?”   It’s like really, Who gives a hoot about World War One and why we got into it?  We were manipulated into it with all this intrigue you read about today in the Globe.  Who gives a hoot?  So we had a war, and all those lives were lost, the second bloodiest war in our history.  And in another fifty years, who will give a hoot if President Roosevelt knew that those Japanese planes were on their way, and he let all those boys at Pearl Harbor die?  Who will give a hoot?  And in Russia, they’ll give even less of a hoot.

      I give a hoot that people can’t be informed right after these things happen, that they can’t be informed before they happen, that they can’t really have a say in their government and what’s happening.  That they have to be tricked into waving their flags and saying, Oh, what a crime, those awful Germans, those beasts.  .

J   I do, too.  If that’s true, you’re right.  I think it’s terrible to sacrifice lives to go to somebody else’s aid. 

B   “To go to somebody else’s aid.”  Well, it’s not terrible if it’s for the right reasons, but if you’re tricked into it, it’s terrible. 

J   No, no, it’s still terrible, Barbara, to allow Pearl Harbor to happen in order to help someone’s cause.  I don’t think there should be one lowly sailor sacrificed for a thing like that.  I really don’t.  But I think it’s disgraceful to think that some of these people did not do their job, and those poor sailors were thinking, Well, we’re all set because the higher-ups know exactly what’s going on, and they’re on the ball.

B   All right.  That would be impossible to tolerate, except maybe in another thirty or forty years, people won’t give a hoot, just like you said who gives a hoot about what happened in Russia in the past.

J   No, no, that’s different, angel!  That’s different entirely!  You’re talking about something that was supposed to happen, the assassination of a royal family, and that was a terrible thing in itself to happen.  But the fact that this man is bringing out that it didn’t happen, I don’t get the connection.

B   Well, I won’t either until I read the book, unless the connection is that there are all kinds of sinister maneuverings going on in governments—

J   This was all brought about before this family was assassinated.   It wasn’t at the instigation of something.  This was a revolution that was well under way, and they were assassinated.   I don’t know why, I’ll never understand how people can do that.  Of course, they might look upon this family as the reason for human suffering with the vast majority of people, and therefore they resent them for taking their high place and allowing these things to happen.  So they deserve to die. But not to have the whole family wiped out

B   If you look through history, millions and millions of lives have been sacrificed simply because some people in power sat around a table and consulted their maps and they said, We’ll do this here and we’ll do that there, and they planned their stragedy, str-, str- . . .

J   The word sounds like it should be stragedy.

B   (laugh) And the fact that this crushed a lot of lives, it’s just part of the game.  I don't believe women would do the same thing if we were in power.  It seems as if men will always want to play their cowboys and Indians games.  What are you having now?

J   Rum and cranberry juice.  Want to try it?

B  Umm, that’s good!

J   {sound of ice plunking in glass)  You’re beautiful to drink with.

B   I’m thinking about another thing that’s fun about you.  That one can get a little loaded and still have fun, and a lot loaded and still have fun.  

J   That’s because I put up with your belligerence. . . . (Tape ends.)