First Impressions: Guns of the Regressive Right

The Warren Commission Report earned contempt the moment is rolled off the presses, claiming the attention of a former reporter and novelist who published Guns of the Regressive Right as an antidote to the lies of the WCR. While it is an old gem, it is not a literary one. Reader discretion is advised but historical interest is high.

 

One of our correspondents alerted us to this book by Morris Bealle which not only contained compelling material, but also gives us some perspective on the state of conspiracy analysis at such an early date. The author states that the book is semi-fictional meaning that the narrative is fictional but that the people are real and the events of the plot correspond to real ones – namely the murder of John Kennedy.

 

The book provides scant information about the author, as does the internet. We know that he was a reporter of the Washington Times and Herald before publishing his own small newspaper in the 1930s when he first came up against the unbridled power of large corporations and industrialists, many of whom were associated with the Rockefeller cartels.

 

Bealle published a number of investigative books critical of the thuggery and criminality of these powerful men, including The Drug Story originally copyrighted 1949. By 1976 the copyright was held by his wife, so we assume that he was deceased by then.

 

According to other information we obtained, Bealle was from a well to do, if not wealthy, family which gave him access to the circles of men about whom he writes in his books, not the least of which is the current novel which was written in 1964, and published not long after the Warren Commission Report was published in September of that year.

 

The plot of the book centers around 9 men, known as The Establishment, who plan the assassination of President Joe Smith in large measure because he had become too big for his britches, showing increasing independence of The Establishment in the aftermath of his father’s stroke suffered in 1961. Most offensive to the cabal is the proposed elimination of the oil depletion allowance which at the time was 27.5% and the source of enormous profits.

 

After discussing the matter at one of their conclaves, and considering the consequences of a second term, they decide to murder the president. They dispatch one of their members to organize the teams necessary to pull off the coup. He in turn hires staff which includes mafia elements who handle the shooting and an accomplice to help him who acts as decoy to throw the cops off the murderer’s path.

 

The Establishment takes great care in handling the public relations aspect of the crime in order to cover up the deed, a task made vastly simple by the sheepish character of the American people who are under the propaganda sway of one of The Establishment’s media moguls. One of the major purposes of the crime was to associate it with the leading Republican presidential contender of 1964 so as to destroy his chances at the presidency as he, too, proved incorrigible to The Establishment.

 

All goes well until a few hours after the murder, when The Establishment realizes that the decoy missed his getaway and murdered a cop on his way to a theater where he was quickly arrested. Since he is now a huge liability, they order a local small time Dallas mob leader to eliminate the decoy which then necessitates the silencing of the silencer.

 

Prior to this point, The Establishment realizes that an official investigation is required to cover-up the crime and to hide the identities of the perpetrators. They select reliable cronies in the government to take care of the details and to produce a mind boggling, incoherent report to baffle the public with meaningless facts and half-truths.

 

Their report is released to great fanfare, but a maverick publisher of a small newsletter manages to get on a special edition of Meet-the-Press to ask embarrassing questions of the guest who is the chairman of the investigative committee. While he bamboozles the main stream press representatives, he fails to cow the newsletter publisher who reduces the Supreme Court justice to pixilated inanities.

 

Before turning to the substance of the narrative, we would caution anyone who wishes to read it that the writing is rather wooden and stilted. It is not a page turner and of rather low literary quality. However, it lays out an interesting thesis, with which some we would agree, while other portions we would discard given what we have learned in the intervening 50 years.

 

We would agree that The Establishment was the prime mover in the murder. Bealle enumerates each of these men with pseudonyms, most of whom we have not yet deciphered, and for which we appeal to our dear readers for assistance. However, David and Nelson Rockefeller are clearly discernible.

 

We know that the enormity of the crime required much more than these 9 plutocrats, especially the CIA and military – in other words, the whole of the Military Industrial Complex, not just its Wall Street element.

 

Bealle also seems to exculpate the Secret Service and FBI both of which we know were knee deep in the crime. The Secret Service ensured that Kennedy would be assassinated while FBI was suborned into the crime after the fact, serving as its chief obfuscator and enforcer.

 

Our author realizes that Lee Oswald did not pull the trigger, lacking the skills and psychology for doing so. Unfortunately, he does not realize that Oswald was a patsy or working for the FBI in order to stop the plot. Bealle erroneously believes that Oswald was truly a Communist.

 

One interesting insight Bealle provides is that he indicates that the President was shot from the front although he never mentions the famed Grassy Knoll. In at least two places, he describes the presidential limousine turning around to go to the hospital, when we know that it sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital by gunning forward – after it slowed down long enough to give the sniper a good aim at the president’s skull. Bealle also notes that the right rear of Kennedy’s skull is blown off, a fact which did not gain traction or significance among a wide audience until at least 2-3 decades later.

 

Interestingly, Bealle has the sniper in the Dal-Tex building rather than the Texas School Book Depository although the book cover shows the TSBD. At least this is our interpretation of the book which describes the sniper’s lair in a 10 story building which emptied at 11a for the motorcade.

 

Chief Justice Warren is singled out as the master mind of the executive branch criminal investigation, but at this point, we believe that he was a useful idiot. Allen Dulles was the ring leader of the circus, but receives minimal attention from Bealle.

 

The novel notes the association between Oswald and Jack Ruby and anticipates the death of the latter. Ruby died of cancer in 1967 according to official stories, but Bealle has The Establishment murder him in 1964 - 3 years before his actual demise, a finality which we believe corresponds to the truth.

 

We have included a list of characters in the novel as Bealle provides them. We have listed the actual person where we are 100% certain of the correspondence. For those which leave us mystified, we have included the author’s characterization of the person. Perhaps someone with old corporate annual reports or a good knowledge of corporate history can help us with the blanks.

 

The bottom line is that Bealle was more right than he was wrong, but we have the benefit of painstaking research which the murderers suffocated in order to perpetuate the preposterous lies to which Bealle so rightfully and forcefully rejects.

Cast of Characters

Character	Person	Notes
Jasper Jarrell	Chairman of the Board, Amalgamated Oil	May be Standard Oil or one of the Rockefeller trusts. Jarrell is said to be 82 and from Oklahoma
Dewitt Dockstader	David Rockefeller
Henning LaPorte	Executive Vice President, International Motors	We assume this to be General Motors
Somerset Pitt	President, Amalgamated Steel	This sounds like US Steel to us.
Kimberly Lansing	Chairman of the Board, Consolidated T&T	Appears to be AT&T rather than IT&T
Perry Platte	Chairman of the Board, Associated Broadcasting	We originally thought Bill Paley but other clues lead us elsewhere
Halifax St Lawrence	President, Consolidated Paper and Power	Canadian firm
Rosseau Greenbush	President United Transportation	We are completely clueless here
Greeley Pulitzer	Arthur Sulzberger Sr
Old Bill Smith	Joe Kennedy
Joe Smith	John Kennedy
Reggie Lucca	Big Wheel of Chicago’s Gangland
Hokey Harvey	Richard Daly
Harry Silverton	Barry Goldwater
Jimmy O’Shea	One-time mayor of New York	We have a couple of candidates – John P O’Brien or William O’Dwyer
Harbert Lohman	Herbert Lehman
Dan Rush	Dean Rusk
Perry Harriman	Pierre Salinger
Yale Suggs	Hale Boggs
Mandrake Santos	Internationally-known professional murderer and fixer
Mark McClay	Military Expert, Bank of the United States of America	We assume that Bank of the United States of America is Chase Manhattan
Samakov Tata	Hungarian communist and crack gunman
Grant Osteen	Lee Oswald
Tricky Dicky Mixon	Richard Nixon
Governor Ramey	George Romney
Algernon Dockstader	Nelson Rockefeller
Willie Wilkes-Barre	William Scranton
Hodge Podge Dodge	Henry Cabot Lodge
Lynn Buskirk Jonas	Lyndon Baines Johnson
Otis Hutchins	Earl Warren
Governor Callahan	John Connally
Sen Arbuckle	Yarborough
Sam Glade	Actor and phoney foreman of the Texas Dress Shop
Scarface Jiminez	Skipper of the getaway boat
Jim Harlan Crow	Editor of the CONDENSIRATOR	I can’t imagine this being Reader’s Digest
Beany Bimstein	Jack Ruby
Jack Stole	Amalgamated Press Columnist
Gus Hall	Gus Hall
Bobby Smith	Robert Kennedy
Sam Houston VIII	Mayor of Dallas	Earle Cabell?
Davy Crocket VII	Inspector of Dallas Police
Marty McManus	John McCormack
Halper Dollars	Allen Dulles
Christianson Gerber	Christian Herter
Clayton Chrysler	Gerald Ford
Staunton Slater	John Sherman Cooper
Harris Nathrop	Senator from Pennsylvania	Be careful with states – Dick Fussel is from Mississippi but Richard Russell from Georgia - Hugh Scott?
Tom McCoy	Chairman of the Board, Bank of the United States of America	Believed to be Chase Manhattan
Dick Fussel	Richard Russell
Tom Drummond	Strom Thurmond
Swifty Hannan	Chief of Chicago Tribune’s Washington Bureau	Said to be too truthy for The Establishment
Larry Hanighan	Public Relations Director, House of Dockstader	Rockefeller Public Relations Director
Pat Westland	James Eastland
Martin Luther Queen	Martin Luther King
Sen Rubimoff	Abraham Rubicoff
Sen Jambits	Jacob Javits
Barton Kelli	Melvin Belli
Judge Black	Dallas District Court
George Trotter	George Gallup
Lee Sauvage	US correspondent for Paris’ Le Figaro
Barry Carter	House of Dockstader Security Chief
Sammy Rodriguez	Night Jailer at the Dallas Hoosegow
Drew Annanias Hopscotch	Drew Pearson

Reference

Guns of the Regressive Right, Morris A Bealle, 1964, Columbia Publishing Company, Washington DC

Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.