Saturday, May 26, 2007. Hanford Fox Theater. The showing of two silent films. The projectors in the photo below are for sale. The movies are actually DVDs that are projected onto the screen. The film is accompanied by a live organ player. Note the blurry, lighted image at the bottom of the movie screen. Exterior photos of the theater can be found at:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=hanford%20fox%20theater&w=all

Transcript of the E. Howard Hunt taped confession.
Coast To Coast AM. May 11, 2007. 11:20 p.m. West Coast Time. Ian Punnett filling in for George Noory. During the open lines segment.

Punnett: This is the one that E. Howard Hunt's son, St. ("Saint") John Hunt had. You may have heard this with George (Noory) a little while ago. Let me set this up this way by saying something I said last week on Coast to Coast Live (the Saturday evening show). The administration of the C.I.A. and the administration of the mafia had been in fairly loose cahoots to kill Castro for years before the assassination of J.F.K. The mafia and the C.I.A. both wanted Castro out of Cuba. The C.I.A. for the self-interest of national security. The mob to have their hotels, their casinos, and other related businesses back. This is a known fact. It's indisputable. Nobody would even bother to say that this is not true now. But there was never a formal connection. It wasn't like they signed papers or something. They just overlooked their differences. The mafia and the C.I.A. kind of made a priority out of their mutual interests and started to work together. But while the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the attempts on the life of Fidel Castro kind of put the mafia and the C.I.A. tighter. There was just relationships...no official connections. Just guys who knew a guy who could make a phone call and make something happen. And it's so easy to see how it worked back then. How just a few people who knew the right numbers could create a sophistocated relationship between two supersecret organizations. People that were used to keeping their mouths shut: the mafia and the C.I.A. It's just not hard to see how these things could get done: a few phone calls, a few quiet get togethers, some money passed along in suitcases, no memos, no official paper trail, no official conspiracy. If nobody talks, nobody knows. Just some guy who has a need and they know a guy who knows a guy that can make that happen.

And that's where we come in on this audio file that is the final testimony of C.I.A veteran and convicted Watergate conspirator, E. Howard Hunt, on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The unmarked cassettte was received in the mail by his oldest son, Saint John Hunt in January of 2004. At the time, the 86 year old E. Howard Hunt was not well, according to St. John Hunt. His father's only request was that the information not be released until his death. Shortly thereafter he recovered from his illness and would not die until January 2007. So St. John Hunt just had the tape in a safe place and waited for his dad to pass on. According to St. John Hunt, the existence of the tape was unknown by his extended family until its broadcast on Coast to Coast Live with me on April 27, 2007. And I know this to be true, because the rest of the Hunt family had e-mailed me and said "Oh, he doesn't have a tape. He says he's got a tape, but he doesn't have a tape. It doesn't happen." But it did happen. He did have a tape. Many of the details in the tape were included in that interview with that Rolling Stone Magazine piece (April 5, 2007 issue, page 44 "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt" by Erik Hedegaard; http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt) published earlier in the month. By the way, it's cool. The contents of the attached tape are consistent with E. Howard Hunt's C.I.A. career. He was a significant team member of many C.I.A. "wet ops." You know...bloody operations like the violent overthrow of Guatamalen President Jacabo Arbenz (?) in 1954 and the assassination of Che Guevarra. In his lifetime, E. Howard Hunt would often be glib about his roles in these so called wet ops. He saw them as a kind of patriotic duty. He was kind of uniquely suited for that. He was amoral in that way. He was urbane, he was well connected, he was well educated, he was a writer of 85 spy novels, I think St. John Hunt said. He just enjoyed the respect and companionship of many of Washinton's most elite conservatives like William F. Buckeley, who wrote the foreword to Hunt's most recent memoirs. And despite many allegations over the years, E. Howard Hunt has always denied any official involvement in the assassination of JFK. In 1978 or 4 was it? he testifed to congress that neither he nor the C.I.A. had anything to do with the murder of the president. But he was not being fully truthful. The wet op that was pulled off in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 may not have be actually orchestrated by the CIA proper, but rather was put together by several CIA veterans and contract players for hire in a non-sanctioned hit orginally suggested by then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. One of the many purposes of the tape, according to E. Howard Hunt, was to make clear LBJ's involvement in the assassination, as we talked about a couple of week ago on Coast to Coast AM Live. The other main purpose of this tape testimony may be pride in the success of having gotten away with it. Hunt was clearly seeing that he wanted this information to get out eventually. He wasn't in a hurry. On the tape he clearly states that he didn't want to communicate the tape in a fictionalized version of the event. Perhaps as a way of justifying the assassination, Hunt seems really focused on establishing the chain of command to this action that allows him to see himself as followers of an order. That he and the other guys were just followers. That they had a greater patriotic goal. If the president asked for it, they could go do it. That's all he needed to do. That was his opinon, that was how he viewed his role in the CIA and in these special operations. That's how he saw the world. That if he, E. Howard Hunt, was being asked by the president to do something, that was all the clearance he needed to be a good American. Your president has asked you, you go do it. So that's why he can make the connection to LBJ. LBJ said he gave his approval, good enough for him. Now, they didn't want him for the same purpose, that's pretty clear. On the tape, the man that Hunt refers to as Frank, according to written notes taken down by St. John Hunt, is co-conspirator from Watergate Frank Sturgis. The mastermind appears to be Cord Meyer...who's wife was having an ongoing affair with JFK. He had his own reasons for perhaps seeing JFK dead. Dave Philips, also a CIA operative in Central and South America. And the tape also confirms this long held suspicion that David Morales was a key member of the assassination team. What's not on the tape is this guy Lucien Sarti. The man that Hunt, according to his son, confirmed earlier, was this Corsican born French contract hit man who was flown in to take the head shot at JFK from behind the grassy knoll. What is also not on this tape, your going to hear coming up after the top of the hour is motive. But I think that is attested to in other testimony. These guys hated Kennedy. The Bay of Pigs, being soft on communism, the fact that they thought he was guilty of sending their friends to their torture and deaths during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They also felt that he was a bad risk for the future of the country. They didn't respect him as a person. And they were resentful of the way the White House had been treating the CIA...the way in which Kennedy appeared to be dedicated to breaking up the CIA, firing some of the most important members of the CIA. In sum, with the permission of LBJ, Cord Meyer, David Philips, David Morales, E. Howard Hunt conspired to create a non-official hit for the quote unquote "good of the country." And once the CIA men, former military spooks have their chain of command, that they knew that the soon to be president of the U.S. had their backs, they go to work. The team is assembled, both the A-Team and the benchwarmers, meetings are held, it's not complicated. The CIA ops have done it before. It's just a matter of time. Just gotta know where and when, its not the how. Without ever explaining why, a couple of calls get made to the Secret Service, perhaps. Maybe an envelope shows up with the motorcade plans to a couple of different cities. Whatever the source, plans and backup plans are drawn on when and where. The how is easy. There is no panic. There is no concern about getting away with it. They know what they can do. It's a tight circle. Everybody in it has been battle tested and they can keep a secret. Some formally worked within the CIA, some are just contract players, some are mob hit men, perhaps. But this whole op is unoffical anyways so it doesn't matter. This is their favorite kind of wet ops. It off the books, but the soon to be president will be their guardian angel. Gotta keep if off the books, gotta keep it off the front pages, send out lots of disinformation, and then pull it off. And pull it off they did.

After the bottom of the hour commercial, the audio of E. Howard Hunt's taped confession is played. The audio and transcript of the confession can be found at:
http://www.saintjohnhunt.com/testament.html

Former Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) star Andy Xie says he thinks China isready to crash.“I think it’s going to be bust very soon,” Reuters reports Xie saying,laying the blame on the usual suspects: excess liquidity, rising inflationand rich valuations.“People will be surprised. When the end comes, it’s going to be prettybad,” Xie said.Well, we won’t be surprised. What surprises us is that the crash is takingso long to get here.How DO you say ‘bubble’ in Mandarin?Last night, we dreamt that the Dow was crashing. We woke up and wonderedif it had been a dream...or a prophecy. We’ll have to wait and see, butfor now we keep our Crash Alert flag flying here at the Daily Reckoningheadquarters, just in case. Dreams foretold Caesar’s death on the Ides ofMarch...maybe they’ll foretell the Dow’s demise.Meanwhile, more evidence that China is readying as a crash cometh - in aletter from a Chinese reader, sent to colleague Porter Stansberry:“All the people I know in China now gamble in stock. On one of China’s TVstations yesterday, was the report that out of the 16 million people inShanghai, close to 11 million now put money into the stock market. Almosteveryone - you name it: taxi driver, security guard, mini fruit-shopowner, high school student, retiree. But in the long run, a lot of thiswill end in tears, no matter how quickly China’s GDP grows. There issimply no decent research to educate Chinese people on how investing isdifferent from speculating out there.”What do we care what happens in China?Well, the Chinese central bank has a cash hoard of U.S. dollars mountingup towards $1 trillion. What will happen to all this money when thecountry goes into an economic crisis? If the Chinese chose to, they couldsend the U.S. dollar into free-fall, force American interest rates upsharply...and drive the U.S. economy into a slump. More than 80% of theU.S. budget deficit is financed by foreigners...and much of it by theChinese.Or maybe China will use its money to buy weapons. That would beinteresting, wouldn’t it?Or, they could try to corner the market on the key strategic supplies ofmodern economies - such as oil, uranium and granite countertops.Yes, dear reader, it is free cash flow that makes the world go‘round...and China’s got it - because China makes things that people wantto buy.Meanwhile, back in our beloved homeland, mommas send their children to thevery best schools so they can get jobs in finance! Ah...that’s where themoney is...not in making THINGS but in making MONEY itself.Harold Macmillan once described Britain’s post-war service economy as onein which “we take in each other’s wash [laundry].” But in the 21st centuryU.S. economy, people don’t even get their hands wet. They take in eachother’s money; one manages his neighbor’s money...another lends hisneighbor money for a house...and another takes his neighbor’s company,‘restructures’ it, and sells it back to him.The United States, for example, used to be the world’s largeststeel-maker. No more. Where the United States used to make steel, now itgambles. Literally.Here, another message from Porter Stansberry:“‘I’m not making this up. Beth Steel’s flagship iron works in Bethlehem PA- where the steel in the Golden Gate Bridge was made - has been purchasedby Las Vegas Sands Corporation and will be turned into a casino. “...I’ve never been more willing to buy gold.” The AP Story:“A sprawling 130-year-old steel plant that armored hundreds of U.S.warships and provided the raw material for the Golden Gate Bridge, MadisonSquare Garden and many other famous landmarks will become a hive ofactivity over the next few days as workers start preparing some of itsbuildings for demolition. “More than a decade after its towering blast furnaces went cold, BethlehemSteel’s flagship plant is being transformed into a $600 million casinocomplex run by Las Vegas Sands Corp., owner of the Venetian Resort HotelCasino in Las Vegas.“...State gaming regulators awarded Sands a slots license in December. Thecompany plans to open a casino with 3,000 slot machines by the end of2008, a 300-room hotel and 50,000-square-foot convention center threemonths after that, and a casino addition with another 2,000 slot machinesin summer 2009.“‘It will be one of the most unique economic development projects in thecountry, and people will come far and wide to see it,” [Mayor JohnCallahan] said. “It will be a national model for the redevelopment of anindustrial site.’”The whole U.S. economy has become rather gloriously mad, in the sense thatnone of it really makes any economic sense. Glorious in the sense thatDeng Tsiao-ping must have had in mind when he said: “To get rich isglorious”; for the illusion of wealth has never been easier, faster orcloser to hand. Just step on into the casino!Central banks all over the planet are serving helpings of money likeMcDonald’s cheeseburgers...over $2 trillion served in the last five years.Maybe they should put that up in lights. All a smart investor has to do isto get in line.In the late ‘90s, the way to make money was to start a dotcom and take itpublic. Investors would give you millions. Then...take the loot andspeculate in property. Better yet, start a property fund. Who didn’t wantto be in property in 2000-2006? And after that, it was a good idea to sell the property fund beforelenders started asking questions, and move into private equity. Borrow alot of money to buy a company. Then, have the company borrow a lot ofmoney so it can pay you big fees, because you are such a genius. Then,sell the company to the ‘mom and pop’ investors in the public market. But after that, get out of town - because each get-rich-quick era isfollowed by a posse with revenge on its mind.After the tech bubble blew they strung up Bernie Ebbers and FrankQuattrone. Now that the bubble in subprime has blown up, they’re chasingNew Century (OTC:NEWC) and other lenders. It won’t be too long before thebubble in private equity goes up too. And, not too far behind will be amob clamoring for some kind of rough justice. Already, we read in today’s paper that French presidential candidate,Nicholas Sarkozy, is threatening ‘predator’ hedge funds with a tax ontheir speculative investments. It probably won’t be long before hisAnglo-Saxon confreres pick up the rope.