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Did the CIA kill John Lennon?

So, in other words, you don't really believe that Chapman was literally psychotic, you were using the term "lunatic" in a generically pejorative kind of way.
What part of my statement are you having difficulty with? Or are you just arguing semantics, because you have nothing? He was suicidal, depressed, and delusional. His life is marked with failure, and religious extremism. If you can't get over a single word that was used as a condemning hyperbole, then I don't know what to tell you.

And you know this how?
Because manchurian candidate style "sleeper assassins" are a work of fiction, not reality. The CIA abandoned such a project because it yielded no positive results.

I'm not fabricating anything.
You speak of cabals, and sleeper assassins as though it's the only reasonable explanation, which are fabrications, since there is no evidence to support your claims.

You quack as if the fact that Chapman was not financially self-sufficient enough to carry out the assassination all by himself is nothing to be concerned about. You quack about his being a "****ing lunatic" and then back away from your own diagnosis as soon as the issue over whether or not he had the mental competency to carry out the deed is introduced.
I didn't back away from my "own diagnosis". I've actually stood by it pretty firmly, because his mental health is key to the case against him. The 9 psychiatrists who examined him will agree, since their prognosis was the same: Delusional, but competent enough to stand trial. Which means he was also competent enough to plan, and commit a murder. Six out of nine stated that he was, in fact, psychotic.

1.) Chapman did not have the financial wherewithal to do the deed by himself.
Actually, he did. From all of the jobs he worked, and from living in very cheap quarters, he was able to accumulate 1,200 dollars, which he exhausted on his one way trip to kill Lennon. You see, he wasn't just a security guard, he was also paid part time by the hospital he was committed to for attempting suicide, as well as the YMCA, in which he resided. 1200 dollars is not a fortune, but it was enough to get him to New York one last time.

2.) Chapman did not have the mental competency to do the deed by himself.
Of course he did. He clearly demonstrated that he was capable of making, and executing plans on his ow. He had relationships, he held jobs to pay rent, he lowered his living standards so he didn't exhaust his monetary income. People with cognitive dysfunctions are able to do a great many things.

These are NOT trivial issues. They require explanation in order to conclude that Chapman acted alone. And yet, you seem perfectly content to overlook them and mindlessly reiterate the mainstream narrative as if, like Chapman, you are apparently also under the spell of some posthypnotic suggestion.

...or maybe you're just a gullible, duckspeaking fool.
No, I just don't put any stock into your opinion, especially now. If you want to believe that Chapman was part of some malevolent underground cabal that uses mind control assassins to kill musicians well after their musical decline, that's your problem.
 
Actually, his obsession with Lennon was pretty well-documented. It was not simply killing someone famous. The whole "kill someone to get famous" rationale is basically a myth fabricated for political purposes or as a coping mechanism. People don't do that, not even crazy people.
He had a list of people to Kill, including Jackie Onassis, George C Scott, and Johnny Carson.
 
He had a list of people to Kill, including Jackie Onassis, George C Scott, and Johnny Carson.

He did not have a "list" of people to kill. Chapman has said he thought about killing other people, but the fixation on Lennon was pretty obvious from his actions. It was not about killing some random famous person.
 
He did not have a "list" of people to kill. Chapman has said he thought about killing other people, but the fixation on Lennon was pretty obvious from his actions. It was not about killing some random famous person.

He openly admitted to having a list of people to kill, and chose Lennon because he was the most accessible at he time. He wasn't out to "kill random famous people", he was making a statement.
 
He openly admitted to having a list of people to kill, and chose Lennon because he was the most accessible at he time. He wasn't out to "kill random famous people", he was making a statement.

Chapman was talking to a parole board about getting released well after the establishment press had already pushed this notion of him being a fame-seeking lunatic. People wanting to be released from captivity will often say whatever they think is necessary to get free, even if it is completely fabricated. His statements and actions around the time of the assassination, as well as his background, are far more telling than anything he says to get out of prison.
 
Chapman was talking to a parole board about getting released well after the establishment press had already pushed this notion of him being a fame-seeking lunatic. People wanting to be released from captivity will often say whatever they think is necessary to get free, even if it is completely fabricated. His statements and actions around the time of the assassination, as well as his background, are far more telling than anything he says to get out of prison.

So, to get free, he made up that he intended to murder even more people? Does not make sense. Of course he was obsessed with Lennon, he was also obsessed with the Catcher in the Rye, his ex's, religion. He had an obsessive personality. Plus, who wouldn't obsess over a high profile person they intend to murder in order to make a social statement?
 
I didn't come to the conviction that the CIA killed John Lennon until a friend handed me a copy of Fenton Bresler's Who Killed John Lennon? in the mid-90s. Learning about Mark David Chapman was a slap in the face -- I already knew beyond doubt the why...I had been an activist with the Central America solidarity movement for over a decade. I was in Managua when Lennon was assassinated. In El Savador three nuns and a lay worker, all from the U.S., were raped and murdered by the U.S.-backed military, 6 days before Lennon was shot to death by - I would maintain - essentially the same hands. Lennon was due to get his U.S. citizenship in a few months, meaning he could become politically active without fear of deportation, which had famously kept him off the streets for a decade. Reagan's transition team was taking power, and they were to throw their most ferocious attack-dog militarists the bloody bones of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Giuatemala. Was there any single person who might cause them domestic trouble? It doesn't matter that we'll never know if Lennon would or wouldn't get behind, or out front of, the Central America solidarity movement, but if he had the national demos would have drawn a million, not the 50K tops we ever managed to get to the streets of DC. That doesn't matter. The war planners only had to believe he was a credible threat. And hell, they got this MDC asset standing by...did you know that MDC worked in the World Vision-run refugee camp at Fort Chaffee where CIA assets and their families landed after being airlifted out by Uncle Sam as Saigon fell? Oh, I see, it's a coincidence. It's also a coincidence that MDC worked at the Beirut YMCA at the onset of the civil war. Or that his plane tickets were altered, as Bresler discovered. But programmed assassins? Well if you doubt that programmed assassins are factual, please see this obituary in the Newspaper of Record for Herb Spiegel, a psychiatrist on the Columbia faculty for 40 years and author of a standard clinical textbook of hypnosis, and then watch RFK Must Die, a 2006 documentary, where you can hear Spiegel explain why he's certain that Sirhan Sirhan acted under hypnotic suggestion - that he was a programmed assassin. Was Jose Perdomo the second gunman? maybe. If it's a fact that he was a Cuban exile with a paramilitary history, all by itself this looks pretty suspicious. But whether or not he's part it, it doesn't change the big picture. These people took Lennon from us, we'll never hear the music he might have continued to create. He died for Central America. I'll go to my ashes believing that.

Feel free to visit my blog, ciakilledlennon.blogspot.com
 
So, to get free, he made up that he intended to murder even more people? Does not make sense.

Seriously, are you just going to slaughter a bunch of straw men or are you going to have a real discussion? What he would have made up is that anyone famous would have suited his purpose at that time. If he thinks that people wanted to hear him say he really just wanted fame and didn't care how he got it that would be part of it, making sure to say it was not really about killing Lennon.
 
Seriously, are you just going to slaughter a bunch of straw men or are you going to have a real discussion? What he would have made up is that anyone famous would have suited his purpose at that time. If he thinks that people wanted to hear him say he really just wanted fame and didn't care how he got it that would be part of it, making sure to say it was not really about killing Lennon.

I don't think you understand what a strawman is. You stated:

"People wanting to be released from captivity will often say whatever they think is necessary to get free, even if it is completely fabricated."

I responded to that portion with:

"So, to get free, he made up that he intended to murder even more people? Does not make sense."

That's not a strawman.
 
I don't think you understand what a strawman is. You stated:

"People wanting to be released from captivity will often say whatever they think is necessary to get free, even if it is completely fabricated."

I responded to that portion with:

"So, to get free, he made up that he intended to murder even more people? Does not make sense."

That's not a strawman.

I was not saying he "made up that he intended to murder even more people" to get parole and that is not what happened either. That is definitely a strawman argument. Anyone can see that right after I said it was a strawman I clarified what the argument was actually about so there should be no confusion on your part about why it was a strawman. Just in case you are still not clear or are still going to push this strawman, the statement Chapman made was saying that he had thought about killing someone other than Lennon and that any famous person would suffice. His statement before the parole board was inconsistent with his actions and words around the time of the assassination. Most likely he thought the parole board wanted him to admit he did not have any lofty motive, but was just acting out of his own selfish desires, even if it was not true and so he had to make it convincing.
 
What part of my statement are you having difficulty with? Or are you just arguing semantics, because you have nothing? He was suicidal, depressed, and delusional. His life is marked with failure, and religious extremism. If you can't get over a single word that was used as a condemning hyperbole, then I don't know what to tell you.

I'm sorry, but in your earlier post you seemed to suggest that you were more learned about psychiatry and mental illness than myself. Now, you are admitting to merely throwing around generic layman's terms without any real understanding of what you are talking about.

Let me explain something to you, while it is possible for someone as apparently sick as Chapman was at the time, to make multiple flights to and from Hawaii to New York without considerable assistance from another party, it is highly unlikely.

People in the throws of such psychosis do not usually have the psychic energy needed for such an endeavor. Mind you, this is not the same thing as showing up at school, armed to the teeth, and going on a homicidal rampage. This incident required a considerably agitated psychotic to make extensive air travel, TWICE, in order to commit the offense.

Because manchurian candidate style "sleeper assassins" are a work of fiction, not reality. The CIA abandoned such a project because it yielded no positive results.

And you know they are a work of fiction, how?

POP QUESTION: Which do you think the more likely?:

1) That the CIA would admit to having successfully developed such a technique, which would necessitate having actually tested it and would thus admit to murder, or...

2) That the CIA would admit disinformation regarding the development of such a technique, after information regarding its development was leaked, and then claim to have abandoned it as a failed enterprise.

You speak of cabals, and sleeper assassins as though it's the only reasonable explanation, which are fabrications, since there is no evidence to support your claims.

If Chapman did not act alone, then this was a conspired act. The next question is: Who could possibly induce a person to commit such an act, wait for the police to arrive, and then confess to the act without being able to recall any memory or knowledge of the inducing entity?

This is not a long list of suspects.

I didn't back away from my "own diagnosis". I've actually stood by it pretty firmly, because his mental health is key to the case against him. The 9 psychiatrists who examined him will agree, since their prognosis was the same: Delusional, but competent enough to stand trial. Which means he was also competent enough to plan, and commit a murder. Six out of nine stated that he was, in fact, psychotic.

"Legally sane" only means that one is competent enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Legal competency is not the issue here. The issue is whether or not Chapman was mentally robust enough to plan and commit the offense without the assistance of another party.

Actually, he did. From all of the jobs he worked, and from living in very cheap quarters, he was able to accumulate 1,200 dollars, which he exhausted on his one way trip to kill Lennon. You see, he wasn't just a security guard, he was also paid part time by the hospital he was committed to for attempting suicide, as well as the YMCA, in which he resided. 1200 dollars is not a fortune, but it was enough to get him to New York one last time.

The only "cheap quarters" that exist in Hawaii are on the beach. So, unless Chapman lived in a tent, it would have been financially difficult, if not impossible, for him to afford such airfare at that particular time in airline history when flights between New York and Hawaii were a whole lot more expensive than they are today.

Furthermore, think about what you are saying. Even the most stable and disciplined person would have extreme difficulty squirreling that amount of money away from such meager resources. Chapman was neither stable nor disciplined. Indeed, he was in the throws of extreme mental illness.

Of course he did. He clearly demonstrated that he was capable of making, and executing plans on his ow. He had relationships, he held jobs to pay rent, he lowered his living standards...

...he thought he was Holden Caulfield, he attempted suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, "Chapman got a job at Castle Memorial Hospital as a printer, working alone rather than with staff and patients. He was fired by the Castle Memorial Hospital, rehired, then got into a shouting match with a nurse and quit. He took a job as a night security guard and began drinking heavily.[8] Chapman developed a series of obsessions, including artwork, The Catcher in the Rye, music, and John Lennon, and started talking with the imaginary 'little people' again. In September 1980, he wrote a letter to a friend, Lynda Irish, in which he stated, "I'm going nuts", and signed it "The Catcher in the Rye".[9]

Mark David Chapman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bottom line: Chapman was in the throws of a complete mental breakdown. It is highly doubtful that someone this sick and this agitated would travel by air as far as he did to commit the crime that he did, by his own directive. Had he shot Lennon while he was on vacation in Honolulu, the idea that Chapman acted alone would be credible. However, such is not the case.


No, I just don't put any stock into your opinion, especially now. If you want to believe that Chapman was part of some malevolent underground cabal that uses mind control assassins to kill musicians well after their musical decline, that's your problem.

As bizarre and ridiculous as the idea may be, the evidence speaks for itself. Perhaps, the worst part of it is that there may be people with considerable power and influence who are actually so vain and malicious as do something like this merely to celebrate the reemergence of their sociopolitical dominance.
 
...he thought he was Holden Caulfield, he attempted suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, "Chapman got a job at Castle Memorial Hospital as a printer, working alone rather than with staff and patients. He was fired by the Castle Memorial Hospital, rehired, then got into a shouting match with a nurse and quit. He took a job as a night security guard and began drinking heavily.[8] Chapman developed a series of obsessions, including artwork, The Catcher in the Rye, music, and John Lennon, and started talking with the imaginary 'little people' again. In September 1980, he wrote a letter to a friend, Lynda Irish, in which he stated, "I'm going nuts", and signed it "The Catcher in the Rye".[9]

Mark David Chapman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bottom line: Chapman was in the throws of a complete mental breakdown. It is highly doubtful that someone this sick and this agitated would travel by air as far as he did to commit the crime that he did, by his own directive. Had he shot Lennon while he was on vacation in Honolulu, the idea that Chapman acted alone would be credible. However, such is not the case.

Great thing about crazy people is that they are very suggestible. When the Nazis wanted to manufacture an incident to seize power they found a firestarter with a few loose nuts and let him run around inside the fuel-soaked Reichstag building. He took care of the rest and they had a great cover in this lunatic who probably had no clue he was being used.
 
Great thing about crazy people is that they are very suggestible. When the Nazis wanted to manufacture an incident to seize power they found a firestarter with a few loose nuts and let him run around inside the fuel-soaked Reichstag building. He took care of the rest and they had a great cover in this lunatic who probably had no clue he was being used.

But, see that makes too much sense. MIND CONTROL MAN. You believe it was mind control deep down so you are a kook. (What you say above is so obvious that the "mind control" taunts thrown out earlier by another = a good laugh)
 
Please see my prior post if you don't believe that the creation of programmed assassins has not only been attempted by the CIA, it has succeeded. Herbert Spiegel. Google him. Then see what he says about Sirhan Sirhan to the camera in RFK Must Die. You might also want to look at the Search for the Manchurian Candidate by John Marks (formerly of the State Dept), in which he describes the CIA's failure to achieve their goal with the use of hallucinogens, esp LSD, but how they did achieve success with hypnosis, and hypnosis plus mind drugs -- he reports that they did a subject to fire a pistol at a human target -- while believing the weapon to be loaded with live ammunition. Don't take my word for it, go to the sources.
 
And by the way, there is no evidence that Chapman was psychotic. He was being treated for depression in Hawaii and had never had any other diagnosis -- it's in Bresler's book. But certain personalities are more susceptible to the kind of hypnotic suggestion that could make you do something that you ordinarily would not do. Herbert Spiegel, in RFK Must Die, says that about 5% of people can't be hypnotized while about the same fraction are so highly suggestible that you could turn them into assassins. More tellingly, Chapman has done nothing since the moment he was arrested (standing awaiting capture when he could readily have disappeared) until now to suggest he is psychotic. Schizophrenic people don't just suddenly stop being schizophrenic.
 
Great thing about crazy people is that they are very suggestible. When the Nazis wanted to manufacture an incident to seize power they found a firestarter with a few loose nuts and let him run around inside the fuel-soaked Reichstag building. He took care of the rest and they had a great cover in this lunatic who probably had no clue he was being used.

Not all people who are highly suggestible are mentally ill, and vice-versa. In fact, a great many people with mild to serious mental illness are very unreceptive to suggestion and very poor candidates for hypnosis. Nevertheless, there are certain personality disorders which typically exhibit a high degree of suggestibility.

With Chapman, one has to wonder what came first, the mental illness or the mind control. It is curious that Chapman did not seem to be exhibiting any serious manifestations until after his stint in Lebanon.
 
Not all people who are highly suggestible are mentally ill, and vice-versa. In fact, a great many people with mild to serious mental illness are very unreceptive to suggestion and very poor candidates for hypnosis. Nevertheless, there are certain personality disorders which typically exhibit a high degree of suggestibility.

I said nothing about hypnosis. The power of suggestion can be far more subtle than the extremes of hypnosis. Probably around 99% of the people in the world act based on some form of suggestion. All you have to is appeal to that person's logic and control their intake of information. Someone enduring a mental illness is a prime target as their logic is already crazy enough and they can be even be uncontroversially put in a controlled environment where people experienced in the ways of the mind can choose how, when, and if they get information.
 
As I noted in my prior post, the possibility that hypnosis can be used to create a "programmed assassin" is supported by Herbert Spiegel, a psychiatrist affiliated with Columbia University for 40 years and the author of one of the standard textbooks on clinical hypnosis. You can read his Wikipedia entry and this NYT obituary if you'd like to verify his credentials. In the film RFK Must Die, Shane O'Sullivan's 2007 investigative documentary, Spiegel discusses this in detail. He notes that perhaps 5% of the population can't be hypnotized, and this includes a disproportionate number of people with psychoses e.g. schizophrenia, as noted by Demon of Light; 90% can be hypnotized but not to the state where they could be manipulated into doing something against their principles; and about 5% are highly suggestible and could be successfully hypnotized to kill. Spiegel estimates it might take an hour a day over some weeks to produce this level of effect in a highly suggestible subject. He describes the aspects of Sirhan's behavior that convince him that Sirhan had been hypnotized to fire at RFK. Coming from a leading academic psychiatric authority on hypnosis, it is very convincing. Put that together with Chapman's history (especially as recounted by Fenton Bresler in _Who Killed John Lennon?_ esp. his close encounters with the CIA in Fort Chaffee, and probably Beirut; the doctored plane tickets) and Uncle Sam's motive -- the counterrevolutionary wars in Central America and Reagan's transition team taking the reins -- and this is a compelling case. Anything Chapman has said after his capture is irrelevant - e.g. was he out to kill just any celebrity etc. - because he himself has no idea what happened to him - just like Sirhan, to this day, cannot remember firing a weapon at RFK. When done right, the subject recalls nothing about his/her programming, since it's part of the programming to forget. Chapman has had 30+ years to ponder what he did and why, and whatever he comes up with will have no relationship to the truth. John Lennon died for Central America.
 
As I said in my post on page two, Lennon was politically informed.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/consp...id-cia-kill-john-lennon-2.html#post1060435579

That was all before internet and lots of Americans didn't have access to objective analyses of American interventions abroad. This book...
Amazon.com: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (The Political Economy of Human Rights - Volume I) (9780896080904): Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman: Books

(excerpt from book)
Washington Connection and Third World Fascism Chomsky and Herman

...was available when Lennon was alive. Lennon probably knew about this book and other similar books. If Lennon had recommended one of those books to his fans, who knows how many Americans would have read it? The government didn't want people learning about this stuff; they wanted people to keep thinking like good Americans. If Lennon was about to become politically active, the government had good reason to want to get rid of him as he had the potential to inform millions of Americans that their government was the bad guys in the world.

As for Chapman...
Google
cia mind control - YouTube

...it's perfectly plausible that he was a Manchurian Candidate. I would bet that the US government planned and carried out his murder.

If those links don't work, do Google and YouTube searches on "CIA Mind Control".
 
I would bet that the US government planned and carried out his murder.

It is doubtful that any active bureaucrat in the U.S. government would have had the motive, or even the nerve, to do such a thing. However, there are radical reactionaries in the private sector who would have certainly been motivated to kill Lennon, and have had within their employment retired military and intelligence agents who were privy to programmed-assassin technology.
 
It is doubtful that any active bureaucrat in the U.S. government would have had the motive, or even the nerve, to do such a thing.
The motive would be to keep him from informing Americans that they were the bad guys. It wouldn't have been just one bureaucrat. It would have been a group.
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugex....,cf.osb&fp=76db592f797d9a72&biw=1024&bih=582
https://www.google.com/#q=bilderber....,cf.osb&fp=3fc35f0c413ec944&biw=1024&bih=582

If they thought they had a good chance of getting away with it, they wouldn't have had any problems with nerve.

The scenario that the US government planned and carried out Lennon's death is very plausible. I think it's the most likely one.
 
The motive would be to keep him from informing Americans that they were the bad guys.

There was enough of that going on then that killing Lennon would have only have had symbolic value. The mass media was teeming with anti-American rhetoric. Lennon was not the only, nor even the most prominent, of anti-Establishment heroes at the time.

It wouldn't have been just one bureaucrat. It would have been a group.

That is why it is so unlikely to have been bureaucrats.

If they thought they had a good chance of getting away with it, they wouldn't have had any problems with nerve.

On the other hand, this was the post-Watergate 80's. No bureaucrat would have likely thought this way at the time.

The scenario that the US government planned and carried out Lennon's death is very plausible. I think it's the most likely one.

It is not nearly as plausible or likely than the scenario of it being planned and carried out by radical reactionaries in the private sector who would have been much less apprehensive about the possibility of being called before yet another Congressional investigative committee. You seem to be forgetting that the CIA was under a lot of heat in those days.


FYI: The Bilderberg Club is a private organization. It is NOT a government bureaucracy.
 
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FYI: The Bilderberg Club is a private organization. It is NOT a government bureaucracy.
The theory is that governments take orders from them.
 
The mass media was teeming with anti-American rhetoric.
I was in my early twenties when Lennon was killed and I'd been reading the newspaper almost every day for years. I saw nothing that came close to explaining the stuff that Lennon might have explained or a book that he recommended might have explained.

When I lived in South Florida I never read or heard anything like the info in this link.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/archives/19724-american-imperialism.html

Nobody I knew knew anything about it. When I moved to California I started to learn about American imperialism from Americans who travelled and from foreigners. Before internet arrived, there were millions of people who only read American newspapers and talked to other Americans who only read American newspapers and they all believed that the US was the "Good guys" in its conflicts. Anyone who had the potential to inform several million of those misinformed Americans was certainly a big threat to the establishment and it would have been well worth their while to do whatever was necessary to get rid of him before he informed them.

As I said in post #94, all Lennon would have had to do was suggest to his fans that they read Chomsk and Herman's "The Washington Connection" which explained things pretty well, and several million Americans would have gotten informed. Lennon was the American government's nightmare. The idea that the government killed him with a manchurian candidate is perfectly plausible.
 
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