“Mind Games” is a great “Who-Done-it”. Of course, I am old enough to have remembered the December 1980 killing of Lennon – as well as that of JFK, King, And RFK. In fact, there are multiple similarities between the assassination of Robert Kennedy and that of John Lennon.
Author David Whelan has deeply studied the ins-and-outs of various assassinations, and draws a sharp comparison between Sirhan-Sirhan, who appears to have been the “patsy” in the Robert Kennedy assassination, and John Lennon’s alleged assassin Mark David Chapman. Both alleged assassins appear to have been hypnotized to the point where they simply did not remember what the hell they did. Both men may have been firing blanks while professional assassins pulled off the hit. Neither victim had bullet wounds that could have come from where the alleged assassins were positioned.
Chapman was counseled in mental hospitals, and conditioned by teams of hypnotists, intelligence-connected people, and far-right Bible-thumping preachers (who often had intelligence connections).
Author Whelan makes a great case over 27 chapters that Chapman, like Sirhan, was also a “patsy”.
Honestly, I had to re-read various passages to try and keep the cast of characters straight. Whelan must have a photographic memory regarding this assassination, it took me several readings of certain passages to understand the “who’s-who” of the various drivers, doormen, police, doctors, and staff at The Dakota apartment.
Whelan fortunately obtained the working notes of one of the top cops on the case, and may have successfully proved that one of the Dakota staff – Jose’ Perdomo – while being an anti-Castro Cuban was not the same man who was at The Bay Of Pigs invasion (CIA). However, Whelan does believe that this Perdomo may have possibly had a hand in the plot. Whelan writes that Perdomo actually tried to get Chapman to leave the murder scene. Instead, Chapman stuck around and read from his copy of Salinger’s “The Catcher In The Rye”, which may have served as some kind of hypnotic trigger to Chapman. The “Catcher” scenario began to disappear from the picture after John Hinckley (Reagan’s attempted killer – allegedly) was also found to have a copy of “Catcher”, a similarity that linked the conditioning of both men.
“Mind Games” is a detailed investigation of the Lennon murder, one that might have gotten Chapman freed. It does appear however, as with other American assassinations, that much like Oswald, Sirhan, Hinckley, and perhaps others, Chapman was chosen to take a fall for the killing. Lennon was very politically active, and Whelan writes “Lennon was anti-religion. Lennon was anti-war. Lennon was anti-capitalist.” Lennon worked to expose Nixon’s crimes, and would have loathed Reagan.
His son Sean Lennon wrote this in 1998:
“Pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government, and anybody who thinks that Mark Chapman was just some guy who killed my dad for his personal interests is insane, I think, or hasn’t thought about it clearly.”
Author Whelan set the book “Mind Games” up in a very readable fashion. As the book and plot get rolling, Whelan begins chapters with a list of key people in that chapter, and at the end of the chapter a “recap” of what those key people did to manipulate Chapman.
This is a great book to help us understand the assassinations of political figures, assassinations flawlessly orchestrated by intelligence agencies.
– John Titus
