The more I read of the case, the more frustrated I am with the numerous factual errors in the books written about it.

I think a thread limited to noting such errors may be useful amd I would invite anyone knowing of any errors to post them here.

Note I am not talking about errors of interpretation or opinion but only clear errors of fact.

I will begin with two from Crossfire:

1. It states that LHO had to descend five flights of stairs to get from the sixth floor to the second floor, assuming Oswald had been on the sixth floor. But there are only four flights between the second and sixth floor.

2. It states Mrs. Rowland saw the two men on the sixth floor that hrt husband saw. But it is clear from her testimony that she did not.

On page 111 of "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald" Robert Groden states that LHO was seen on the second floor forty-six seconds (from my memory: either 46 or 42) after the shooting stopped but he does not state who saw him.

This has to be an error, doesn't it? Did anyone see LHO on the second floor before Officer Baker and Mr. Truly?

There are also errors in films re the assassination.

For instance, in "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" after showing Mr. Burroughs stating that he saw LHO in the Texas Theatre as early as 1:07, the narrator states that 1:07 was the "official" time for the murder of Officer Tippit, a clearly erroneous statement. AS most know, Mr. Bowley stated he arrived on the scene at 1:10 p.m. and Tippitt was dead when he arrived. But there is no "official" report from any source of which I am aware that Tippitt was shot before 1:10 p.m. I believe the "official" time was 1:15 or 1:16 p.m.

Tim,

Why don't you start with Gerald Posner?

I counted over a dozen mistakes, some typos, in Case Closed, and sent them to the publisher. I expected them to be corrected when the second edition was published, that did contain some corrections, especially related to Mrs. Paine. But none of the mistakes and typos that I pointed out were changed.

And that book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize?

They, meaning Posner and his editors, didn't really care about mistakes.

As for your first example, if Oswald entered the Texas Theater before 1:10, as some of the Texas Theater employees claim, then why is that a mistake?

Why can't that mean that Oswald wasn't at 10th and Patton when Tippit was killed?

And for Mrs. Rowland. She may not have seen the two men in the window, but her husband did, as did others. All of them described the man with the rifle as wearing a white shirt, and the other man wearing a brown sports/suitcoat blazer.

Oswald wore a dark brown, rust colored shirt.

So who was the man in the white shirt and the man in the brown sportscoat?

Certainly not mistakes, except mistakes in the Warren Report.

Bill Kelly

THE POSNER REPORT: A Study In Propaganda: One Hundred Errors in Gerald Posner's Case Closed:

Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK

by David Starks
Copyright 1997, Imagi-Vision, Inc.




http://www.assassinationweb.com/ecc.htm

B.......

Bill, of course I agree there are numerous errors in Posner's book but perhaps we should first clean our own house.

You wrote:

And for Mrs. Rowland. She may not have seen the two men in the window, but her husband did, as did others. All of them described the man with the rifle as wearing a white shirt, and the other man wearing a brown sports/suitcoat blazer.

What do you mean she MAY not have seen the men her husband claimed he saw? She clearly testified she DID NOT see the men--no ifs ands buts or "maybes" about it. Any book (and it is not just "Crossfire") that states Mrs. Rowland saw the men misstates the testimony. I see no excuse for that.

One reason may be laziness. One book cites Summers' "Conspiracy" when discussing Mrs. Rowland. A sentence in his book is written inartfully and COULD be read that Mrs. Rowland saw the men, but I am sure that was not Summer's intent. I think someone just read and misinterpreted Summers on Mrs. Roland without making the effort to actually read Mrs. Rowland's testimony. That is why it is important to verify with primary sourcers and why I am extremely cautious about Marrs' statements.

Here is a quote from "High Treason" by Groden and Livingstone (page 175 in my paperback edition):

It has been established that at exactly 12:15, Arnold Rowland (as well as Carolyn Walther and Ruby Henderson) saw two men with a rifle in the sixth floor window, and this is backed up by Rowland's wife, who also saw them.

As we stated previously, Mrs. Rowland stated she NEVER saw any person in a sixth floor window. She also testified that her husband never told her that he had seen TWO men. She testified: "He never said there was another man on the sixth floor, in my presence, that I can remember." WC Hearings, Vol. VI, page 188.

Carolyn Walther was not called to testify but her statement is Warren Commission Exhibit 2086. She saw a man with a rifle (or a machine gun) and a man standing next to him but she stated she saw these men on the fourth or fifth floors, that she was "positive" the window was not as high as the sixth floor. Now she may have been mistaken about the floor, granted, but how can Groden & Livingstone state that Walther saw these men on the SIXTH floor when her statement is to the contrary?

In her statement to the FBI, Ruby Henderson stated she saw two men in an open window on one of the upper floors of the TSBD, but she ws not sure which floor it was. She never stated anything about a rifle. So how can Groden & Livingstone write that Mrs. Henderson saw two men, one with a rifle, on the sixth floor when she makes no reference whatsoever to a rifle? (Her statement is Warren Commission Exhibit 2089 in Vol. XXIV--read it yourself and determine if I overlooked the part where she mentioned a rifle.

I think that one sentence in "High Treason" contains these errors:

1. Mrs. Rowland saw two men in on the sixth floor, one with a rifle.

2. Mrs. Walther saw men on the sixth floor.

3. Mrs. Henderson saw two men on the sixth floor.

4. One of the men Mrs, Henderson saw had a rifle.

Finally, neither Mrs. Walther nor Mrs. Henderson states she saw the men at "exactly" 12:15 p.m.

So I count FIVE errors of fact in that one sentence!

I think when one reads a book on the assassination one should be entitled to assume the author is accurately stating what is said in a primary source document without having to go to the footnote and check every statement the author has made.

Of course one should also note clear errors in the anti-conspiracy literature as well.

Manchester's "The Death of a President" is not an anti-conspiracy book as such but it clearly adopts the position of the WC in toto and without question.

In the book, Manchester states that Oswald was alone on the sixth floor for a full half hour with plenty of time to construct the sniper's nest. Of course, the Warren Report itself states that Bonnie Ray Williams ate his lunch on the sixth floor after noon, so Manchester should have known better. And of course had he bothered to read Williams actual testimony, which was of courese available before Manchester completed his book, Manchester would have known how long Willams stated he stayed on the sixth floor.

It is inexcuasable IMO for a person who held himself out as a historian to make that error of fact.

Now this is unbelievable.

In "Conversations with Kennedy" JFK's friend Benjamin Bradlee dates the assassination as November 23rd.

Surely he knew the actual date and surely whoever proof-read the galleys must have known the date as well.

It astounds me that this error was allowed in "Conversations with Kennedy."

In Craig Zirbel's "The Texas Connection", this statement is made:

" . . /[E]yewitnesses saw Tippit get out of his car (with no broadcast having been made over the police radio identifying Oswald, or anyone with his appearence as being an assassination suspect)." (Paperback edition pages 176-177.)

But we all know that statement is false. There was a description of the suspect in the assassination broadcast as early as 12:45 p.m. as I recall that fit Oswald and many many other young men. So how can Zirbel say there was no such broadcast? Is he dishonest or is he woefully ignorant of some of the fundamental facts of the case?

Just another example of errors in the literature!

A good thread Tim, only trouble is I think there have been so many errors writen by BOTH sides that you would have to dedicate a whole forum rather than just a thread. This is one I stumbled on a few days ago. Sylvia Meagher is writing about an affidavit giving by Charles Givens (a TSBD employee) : "Within an hour or two, Givens was escorted to the police headquarters, where he was questioned and where he executed an affidavit stating that he had left the sixth floor at about 11:30 a.m., had gone to the washroom, at noon had taken his lunch period, had gone to a parking lot to visit with a friend employed there (CE 2003, page 27)." (unquote). Yet when I checked the affidavit for myself I found Meagher's time of "11.30" to be totaly inaccurate it was in fact 11.50:

AFFIDAVIT IN ANY FACT
THE STATE OF TEXAS
COUNTY OF DALLAS
BEFORE ME, Mary Rattan, a Notary Public in and for said County, State of Texas, on this day personally appeared Charles Douglas Givens c/m/37, 2511 Carpenter, RI2 4670 who, after being by me duly sworn, on oath deposes and says:

I work for the Texas School Book Depository, 411 Elm Street. I worked up on the 6th floor today until about 11:50 am. Then I went downstairs and into the bathroom. At twelve o'clock I took my lunch period. I went to the parking lot at Record and Elm street. I have a friend who works at the parking lot. We walked up to Main and Record when the President passed by. We then walked back to the parking lot after the President had passed by. We had just got back to the lot when we heard the shooting. I think I heard three shots. I did not see anyone in the building that was not supposed to be there this morning.

/s/ Charles Douglas Givens

SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN BEFORE ME THIS 22 DAY OF November A.D. 1963

/s/ Mary Rattan
Notary Public, Dallas County, Texas (unquote)

Not a small mistake, the 20 minute time difference is crucial. And I use the word "mistake" with a great deal of generosity. Denis.

Hi Denis :

Re Givens.........In his FBI statement.....He stated 11.30A.M.....

But you will not find that FBI report in the W/C, oops they forgot to include it as with so much more....

It was then given as 11.50.AM...think....Dallas' Finest.....

B.......

Denis wrote:

Not a small mistake, the 20 minute time difference is crucial. And I use the word "mistake" with a great deal of generosity.

It is indeed curious that whether the writer making a mistake is pro or anti conspiracy in almost every case the mistake supports the writer's POV. It is hard to decide when the errors are the result of sloppiness or may in fact be deliberate.

And I suggest one way that errors can proliferate is when a second writer simply uses the work of an earlier writer in support of a statenent of fact without bothering to independently validate it via a primary source.

For instance, I could write a book making the claim that Oswald was seen on the second floor a mere 46 seconds after the shooting stopped. I would footnote the assertion. As support, I would simply put: Groden, "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald", page 111. There would now be TWO books making the erroneous assertion. Add a third and pretty soon that datum would start to become the accepted version of the facts, even though the original source. Groden, offers no primary source whatsoever for his assertion.

As Denis points out the literature is simply replete with these errors. And I refer not to errors of opinion, over which there can be legitimate differences of interpretation, but to clear errors of fact. This phenomenon is indeed unfortunate and it hampers the truth-seeking process.

But a forum like this can serve as a good venue for enumerating these errors.

I would be interested if anyone can identify any error in an assassination book (either pro- or anti- conspiracy) where the error goes against the POV of the author.

Denis, where did you get that affidavit? Off the McAdams site? If you look at the actual affidavit, here http://historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/w...Vol24_0114b.htm
you'll see that Meagher got it right. He said 11:30, not 11:50.

Thanks Pat, I'm absolutely amazed, we are not talking about mistakes here, this is outright forgery! The reason I disbelieved Meagher was because I couldn't belive anyone would dare to change a copy of an actual affidavit. Its criminal. I really wish I had the funds to pursue this. I certainly owe Sylvia Meagher a huge apology, be it posthumous. I guess this does prove Tim's point though. I hope this thread continues, it could clear up a lot of misconceptions. My stupid mistake is a good example. Thanks again Pat. Denis.

********************

Denis & Pat:

You both need to take this some further.....

In the case of Charles Givens ............I realize you both totally ignored what I had posted, for you..... and went on only to reply to each other ........So excuse me if I butt in here again, one more time, with further information, and then leave you to your own.... perhaps this will help clarify the information for you both, you may consider the following....The rest of the story...

In the case of Charles Givens, in trying to put LHO on the Sixth floor, in time to shoot the President....David Belin, whom later on was decribed by some of his co-workers on the W/C as , his behaviour being both shameful and unethical.....knowingly suborned perjured testimony....from this totally unreliable witness and handyman.....

Givens had a police record, and was both known to Dallas police and by the FBI to be susceptible to bribery...........He first told the FBI that he had last seen Oswald on the FIRST Floor of the
Depository..35 minutes before the Assassination ......Only later did he change his story, that he had last seen LHO on theSixth Floor .....

Belin was aware of the FBI's original Givens statement , that he had before him......and knew of the rumour that he had revised his testimony....But........He did not cross examine Givens,.... nor did he refer to such.........but simply put the second version into the official record....

This would be the ONLY "evidence" placing LHO on that Sixth floor....

Now just to make it positive that no researcher, critic, what have you....was able to get ahold of this gem, Belin did not include it within the Appendix to the W/R..............He sent it directly to the classified files
of the National Archives......But......Ta Da.......a sharp eyed Sylvia Meagher accidently discovered it in 1968....

This also then challenged the statement that none of the employees was known to have seen LHO until after the shooting...

For instance Eddie Piper...testified in his affidavit and again to the W/C.....that he saw and spoke to Oswald " just at twelve o'clock, down on the first floor".....

William Shelley testified also that he saw LHO when he," came down to eat lunch about Ten to Twelve".

The one person who should have seen LHO after 11.55AM ,......... if Givens story was true, was Bonnie Ray Williams, who returned to the 6th floor at Twelve O'clock to eat his lunch......but he saw neither Oswald nor Givens........this is just another....wee part of the LHO is guilty cut and dried...scenario.....and the dishonety of the W/C....and futher investigations....

B......

Hi Bernice, you could never "butt in" and I certainly did not mean to ignore you. I apologize if it seemed that way. I tackled Pat's response first as that was the easiest to check on. I've been researching your response for most of the evening. I shouldn't have bothered, as usual everything you stated was 100% correct. Thanks for help (again) Bernice. And apologies again. Denis.

The whole idea of uncovering "errors" in the works by critics is misguided. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, why leave out the Warren Report and Posner, Bugliosi, etc.?

Most of the critics who published books on this subject were average citizens, not professional writers or investigators. They certainly didn't have subpeona power or access to classified information. If they made mistakes, that is only to be expected, considering the conditions they were working under. However, if you take the research of the most sensational "conspiracy theorist" you can find, and compare it to the official story, it is still far more believable and will have far fewer errors in it. It was only because the official "investigations" failed us completely, and the mainstream media refused to do any independent reporting on this subject, that Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg, Sylvia Meagher, Penn Jones, Vince Salandria, etc., had to step in and fill the void.

Harold Weisberg, for instance, financed his books completely out of his own pocket, and his wife typed his manuscripts. He was a retired chicken farmer, and spent the last few decades of his life traveling into Washington, D.C. (from a Maryland suburb about an hour away) almost every day, in order to file various Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. We are forever indebted to him for this courageous, selfless act, and the idea of nitpicking over his hand typed manuscripts for minor errors is ridiculous. Sylvia Meagher was an employee with the World Health Organization. Again, she put countless hours into sifting through the official record, and eventually produced an invaluable index to the Warren Commission's Hearings & Exhibits. Her classic "Accessories After The Fact" is based exclusively on the conclusions of the Warren Report, and how those conclusions match up against the supporting evidence in the official record. Again, any minor error found in her work is completely inconsequencial, when compared with the consistent innaccuracies and misrepresentations in the Warren Report, and the works by apologists like Posner and Bugliosi.

To Don:

How do you explain that Marrs (and Groden and Livingstone) wrote that Mrs. Rowland saw two men on the sixth floor at 12:15 p.m. when that is directly contrary to her WC testimony? That mistake cannot be explained, as you seem to suggest, because Marrs and Groden and Livingstone lacked subpoena power or access to classified information.

Similarly, how can you explain the assertion by Groden that Oswald was seen on thne second floor forty-two seconds after the shooting stopped? As far as I can tell, that statement is simply a flat-out falsehood.

Neither of these examples are minor errors, as you know. They cannot be explained because Marrs and Groden lacked subpoena power or access to classified documents, nor because they were working under adverse working conditions.

I see no way to excuse these errors and they are neither minor nor inconsequential nor are they nit-picking. (It is nit-picking to point out that Mrs. Rowland stated she never saw anyone on the sixth floor and Marrs (and Groden and Livingstone) says she did?)

How about Marrs (and Stone) claiming that Oswald had to descend five flights of stairs to get from the sixth floor to the second floor? Does one need access to classified information to subtract two from six? Or is it because they lacked the power to subpoena a third grade student to do the math for them?

I do not think a single error that I pointed out can be explained because the author (a) lacked subpoena power; ( lacked access to classified information; or © was working under less than ideal working arrangements.

If the assassination research community fails to "police itself" it leaves itself open to criticism by WC apologists e.g, Posner and Bugliosi. That Posner's book and Bugliosi's books contain errors do not excuse the errors in Marrs, Groden, etc. I deplore errors in the books by pro- and anti- conspiracy writers.

I do think it is worthwhile for all to be aware of the books that contain these errors. I for one am uncomfortable with a book in which I cannot trust the author to accurately paraphrase the information in the primary source documents he or she cites.

More to Don:

Mrs. Rowland gave a statement to the DPD on November 22, 1963. It is located in Vol 19 of the WC 26 Volumes at 493.

She also gave a statement to the FBI to the FBI on November 22, 1963. That is found in Vol 26 at page 168.

Her actual testimony is in Volume 6.

Three times she told authorities she never saw anyone on the sixth floor. But "Crossfire" and "High Treason" claim she said she had seen the men her husband saw (or claimed to see).

In my opinion, there is no way to excuse a book that so clearly misstates the evidence. What other conclusion can there be that the author is either extremely sloppy at best or dishonest at worst? (As I stated, I think part of this error may be explained because the authors never bothered to read her testimony but rather relied on s statement in "Conspiracy" that they misinterpreted.)

But how does one explain Groden's statement in "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald" that Oswald was seen on the second floor only forty-two seconds after the last shot was fired? Did Groden merely manufacture this statement to bolster his theory that Oswald was innocent? I do not want to accuse Mr. Groden of deliberately inserting a lie in his book but I would certainly be interested in his source for that information--that I have seen in no other assassination book. If someone indeed saw Oswald on the second floor 42 seconds after the last shot I suspect that information would be found in EVERY conspiracy book!

________________________________

Tim,

Maybe the assassination really did happen on November the 23rd, and then everything was just, well, altered....

--Thomas
________________________________

Keeping in mind the old adage about great minds, when I mentioned that in an e-mail to Larry Hancock, he had the very same thought! I think he said to the effect, "What did Bradlee know that we don't?"

I mean surely Ben Bradlee knew the date of his friend's death.

But here's one David Lifton would enjoy. In "Conversations" Bradlee wrote that he knew JFK's body was to be brought to Bethesda for "the final autopsy". How's that again?

I'm sorry Don but I just cant agree, errors, be they big, small, unintentional whatever, are still errors. How can anyone object to those errors being exposed and hopefully rectified. And who said that shouldn't include the errors of the Warren Report and Posner, Bugliosi etc? Errors are repeated and quoted so many times they eventually become set in stone "fact". And that can only be bad for research. Denis.

Thomas, PLEASE dont put ideas like that into peoples heads, there's more than a few here who may just take you literally. Denis.

Tim,

I'll address your points briefly. First, Rowland did testify that he saw two men- the other man was an "elderly negro" in the window at the opposite end of the floor. He tried to tell the FBI about this second man, in his original report, but they told him it wasn't important. As Rowland described it, "they just as soon as told me to forget it." Second, while Barbara Rowland told the Commission she didn't see a man in the window, she clearly believed Arnold (why would she have any reason to doubt him?) I'd like to see the exact quotes from the books you are talking about, where they claim that she testified she'd actually seen the man/men in question. Really, this is a minor, insignificant detail. Do you think that it would matter, either way, if she had said she'd seen exactly what he did? Do you think it would have changed any minds, or provoked the Warren Commission to actually investigate anything, if they'd had their neighborhood bridge club members with them that day, and all of them agreed on what they saw?

As for Groden's 42 second figure, I don't know how he arrived at such a precise number. He may, however, have been talking about Barbara Reid's sighting of Oswald, walking with a soft drink in hand, which was only a very brief time after the shots were fired. He also might have been cutting down on the 90 second estimate the Warren Commission dubiously calculated, following some of their extremely "creative" reconstructions.

I do not like shoddy research, and certainly don't support those who deliberately publish information they know is inaccurate. However, as I've said before, this whole notion of "cleaning our own house" by pointing out alleged errors made by pro-conspiracy writers, has been pushed for some time now by those I call the new neo-cons (neo-conspiracy believers). Gary Mack was one of the first to push this line of thinking. Others have followed in his wake, and we see the neo-con mindset most clearly in the threads on this (or other forums) revolving around allegations that the Zapruder film was altered. The passionate opposition to any notion that the film was altered is in stark contrast to the friendly, patient responses these same individuals grant to the latest lone nutter, posting a thread about why the single-bullet theory is actually valid or other similar nonsense. If you have zero tolerance for researchers like Jack White or Jim Fetzer, who have been working on this case for many years, because they claim a home movie was altered, how can you patiently tolerate the absurdity of the single-bullet theory and the like from the latest new lone nutter on the forum?

Nothing that Jim Marrs, Robert Groden or all the other pro-conspiracy writers combined has ever written is half as deceptive as a single chapter of the Warren Report. We ought to be concentrating on pointing out significant errors in the official record, which actually matter and have resulted in a mockery of justice and a distortion of history.

I agree. Of course, people do make mistakes.

Bill

Why not both?

Bill

To Bill:

I agree with you. Errors in the pro- and anti-conspiracy literature should both be exposed.

There are several on-line essays about the errors in Posner. I will try to get a link to them.

To Don Jeffries:

Of course Rowland said first he saw a man on the second floor and later he said he saw two men, I know he later claimed he tried to tell the FBI that he saw two men but in one of my posts above I noted that his wife testified that he never told HER that he had seen two men. I find that rather curious.

I will (if I have not already done so) post the exact quotes from "Crossfire" and "High Treason" but believe me they saw explicitly that Mrs. Rowland saw the two men, in direct opposition to her testimony. As I see it, there are only two explanations: a) they wrote that statement without even reading her testimony; or they read her testimony and deliberately made a false statement. IMO the statements indicate they are either sloppy & lazy ot liars. I see no more charitable explanation.

And it is errors like that that give ammunition to critics of the assassination research community.

Re Groden placing Oswald on the second floor at 42 seconds after the shooting, how in the world can you claim he was using Mrs. Reid's testimony? I know you know the case better than that. Truly and Baker encountered Oswald approximately 90 seconds after the shooting, and Mrs. Reid saw him as he was leaving the building, two minutes after the shooting. I bet almost every member is aware of that time sequence.

So how does Groden get by saying Oswald was seen a mere 42 seconds after the shooting stopped? Groden never even says who supposedly saw him in such a time frame. He can't, because no one did. So is this is deliberate misstatement of fact? I hope someone might communicate this to Mr. Groden to see if he can offer an explanation.

Is it significant whether Mrs. Rowland had seen two men in the sixth floor window? Why of course it is. As it is the ONLY person who so testified was Mr. Rowland. Had any other person, including a relative of Mr. Rowland, seen the two men he claims he saw, it would have been significant corroboration for his testimony. Of course I doubt whether it would have changed the minds of the WC but it would be significant. If it is as meaningless as you claim, Marrs and Groden & Livingstone would not have mentioned it, would they?

Can you now point out a clear factual error in the WC? I would more characterize the WC as ignoring evidence contrary to its position rather than misstating facts, although for those who are not familiar with it I would point out that when the WC published the face sheet of the autopsy protocol for some reason it does not include the notation: "Verified /s/ George Burkeley."