Joseph McBride

When I was a kid, his name was pronounced "Ree-gun." Then some time after he got into politics, the pronunciation shifted to the more "high-toned" (i.e., less Irish-sounding) "Ray-gun." When I worked with Reagan's old friend David Niven on a TV special, Niven joked about how he used to know Reagan when he was still "Ree-gun."

Looking forward to your new book, Larry! You're a fine, dedicated scholar.

Jack White's video documentary on the backyard photographs is good.

Of course the backyard photos are fake.

Oswald did not own the rifle or the pistol the DPD placed into evidence. Why do people on this site keep making those errors?

That quote you attribute to RFK is from George Bernard Shaw. RFK always credited it to Shaw.

John Armstrong's book demonstrates with exhaustive research that there is no actual evidence that Oswald owned either gun entered into evidence, the rifle or the pistol. As Oswald told his brother Robert on November 23, "Don't believe all this so-called evidence."

I vividly remember hearing this from Teller on a radio interview.

I knew early on that SDI was a boondoggle after listening to none other than Edward Teller saying in a radio interview that it wouldn't work because, very simply, even if it could stop, say, ten missiles, the Soviets would send 100, and if even one, two, or three got through, that would trigger the doomsday scenario. And SDI never actually worked. Some people still don't realize that all it was was a way of funneling vast sums of taxpayers' money to Reagan's military-industrial complex supporters in California and elsewhere. Frances Fitzgerald's book misses this economic point even as she mocks the scientific flaws of SDI. She traces the crazy concept partly back to Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN and a movie in which Ronnie played a Secret Service agent. Reagan tended to fantasize that he had actually been in events depicted in scenes from old movies; CBS did a hilarious and disturbing review of such claims. So calling it STAR WARS, initially a term of derision after the juvenile Lucas movie, was apt.

The White House Police are a branch of the Secret Service. I noted in my comment that Coffelt was killed protecting President Truman.

Morley should know the assassination attempt on President Truman was in 1950, not 1951, and only one of the two attackers, Oscar Collazo, was "captured." The other, Griselio Torresola, shot and killed White House Police Officer Leslie Coffelt, who shot him to death in a gunfight. Secret Service agents wounded Collazo.

That's a flag on the front of the presidential limousine.

From the Daily Mail: The FBI's director has cast doubt on whether Donald Trump was struck by a bullet during the attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania political rally. Christopher Wray was updating Congress on the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler on Wednesday when he made the explosive statement. 'There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,' Wray said.

I think other assassinations or assassination attempts help us understand the JFK assassination by putting it in a wider ideological and practical context. Those threads ought to remain here.

Now they're saying the golf photo was not from Sunday. But the other points stand. Trump's dubious doctor Ronny Jackson put out comments about treating Trump's ear on the plane from an alleged bullet wound. But the medical staff at the hospital have been muzzled. A report said the hospital was on a lockdown plan originally set up by the Secret Service for a Trump visit to the area in 2020. Also, there's a report the hospital staff treated 200 (!) people at the rally, apparently on the scene, for heat problems and so forth. Photos do not show the 15,000 people that the campaign claimed were there. More like 1500-2000.

That's alleged to be a bullet in the photo. A Republican congressman who was a sniper in the military said in a TV interview that it is not a bullet but a vapor trail from a bullet. It is also consistent with a glass fragment.

Newsmax, citing sources in the Pennsylvania State Police, says Trump was not struck in the ear by a bullet but by a glass shard or fragments from a Teleprompter shattered by a bullet. The FBI SAC heading the investigation, when asked if a bullet hit Trump, declined to answer. The medical staff at the hospital have not publicly discussed his injury but have been told to defer questions to the campaign. Trump was not wearing a bandage on his ear while playing golf Sunday but conspicuously wore one at the convention Monday.

Roger Odisio writes, "[Abraham] Zapruder was outside the circle of govt agencies we've been dealing with." However, Mr. Z's son, Henry, worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department at the time of the JFK assassination. Henry was the father of Alexandra Zapruder, who wrote a mendacious book about the Z film.

I bought that issue of LIFE on Tuesday, November 26, at a magazine/newspaper store in downtown Milwaukee. They had several piles of the issue lined up against a wall. I don't know if copies were available for sale on Monday. We soon got our copy in the mail too.

Ted Sorensen said that the Cuban Missile Crisis was the moment in history that John F. Kennedy was elected to handle. The other hero of that crisis was Nikita Khrushchev, who also lost his job as a result. If Kennedy and Khrushchev had not shown restraint and wisdom, we wouldn't be here today.

INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT has never been out of print since it was published in 2013. It can be ordered through Amazon.com or directly through Vervante, the fulfillment house. We regularly get many orders from buyers in the US as well as in other countries.

I am sorry you are having trouble buying INTO THE NIGHTMARE. You can order the paperback through Amazon.com for $48.50, and the fulfillment house, Vervante in Utah, will ship it anywhere. We get many orders from all around the world. Shipping can be costly, but those are postal rates beyond our control. (There is also a Kindle edition, but you say you aren't into Kindle.) You can also order the book directly from the Vervante website. They also are the fulfillment house for my second book on the subject, POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY.

I called Jack Revill to ask for an interview. He was cordial but declined; another frustrating dead end. But he then surprised me by wishing me "good luck" (spoken without apparent irony) with my investigation of the case. Clearly he knew a lot but wouldn't reveal it.

I interviewed Jack Daniels about his film while he was standing on that site. I asked him why the limousine is just a blur when it goes past, and the camera basically loses the occupants. He told me he was not looking through the camera but holding it at chest height and panning it with his body as it passed him and his sons, who are the boys seen waving as the car approaches, seemingly oblvious to what had happened in Dealey Plaza.