Would An Agent Have Done That?

[Cliff Varnell]

I find it interesting that the people who are quickest to accuse others

of being "government disinformation agents" are the quickest to

reflexively dismiss clear evidence pointing to CIA-connected complicity

in the murder of John F. Kennedy.

I don't believe any one is a "government disinformation agent."

I think defenders of the official lie noticed long ago that the John F.

Kennedy Assassination Critical Research Community naturally formed

into a hard-nosed circular firing squad where all the consistent facts

would be buried in a storm of squabbling over minutia.

[William Kelly]

Real JFK Assassination Disinformation Agents –

David A. Phillips, Joe Goulden, Hugh Aynesworth, Isaac Don Levine, C. D. Jackson, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Gerald Posner, Norman Mailer, Phil Zelikow, Max Holland, Gus Russo - Why isn't anybody upset at these people for promoting real disinformation?

dis·in·for·ma·tion (dĭs-ĭn'fər-mā'shən)

n. Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation.

Lee Harvey Oswald – the ultimate disinformation agent, selected as the patsy in the assassination of President Kennedy precisely because of his ties to intelligence agencies, who would then be compromised and required to cooperate with the new government and its policies, especially in regards to the investigation of the assassination.

David Atlee Phillips

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4681

David Atlee Phillips was the CIA officer who was seen with the Patsy in Dallas shortly before Oswald visited the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City, where Phillips was responsible for monitoring those embassies, as well as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Phillips was a master of the "black arts" and a psychological warrior who was involved in the attempts to assassinate Castro. After the assassination Phillips tried to promote the Nicaraguan agent who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a Cuban at the Cuban embassy, but this, like all the attempts to blame the assassination on Castro, was revealed as a disinformation ploy.

One of Phillips' good friends and reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer was Joe Goulden, who covered the assassination aftermath in Dallas and floated the idea that Oswald was an FBI informant. Goulden is now a member of Phillips' Association of Former Intelligence Officers and a frequent contributor to its publications.

Joe Goulden

http://www.dcdave.com/article1/081198.html

Hugh Aynesworth is a Dallas reporter who tried to enlist in the CIA and then became a valuable asset, especially during the New Orleans investigation of Jim Garrison.

Hugh Aynesworth

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKaynesworth.htm

When the new government decided that the evidence indicating Oswald was acting at the behest of Castro and Cuba was known to be false, LBJ still used it to threaten World War III and convince the Warren Commissioners to go with the Lone-Nut scenario, in which all of Oswald's inelligence connections are ignored and he is portrayed as a lone nut loser who got lucky in killing Kennedy.

Life magazine was one of the most prolific supporters of this fairytale, including Isaac Don Levine, who wrote the book "Mind of the Assassin," that details how the Soviet KGB used Ramond Mercader to kill Trotsky in Mexico City, yet Levine couldn't see Oswald's intelligence connections at all.

Isaac Don Levine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Don_Levine

C.D. Jackson, a veteran psychological cold warrior with Eisenhower, was also affiliated with Life magazine.

Getting Marina's life story was the job commissioned to Priscilla Johnson, whose father harbored Stalin's daughter Svetlana when she defected. Priscilla. Priscilla was a friend and neighbor of CIA officer Cord Meyer, and she was also a member of Meyers' World Federalists, along with Michael Paine's mom and Walter Cronkite. Priscilla knew Oswald in Moscow, where she interviewed him for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), which was owned and operated by former OSS hands Ernest Cuneo and Ivor Bryce and included Ian Fleming, the former assistant to the director of British Naval Intelligence. NANA was a nest of spies.

Priscilla Johnson McMillan

http://www.jfk-info.com/pjm-cia.htm

Then there's Edward J. Epstein, whose college thesis became Inquest, which examined how the Warren Commission worked, or didn't work. Epstein's Legend – The Secret World of Oswald, was written with the help of James Jesus Angleton, the former head of CIA counter-intelligence.

Edward J. Epstein's most recent article on the assassination says that Oswald owned ammunition for his guns, something that no one else has been able to verify, and that in the end, we'll never know. We already know Ed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-epstein/annals-of-unsolved-crime_b_366400.html

When Mary Ferrell addressed a Dallas conference she noted that the Warren Commission lawyers had formed a group to counter the effects of the movie "JFK" and the release of the records of the JFK Act. David Phillips also formed a group to defend the CIA.

It was said that they quickly gathered a pool of $15 million to counter the effects of the film and the new law, and it appears to me that rather than spread it around they dolled it out to there heavy hitters, probably through Robert Loomis at Random House, whose stable of authors hit home runs for big bucks – millions apeace, including Gerald Posner and Norman Mailer. Max Holland is also in the mix, but he deserves special attention.

Robert Loomis – Random House

Gerald Posner –

Norman Mailer

Max Holland

Turner, William W. and Christian, Jonn G. The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspiracy and Coverup. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993. 397 pages. First published in 1978 by Random House.

Not only did the earlier edition fail to make it into paperback, but Random House stopped shipping this book because of one letter from a person with links to organized crime. Twenty thousand copies were printed in 1978, and eleven thousand of these were sent to the incinerator in 1985. Though not named, it's obvious that this person is Eugene Hale Brading (aka Jim Braden), who was detained by sheriff's deputies at Dealey Plaza minutes after the JFK assassination. He was also in Los Angeles when RFK was killed. But Brading is mentioned on just three pages, so the Random House bonfire probably had more to do with senior editor Robert D. Loomis, who edited a "lone nut" account of the RFK assassination in 1970, as well as Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" in 1993, in which Oswald is also a lone nut. "They do that with books," Loomis replied when asked about the incineration. When contacted by Publishers Weekly about the Posner book, Loomis had this to say: "All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public's belief in government. They believe that everybody's in cahoots, that we have murderers in the CIA. That's what has been accepted, and that, to me, is a crime." Posner himself acknowledged the influence of Loomis: "His effort on this one was beyond the ordinary assistance…"

Max Holland

Max Holland has worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for more than twenty years. In 2001, he won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for a forthcoming narrative history of the Warren Commission. He is a contributing editor at The Nation and The Wilson Quarterly, and his articles have also appeared in The Atlantic, American Heritage, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. From 1998 to 2003 he was a research fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. His work has also been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. This is his third book. He lives with his wife and daughter in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Before the Columbia-Lucas Award, there was the Columbia-Catherwood Award for journalists, but that was suspended when Catherwood's ties to the CIA became known. Lucas, by the way, was a journalist who died suspiciously while investigating a political assassination in the mid-west. Holland was also affiliated with the University of Virginia center for the study of the presidency, founded by Scripps-Howard, who also employed Seth Kanter and Harold "Spooks" Hendrix.

While working on his book The JFK Assassination Tapes, he was associated with Phil Zelikow, who edited The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which failed to note JFK's response to Gen. LeMay's assertion "You're in a pretty bad fix Mr. President." Zelikow said the response was a "joke," and wasn't clear on the tape, when in fact Kennedy is quite clear in saying "You're in it with me." Clear Disinforatation on both Max Holland and Zelikow's count.

Besides getting money from all of these sources, Holland also gets a grant from a German manufacturer of ventitian blinds. Now that's really shady.

Vincent Bugliosi's editor at W.W. Norton, Starling Lawrence, also hired Dan Moldea to write about the RFK assassination. His boss, Donald S. Lamm, is on the Council of Foreign Relations with some interesting people who set national policies.

W.W. Norton

Vincent Bugliosi

Dan Moldea

http://www.moldea.com/RFK4.html

Even though I had "guaranteed" in my book proposal to deliver evidence that extra bullets proved that two guns had been fired at the crime scene and that Sirhan never hit Senator Kennedy at point-blank range, Star Lawrence, my editor at Norton, didn't complain about my reversal after reading the completed manuscript. In fact, he told me that I had handled the situation well and vindicated my integrity as a journalist by admitting that I had been wrong while setting the record straight. As a result, Lawrence and I believed that our book would be viewed as the definitive account of what had really happened on the night Senator Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded--even though my friends in the "conspiracy crowd" were sure to disagree.

Once former prosecutor Richard Sprague, who had convicted the United Mine Workers president for the murder of a union rival, was removed as chief counsel to the HSCA because he was conducting a real investigation, he was replaced by G. Robert Blakey, who said that his job was to produce a report. That he did, and then wrote a book blaming the assassination on the mob, which after Castro and the Lone-Nut, is the third layer of the cover-story that is still be propagated by Thom Hartmann, Modlea, Blakey and others.

G. Robert Blakey

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=34303&view=full_sptlght

Thom Hartmann & the contingency plans for a coup in Cuba.

Although the original Castro-did-it cover story was shown to be false, that doesn't stop Gus Russo from writing books and false documentary film scripts that continue this back propaganda. I'll let Gus speak for himself:

Gus Russo

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russo.htm

During many of my years of research, I was convinced that all the truths surrounding the Kennedy assassination would never be known-that a complete story could never be told.

It was while in New Orleans for Frontline that I had my first Inkling of the "ultimate truth," the one explanation that resolved everything for me: Oswald's apparent lack of a motive; the Kennedy family's reluctance to say anything about Jack's death; Robert Kennedy's unrelenting grief-, the secrecy surrounding the two key cities in Oswald's life (New Orleans and Mexico City).

More important by far was the release of the JFK documents required by the JFK Act. Measured in man-hours, I spent practically a full year combing the files. They enabled me to see that the big question wasn't WHO done it, but WHY.

Aided by the decision of RFK intimates to tell me their stories, and the Review Board's release of over three million pages of previously classified documents, I am able, for the first time, to speak the unspeakable. My research has convinced me that John and Robert Kennedy's secret war against Cuba backfired on them-that it precipitated both President Kennedy's assassination and its cover-up.

Conspiracy books usually treat John and Robert Kennedy as innocent babes who would not have thought about dirty tricks -- much less assassination plots -- against Castro. But the reality is very different.

Indeed, reality is very different.

Edited January 10, 2010 by William Kelly

[Terry Mauro]

"Once former prosecutor Richard Sprague, who had convicted the United Mine Workers president for the murder of a union rival, was removed as chief counsel to the HSCA because he was conducting a real investigation, he was replaced by G. Robert Blakey, who said that his job was to produce a report. That he did, and then wrote a book blaming the assassination on the mob, which after Castro and the Lone-Nut, is the third layer of the cover-story that is still be propagated by Thom Hartmann, Modlea, Blakey and others."

G. Robert Blakey

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=34303&view=full_sptlght

Thom Hartmann & the contingency plans for a coup in Cuba.

Although the original Castro-did-it cover story was shown to be false, that doesn't stop Gus Russo from writing books and false documentary film scripts that continue this back propaganda. I'll let Gus speak for himself:

Gus Russo

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russo.htm

During many of my years of research, I was convinced that all the truths surrounding the Kennedy assassination would never be known-that a complete story could never be told.

It was while in New Orleans for Frontline that I had my first Inkling of the "ultimate truth," the one explanation that resolved everything for me: Oswald's apparent lack of a motive; the Kennedy family's reluctance to say anything about Jack's death; Robert Kennedy's unrelenting grief-, the secrecy surrounding the two key cities in Oswald's life (New Orleans and Mexico City).

More important by far was the release of the JFK documents required by the JFK Act. Measured in man-hours, I spent practically a full year combing the files. They enabled me to see that the big question wasn't WHO done it, but WHY.

Aided by the decision of RFK intimates to tell me their stories, and the Review Board's release of over three million pages of previously classified documents, I am able, for the first time, to speak the unspeakable. My research has convinced me that John and Robert Kennedy's secret war against Cuba backfired on them-that it precipitated both President Kennedy's assassination and its cover-up.

Conspiracy books usually treat John and Robert Kennedy as innocent babes who would not have thought about dirty tricks -- much less assassination plots -- against Castro. But the reality is very different.

Indeed, reality is very different.

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

G. Robert Blakey

And, let's not forget who Blakey put in charge of the "hen house" during the HSCA investigations, Georges Johannides [of JM/Wave and DRE associations].

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

Investigators, Researchers and Journalists

George Robert Blakey was born in Burlington, North Carolina on 1st July, 1936. He studied at Notre Dame Law School (1957-60). Admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia, he worked as a Special Attorney at the Department of Justice in the Organized Crime & Racketeering Section from 1960 to 1964. He also served as a professor of law and director of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime at Cornell Law School.

In the 1960s Blakey campaigned for and helped write much of the anti-racketeering legislation that helped undermine the activities of the Mafia. This included the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (1970).

Blakey took a keen interest in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King and served as chief counsel and staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979. In this role he led the investigation into the assassination, reexamining the evidence with a new forensics panel.

Blakey is also the co-author with Richard Billings of The Plot to Kill the President (1981). In the book Blakey and Billings argue that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. He believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved but believes that there was at least one gunman firing from the Grassy Knoll. Blakey came to the conclusion that the Mafia boss, Carlos Marcello, organized the assassination. The book was reissued in paperback in 1993 as Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime.

Richard Billings and G. Robert Blakey (1978)

Carl Oglesby summarized Blakey and Billings theory as follows:

a. Oswald alone did shoot and kill J.F.K., as the Warren Commission deduced.

b. An unknown confederate of Oswald's, however, also shot at the President, firing from the celebrated "grassy knoll." This shot missed.

c. Apart from the question of the number of assailants in the attack, Oswald acted as the tool of a much larger conspiracy.

d. The conspiracy behind Oswald was rooted in organized crime and was specifically provoked by J.F.K. s anti-crime program. Singly or in some combination, prime suspects are Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, godfathers respectively of the New Orleans and Tampa Mafias. Each one had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill J.F.K.

Robert Blakey is currently professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. He also helped draft the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

George Joannides died in Houston in March 1990. It was only after his death that it was revealed that Joannides was in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.

G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, was furious when he discovered this information. He issued a statement where he said: "I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee.... I was not told of Joannides' background with the DRE, a focal point of the investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE. That the Agency would put a 'material witness' in as a 'filter' between the committee and its quests for documents was a flat out breach of the understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would co-operate with the investigation."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Spies.htm

George Joannides

George Joannides, the son of a journalist, was born in Athens, Greece, on 5th July, 1922. His family arrived in New York in 1923. After graduating from the City College he received a law degree from St. John's University. He worked for the Greek language National Herald before moving to Washington in 1949 to work for the Greek Embassy Information Service.

He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951 and later became chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami. In this role he worked closely with the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), a militant right-wing, anti-Communist, anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy, group. This was a group that Lee Harvey Oswald was in contact with in New Orleans in August 1963. Journalist Jefferson Morley says he knows of no evidence that Joannides was in contact with Oswald during this period.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Richard Helms appointed John M. Whitten to undertake the agency's in-house investigation. After talking to Winston Scott, the CIA station chief in Mexico City, Whitten discovered that Lee Harvey Oswald had been photographed at the Cuban consulate in early October, 1963. Nor had Scott told Whitten, his boss, that Oswald had also visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico. In fact, Whitten had not been informed of the existence of Oswald, even though there was a 201 pre-assassination file on him that had been maintained by the Counterintelligence/Special Investigative Group.

John M. Whitten and his staff of 30 officers, were sent a large amount of information from the FBI. According to Gerald D. McKnight "the FBI deluged his branch with thousands of reports containing bits and fragments of witness testimony that required laborious and time-consuming name checks." Whitten later described most of this FBI material as "weirdo stuff". As a result of this initial investigation, Whitten told Richard Helms that he believed that Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

On 6th December, Nicholas Katzenbach invited Whitten and Birch O'Neal, Angleton's trusted deputy and senior Special Investigative Group (SIG) officer to read Commission Document 1 (CD1), the report that the FBI had written on Lee Harvey Oswald. Whitten now realized that the FBI had been withholding important information on Oswald from him. He also discovered that Richard Helms had not been providing him all of the agency's available files on Oswald. This included Oswald's political activities in the months preceding the assassination and the relationship Joannides had with the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.

John M. Whitten had a meeting where he argued that Oswald's pro-Castro political activities needed closer examination, especially his attempt to shoot the right-wing General Edwin Walker, his relationship with anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans, and his public support for the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Whitten added that has he had been denied this information, his initial conclusions on the assassination were "completely irrelevant."

Richard Helms responded by taking Whitten off the case. James Jesus Angleton, chief of the CIA's Counterintelligence Branch, was now put in charge of the investigation. According to Gerald D. McKnight (Breach of Trust) Angleton "wrested the CIA's in-house investigation away from John Whitten because he either was convinced or pretended to believe that the purpose of Oswald's trip to Mexico City had been to meet with his KGB handlers to finalize plans to assassinate Kennedy."

[Stuart Wexler]

The allegations that Tink is an agent are absurd. I'd take it further. The allegations made about virtually everyone is this case as being agents are pretty much absurd. I would include in this people like McAdams and others on the LN side. I disagree with them often, but they are honest in their convictions, and even when they are intellectually dishonest, I see the same thing with conspiracy theorists who become the mother of their own theory. If one studies COINTELPRO and similar operations, disinfo agents are the people who pit group member against group member, by instigating fights and raising suspicions about the people in the group. In that sense-- while I am loath to think virtually anyone in this field is a disinfo agent-- the ones who are doing the best job at playing the role are those who accuse researchers of working for the CIA, FBI, etc.

[Pamela Brown]

Brilliant post, Pamela! We may differ on other issues, but you have hit the nail on the head here. As I have elsewhere observed, we are not the only ones to have drawn the inference that Tink has been selling us down the river. Consider the conclusions of Vince Salandria and of Jerrold "Fatback" Smith, which lead to the same conclusion, namely, that there is something wrong with his modus operandi:

"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves" - Lenin

----- Forwarded message from jfetzer@d.umn.edu -----

Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:09:11 -0500

From: jfetzer@d.umn.edu

Reply-To: jfk-research@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Fwd: Re: [jfk-research] Re: Fetzer on acid??

To: jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, richdell@tampabay.rr.com, jfetzer@d.umn.edu

Cc: jwjfk@flash.net, dmantik@rtsx.com, dlifton@earthlink.net, jpcostella@hotmail.com

Is this some kind of joke? I advance an 11-page study of Jean's

interview with Len Osanic and thereby establish a convergence in

her testimony with that of Mary Moorman, which not only indicates

they were in the street at the same time but that, if the Zapruder

were authentic, it would show (a) Mary handing her photos to Jean,

(cool.gif Jean coating them with fixative, © the limo moving to the

left (toward them), (d) Mary and Jean both stepping off the curb

and into the street, (e) Jean calling out, "Mr. President!" and

all that, (f) Mary taking her picture, (g) both stepping back on-

to the grass, (h) Mary getting down and tugging at Jean's leg, but

(h) Jean remaining upright, because she didn't think they would

shoot her, none of which is shown in the film--and your response

is to talk about Mary's Polariod and Jack's research on Badgeman?

Josiah implies that slips in publishing are chimerical, when his

own book commits colossal blunders that demonstrate how insignif-

icat is a mistake in a caption? Has he forgotten that his book

claimed there were three shooters who took four shots, when we

know that JFK alone was hit four times and Connally as many as

three; that there were at least three misses, one of which hit

the chrome strip on the limo's windshield, the second the curb

near James Tague and injured him, the third in the grass near

Mary and Jean? Not only was SIX SECONDS (1967) superseded by

the superior work of Richard Sprague in a series of articles

beginning in COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION (May 1970) but Tink in

the final paragraph of his own book denies he has proven either

that the assassination was a conspiracy or that Lee Oswald was

innocent, which completely stunned other students of the case.

Vincent Salandria, for example, among the earliest critics of

the Warren Commission, wrote to me last month observing that,

"With respect to Josiah Thompson, I am surprised that you do

not know that immediately after the issuance of his book, 'Six

Seconds in Dallas,' I characterized him as a government agent.

I so designated him at my home after I called his attention to

the last paragraph of his book wherein he denied that the mat-

erial analyzed in the book demonstrated that the assassination

of JFK was a conspiracy. He explained the paragraph as 'an

error of exposition.' I said that it was proof enough for me

that he was an agent assigned to help make the JFK assassin-

ation a subject of eternal debate without signifying anything.

He has publicly told audiences that I consider him an agent."

This is interesting on several levels, not only because Vince

Salandria has seen through Tink Thompson as someone who wants

to make everything believable and nothing knowable about the

death of JFK but also because he sought to defend himself by

claiming "an error of exposition"! So apparently some kinds

of slips DO OCCUR in the process of publication, after all--

except, of course, this one appears to have been deliberate.

Indeed, I would suggest that Jean's book and interview, which

I have summarized in the form of 25 major points, does more to

establish the existence of a cover up by fabricating a film

and thereby supports the occurrence of a conspiracy involving

high officials of the US government than does SIX SECONDS IN

DALLAS if we accept the author's own assessment of his book!

Indeed, there are many reasons not to take his book seriously.

as Jerrold "Fatback" Smith explained in a "belated review" in

1999. Here are some of his observations, which I am quoting:

__________________

Thompson thought that four shots may have been fired from three

locations --- the Depository, the knoll, and possibly the roof

of the County Records Building or the Dal Tex Building. (SSID,

p. 137. Hereafter, all citations are from SSID unless otherwise

noted.) Lone assassin theorists had suggested that witnesses to

smoke from a shot on the knoll had actually only seen puffs of

steam from a nearby pipe. Thompson demolished the "steam pipe"

explanation. . . .

But in some other facets of the case, Thompson presented inter-

pretations which seemed to argue against the evidence. He sug-

gested that Kennedy's anterior throat wound was a product of

the head shot. (p. 51-55) A fragment of bullet or bone veered

downward, severing Kennedy's left cerebral peduncle in the

process and exiting the front of his throat. Since the Zapruder

film showed Kennedy raising his hands to his throat well before

frame 313, Thompson's view is hard to believe:

"A close study of the Zapruder film, however, reveals that the

President's fists are clenched and that the movement carries his

hands above his neck. Gayle Newman described how the President

"covered his head with his hands" (19H488), and Marilyn Sitzman

told me how "he put his hands up to guard his face." These

descriptions accurately characterize what we see on the Zapruder

film. ...Such a movement seems as consistent with a shot lodged

in his back as with a transiting shot: there is no science of

the way a person reacts to a bullet hit. (p. 39)

Since those descriptions do not accurately characterize what

we see on the Zapruder film, one is left to wonder what film

Thompson saw. Appeals to the absense of science in these matters

do little to strengthen the argument.

In the Warren Commission's version of the crime, two of the

alleged killer's bullets had to do double duty. One shot, the

Magic Bullet, had to wound Kennedy and Connally. Another either

had to hit the oak tree in front of the Depository and then

wound James Tague, or it had to strike Kennedy's skull and

then wound James Tague. The Commission never put the matter

quite so concisely, but those were the only possibilities

if the single assassin theory was true.

Thompson suggested that the wounding of James Tague was a

consequence of the head shot. (p. 231) In Case Closed,

twenty-six years later, Gerald Posner chose the tree ---

the head shot being too unlikely a source. (Posner, p. 325-

326) Since both explanations are incredible, it is difficult

to choose between them.

But if Bullet 399 was not Magic, it had to do amazing things

anyway. It had to strike Kennedy in the limousine and be

found near someone else's stretcher by the emergency level

elevator entrance.

The Warren Commission's story was that the bullet must have

been found on or by Governor Connally's stretcher --- a

position utterly defeated by the evidence. Thompson theorized

that Bullet 399 was the bullet which caused the shallow wound

in Kennedy's back. The bullet worked its way back out during

efforts to resuscitate the President. How did it get from

Kennedy's stretcher to the emergency level elevators where

it was found? "To answer this question we must appeal to an

old, traditionally American institution --- souvenir hunting."

Perhaps someone "momentarily snatched it as a souvenir, only

to recognize its importance and quickly secrete it on a

stretcher" where it could be found later with "no questions

asked." (p. 168-169)

. . .

___________________

Well, you get the idea. I quote from Salandria's post and

from this review (which can be found by googling "Six Seconds

in Dallas, a belated review") to show that I am far from the

only person who has become disillusioned with Josiah Thompson.

Vincent Salandria is among the most respected of the early

critics of the official account and the kind of student who

Josiah Thompson so often praises. Jerrold Smith is known to

many as a low-key but competent student of the case, who is

not inclined to be easily taken in. That, alas, cannot be

said for the most active members of this forum, who seem to

be determined to preserve the illusion that Josiah Thompson,

-- who has long since betrayed the search for truth about JFK

and who continues to this day to reveal his true character

(with a little help from his friends, Bill, Barb, and Lamson

included) -- deserves our respect rather than our contempt,

a theme that, at this point in time, has worn just a bit thin.

Quoting bmjfk63 <IMSJLE@aol.com>:

Jack has made so many gross errors I doubt many people who been exposed

to them take him seriously. But as he correctly pointed out it was filmed

for TV about (IIRC) 30 minutes after the assassination meaning it could

not have been faked. Of course as a self proclaimed logical think expert

you must realize that if you now take the position the photo was altered

it has zero value as evidence that the Z-film or any other DP image was

altered.

. . .

Bill Miller

You seem to be living inside a bubble, Tink. Try to take a look from the outside. Here goes:

We have the film of the crime of the century. CIA becomes involved at once, and spirits off at least one copy. A script is put in place claiming that complete control has been maintained over the film. The Z-film is suppressed for years, with frames being dribbled out by LIFE here and there. At the same time, there is an underworld where rogue copies are made at least for some LIFE execs, kept in their vaults in their grand homes in Greenwich, CT. There are early viewings, some in livingrooms, at least one in a movie theater.

In you come with your wonderful ideas for a book. You have the right credentials -- Yale (Bones?), Navy (ONI?), a PhD, and you are tapped by the powers that be. They also happen to be the powers behind at least the ongoing cover-up, and maybe even the assassination itself. That doesn't phase you. You are the golden boy. You are ferried around the country for interviews with all the main witnesses. Every door is opened to you. You spend countless hours with a very good copy of the Z-film. You even feel sorry for the poor researchers at NARA who are suffering with slides and film of inferior quality to what you are using. You even realize the WC itself was sandbagged by the poor quality of slides they had available. Did you call out for a new investigation? Did you demand LIFE at least provide researchers with as good a copy as you had? Wait -- you were going to head the LIFE investigation into the assassination, weren't you? You, the super-researcher that had been hand-picked and trained by LIFE. And guess who probably gave LIFE the great idea to find a new fresh face with credibility with the CTs who could be used to counteract the growing current of dissent against the WCR and the govt?

All the time you were in NYC you were apparently oblivious to the underground around you. You were at ground zero of the holy grail of the assassination and nothing about the film or the slides caused you to wonder if it had been altered and if so how. After all these years your position has not changed.

Just what do you expect us to think?

Pamela,

I wouldn't even dare to suggest what you should think but it would be good if you simply thought before you joined in the swift-boating. Someone of your education should recognize the tried and true show trial, McCarthy, swift-boat tactics that are being used on Josiah. It has worked very well in the past and for those who only care about personal victory it's very effective indeed. The utter mindlessness of the approach is beside the point. The 2004 Presidential election was converted to a referendum on John Kerry's war record because people (apparently such as your self) couldn't see that it was an obvious effort to distract public attention from the real issues.

So now, of course, Josiah has to spend his time defending his reputation on nearly endless threads. We're not discussing the assassination, we're discussing speculation about the honor and integrity of a man and everyone knows that where there's smoke there's fire! Fetzer and his cohorts have managed to suppress any substantive discussion of Fetzer's claims and put the fear of God into anyone considering honest disagreement.

What you fail to realize is that it's possible to construct similar fairy-tails about anyone. You, Jack White, or particularly Fetzer himself. It's meaningless. The evidence shows what the evidence shows no matter who presents it or for what reason. But now the debate is about Josiah Thompson instead of what we really care about.

Thanks Pamela,

Mission Accomplished!

Thank you, Jim. I hope that you and I can agree-to-disagree in some areas and yet continue to keep in mind that we are on the same team, working toward the same end.

It seems to me that if all of us who claim to be CTs can at least agree on the axiom that Lee Oswald was either entirely innocent or a patsy, perhaps we can take different positions as to what evidence does best to prove that. By defining agendas of the Ongoing Coverup leading us into 2013 we can hopefully keep from wasting our time and energy by being sandbagged and continue to move forward.

[Jack White]

QUOTE:

It seems to me that if all of us who claim to be CTs can at least agree on the axiom that Lee Oswald was either entirely innocent or a patsy, perhaps we can take different positions as to what evidence does best to prove that. By defining agendas of the Ongoing Coverup leading us into 2013 we can hopefully keep from wasting our time and energy by being sandbagged and continue to move forward.

UNQUOTE

No, Pamela...we cannot agree on that axiom.

The LHO persona was a creation of the CIA, using a real person named Lee Harvey Oswald and a doppelganger

who spoke Russian as part of a false defector program. The doppelganger assumed the name of the real Oswald

and eventually took his place. After his Russian mission was completed, someone in the CIA involved the LHO substitute

in the JFK plot. So it is not as simple as you make it.

Read Armstrong's Harvey & Lee.

Jack