Discussing The Mindset Of Conspiracy Theorists

[Len Colby]

Of course Richard Nixon was referring to the JFK ASSASSINATION when he referred to the "Whole Bay of Pigs" thing. It's obvious. And that is why GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH freaked out so much when he reading the transcript of the "smoking gun tape" of Nixon. Nixon was using the JFK Assassination as a FIREWALL to prevent any more investigation of himself, in effect saying if you "investigate me" it will risk exposing the CIA murder of John Kennedy in the 1963 Coup d'Etat.

Great Cliff you now have the forum's most sex obsessed member in your corner you must be right!

So Robert if that's what he meant why didn't he expose "the CIA murder of John Kennedy"?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I really do believe that one of Bugliosi’s problems is that he went to law school—not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the education, but he never got beyond it.

Not only has he not got beyond it, he seems to have forgotten what he learned in law school, where they teach that if you want to introduce expert testimony, the expert must be QUALIFIED in the discipline he is testifying about. One of Bugliosi's star expert witnesses is Dr. VIncent Guinn. Guinn had a Ph.D. in CHEMISTRY, yet bug introduces him (RH p.488) as an expert in PHYSICS, and cites GUinn's OPINIONS ON PHYSICS to prove that the head shot could have come from behind.

As if to explain why he cites a chemist as authority for a proposition in physics,Bug admits on the same page that

I had avoided taking physics in high school.

As Oscar Wilde said, you would need a heart of pure granite not to burst out laughing.

And Bug goes downhill from there. We meet Dr. Guinn again on page 812 et seq., but first a little background:

On December 12, 2003, (A FULL THREE YEARS BEFORE BUG FINISHED HIS BOOK) in Federal Court in Chicago, Judge Ronald A. GUzman ruled that bullet lead comparison, the forensic method invented by Dr. Guinn in an attempt to shore up the case against Lee Oswald, has no scientific basis.

http://www.daubertontheweb.com/mikos.pdf

Other courts followed, and before long G. RObert Blakey, the chief salesman for Dr. Guinn's product, was forced to admit that Guinn's theories were JUNK SCIENCE.

THe New York TImes reported little on this, but by 2005, when Bug was still two years from finishing his book, the Times did report that the FBI had abandoned Guinn's theory.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E7D71731F931A3575AC0A9639C8B63&scp=1&sq=%22bullet%20lead%22&st=cse

Athough the Times did not mention GUinn by name, there is really no excuse for Bug trotting out in 2007 out the now totally discredited chemist as his star witness who PROVES, if you believe Bug, that CE399 could not have been planted.

(RH P.814)

[Guinn's] MOST IMPORTANT CONCLUSION BY FAR .... scientifically defeating the notion that the bullet.... had been planted

Fine, provided it is understood that when Bug uses the term "scientific" he means JUNK SCIENCE.

Mr. Von Pein may be part-right. RH is a book for the ages, i.e. a book that will be LAUGHED AT for ages to come.

Edited March 6, 2011 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Cliff Varnell]

Back to the bold burgundy. Portions snipped for clarity.

= My latest replied in bold and preceded by equals signs (=)

<snip>

= Lawyers and witnesses / candidates and handlers rehearse likely questions and answers all the like sometimes those answers are accurate sometimes they are not.

What an utterly contentless rationalization. Angleton was the Counter-Intelligence chief of the CIA, and if the CIA had no connection to Oswald there would have been no need to rehearse an answer to the simple question: Was Oswald a CIA agent? Haldeman obviously felt this rehearsal was significant, not routine.

=Haldermona never said directly that LHO was CIA or that the agency was directly involved in the assassination.

It's an obvious subtext given Haldeman's reference to Angleton's denial that Oswald was CIA and Nixon's insistence that Hunt and the burglars were a scab that shouldn't be opened.

=The part about “No mention of the Castro assassination attempt was made” leads us back to the Russo/Gratz theory

Only if you take the statement out of context and spin it to suit your world view.

= so does his use of ‘connection’ rather words like ‘involvement’, ‘role’ etc. Why would he only say they were ‘connected’ if he believed they were the assassins?

Assassins wouldn't be "connected"? Your semantic hair-splitting is amusing.

Varnell:

How about this crucial aside, which I will examine more closely later:

(Interestingly, an investigation of the Kennedy assassination was a project I suggested when I first

entered the White House. I had always been intrigued with the conflicting theories of the assassination.

Now I felt we would be in a position to get all the facts. But Nixon turned me down.)

No endorsement of the Lone Gunman theory there, or the Castro-did-it scenario.

= I didn’t say he exposed the Gratz theory in every sentence, those fit both his and yours.

He doesn't expose the Castro-did-it scenario in any sentence. He clearly raised the possibility that Oswald was a CIA agent.

And what about that bit in the Watergate tapes where Nixon says to Haldeman:

When you get the CIA people in say, “Look, the problem is that this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again.” So they should call the FBI in and for the good of the country don’t go any further into this case. Period.

"For the good of the country." How does that point to Fidel Castro?

= Once again it fits the Russo/Gratz theory as much as yours (if not more so), the discovery that the CIA triggered the assassination by their failed attempts on Castro would be scandalous.

The failed attempts on Castro were already public knowledge in 1972. Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson had written about it in a syndicated column on March 7, 1967; Jack Anderson followed-up in a Wash Post article on January 18, 1971, "6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid on CIA".

How would it have been "bad for the country" if it were thought that Castro had retaliated for those attempts? Once those attempts became public it was an obvious conclusion for many people. The "bad for the country" statement makes more sense in the context of CIA agents killing Kennedy.

Nixon spoke of Hunt and the Watergate Cubans thusly:

"...You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things... tell them we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves..."

The attempts to kill Castro were a scab that had been opened years before. It wasn't a secret. There would have been no "detrimental" consequences if it were reported that Castro killed Kennedy in retaliation. In fact, it would have been a boon to the Kennedy-haters. They could have claimed that Kennedy brought it on himself, and they could paint Castro as an assassin at the same time.

A win-win for the hard right wingers who hated both Kennedy and Castro.

=If he Nixon meant that the CIA had killed Castro he would have said something like “for their own good” because they would be face life in prison or the death penalty.

I had no idea you were so intimate with Richard Nixon that you can speak for the man. Where did you have the opportunity to become so familiar with him, Colby?

"For the good of the country" obviously doesn't refer to the kill-Castro plots, which were public knowledge, or to the Castro-did-it scenario, which had been broadcast far and wide before JFK's body was cold.

The "for the good of the country" comment only makes sense if Nixon thought Hunt and the Watergate Cubans were involved in 11/22/63.

True he didn’t say specifically that LHO was the LONE gunman but since he mentioned no other shooters that seems implicit, in any case he nailed Oswald as the shooter and the scenario spelled out very clearly was the Russo/Gratz ‘Castro did it’ theory, emphasis added.

…as an outgrowth of the Bay of Pigs,

the CIA made several attempts on Fidel Castro's life

…

[…]

Unfortunately,

Castro knew of the assassination attempts

all the time [and said] . On September 7, 1963…"Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves, SINCE THEY, TOO, CAN BE THE VICTIMS OF AN ATTEMPT WHICH WILL CAUSE THEIR DEATH."

After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic cover-up. MANY OF THE FACTS ABOUT OSWALD UNAVOIDABLY POINTED TO A CUBAN CONNECTION.

[Cites 3 examples of LHO’s ties to Cuba]

In a chilling parallel to their cover-up at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy's assassination and the CIA. No mention of the Castro assassination attempt was made to the Warren Commission by CIA representatives.

[Discusses CIA cover up]

This is what I mean about slimey rhetoric. You cut out the part where Angleton rehearsed denying that

Oswald was a CIA agent!

= As I said before I won’t stoop to your level, I also “cut out” LHO’s 3 connections to the Castro regime as both had already been posted and were not directly relevant. He (whoever he was) never said LHO was CIA but did say he was a supporter of Castro.

I'll deal with your hypocritical smears in another post. For now, let's stick with your characterization of the Angleton-Sullivan rehearsals as -- "Discusses CIA cover up." Haldeman never used the phrase "Oswald was a Castro agent," but he did introduce the possibility that Oswald was a CIA agent. That doesn't fit your world-view, so you mis-represented it. Slimey rhetoric, indeed.

<snip redundancies>

Haldeman never referred to Oswald as either a lone nut or an agent of Fidel, but he very clearly

suggested that Oswald may have been a CIA agent.

= No, he directly suggested that LHO was working the behest of the Castro regime a few times and only once made a comment that could be interpreted as suggesting he was CIA.

"Behest of the Castro regime"? What "behest"?

Haldeman clearly raised the possibility Oswald was CIA. Nixon clearly suggested that the Watergate Cubans and Hunt were involved in the Kennedy assassination. The "scab" was already off the Castro assassination attempts. It was old news. That Hunt and the Watergate Cubans were involved in the JFK assassination was big news, indeed.

Again, you apparently are incapable of processing information that doesn't conform to your world view.

= The cognitive dissonance is yours not mine

Thus spake the Black Knight.

And when Nixon said, "It's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs" he might have been reminding Helms, not so gently, of the cover-up of the CIA assassination attempts on the hero of the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro -- A CIA OPERATION THAT MAY HAVE TRIGGERED THE KENNEDY TRAGEDY and which Helms desperately wanted to hide.

One could just as easily conclude that Haldeman was saying that the Bay of Pigs triggered anti-Castro Cubans to kill Kennedy. This is much more likely considering the fact that the Watergate Cubans were part of the effort to kill Castro.

= If that was what he meant to suggest then explain why he wrote “Unfortunately, Castro knew of the assassination attempts all the time”

I take it to mean Haldeman felt it was unfortunate that Castro wasn't assassinated, due to the fact Fidel knew of the plots against him.

=and then included the Castro threat that JFK and RFK could also “be the victims of an attempt which will cause their death."

A threat or a warning? If Castro were plotting to kill JFK do you think he would issue a threat that could be used as a pre-text for an American invasion?

Hunt and the Watergate Cubans were not agents of Fidel Castro.

Neither was Oswald, and Haldeman doesn't say that he was.

=And then follow that with LHO’s support of Castro and say that this lead to a cover-up? Any remotely neutral reading of that passage would be “the CIA assassination attempts on…Fidel Castro…triggered the Kennedy tragedy”

Yes, it triggered Kennedy's murder at the hands of the very same people who were plotting Castro's murder.

=The burglars being part of BoP and the assassination attempts fits both scenarios. Investigation of the burglars could lead to discovery of the attempts which could lead to (if that were the case) the discovery that this lead to JFK being killed in retaliation.

You're obviously ignorant of the fact that the attempts on Castro were already public knowledge. Much of the US military/intelligence/foreign policy establishment wanted to pin the JFK assassination on Castro, and would likely have welcomed the promotion of that conclusion under any circumstances.

<snip redundancies>

And having a "Cuban connection" doesn't necessarily implicate Castro since it was Cubans who were trying to kill him.

= Nonsense because as spelled out above the three things he cited which ‘connected’ LHO to Cuba indicated support of not opposition to Castro.

Not if he were a CIA agent, a possibility Haldeman clearly entertained.

In his September '63 speech did Fidel Castro threaten JFK with murder, or was he warning that the forces once directed at Castro could be re-directed at Kennedy?

= Either on its own or in context the former is the reasonable interpretation Haldermona introduced the quote with “Unfortunately, Castro knew of the assassination attempts all the time”

Unfortunately Castro wasn't assassinated -- the standard American right-wing sentiment.

I'm glad to see that you've gotten off the "DiMona made it all up" tip, Colby.

= Who says I did?

Your inability to pivot from DiMona making up "a sentence or two" to DiMona making up entire conversations

and writing entire portions of the book.

Of course, your inability to admit error will prevent you from acknowledging this.

Edited March 6, 2011 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Great Cliff you now have the forum's most sex obsessed member in your corner you must be right!

This is another example of Len Colby's slimey rhetoric, proving he can stoop very low, indeed.

[David Lifton]

@David S. Lifton:

The "bladder" thing is an ongoing joke of mine (which apparently you didn't realize; or it could be that I've become immune to the reciprocal humor of conspiracy theorists, and you were joking too). ~shrug~

And I'd like to believe that your latest post [on 3/6/11 at 1:45 AM PST] is also a "joke", but, alas, I'm quite sure it is not and that you were dead serious about all of the pure hogwash and fantasy-filled speculation you have uttered above.

As I have said in previous posts at a different forum, Vincent Bugliosi was way, WAY too kind to David S. Lifton in "Reclaiming History":

"IMO, Vince is far too kind to Mr. Lifton and his "research abilities" (especially when we consider the insane theory that was spawned and endorsed by Lifton via his "research"). VB must have been in a super-good mood the day he wrote the nice things that he penned in his book about Mr. Lifton. But Bugliosi also gets down to the bottom-line brass tacks of the matter when he makes these statements about David L.:

"One theory that perhaps "takes the cake" is set forth by conspiracy author David Lifton in his book "Best Evidence". .... Out of his 747 pages, [Lifton] unbelievably devotes no more than 6 or 7 full pages, if that, to Oswald. .... One could safely say that David Lifton took folly to an unprecedented level. And considering the monumental foolishness of his colleagues in the conspiracy community, that's saying something." -- "Reclaiming History"; Pages 1057, 1058, and 1066"

-- DVP; April 21, 2008

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/16ac9042241cdc95

DVP:

I have news for you. If Bugliosi had any real command of the facts in the medical area, he wouldn't have had to issue a written apology to Paul K. O'Connor (now deceased) the Bethesda medical technician who said that when the body arrived, the cranium was empty. (See Chapter 26, Best Evidence, "The Recollections of Paul K. O'Connor)" Mr. Bugliosi had to issue such a written retraction--right there at the bottom of a page of Reclaiming History, because he stupidly confused inaccurate statements that O'Connor made during the TV program, The Trial of Oswald (where Bugliosi plays the role of prosecutor) with the reality of what O'Connor actually witnessed on the night of November 22, 1963, at the Bethesda morgue, and as related not only to the local Florida newspapers, after the military gag order was rescinded, but to the HSCA as well. As O'Connor told the HSCA, circa 1977, after the military gag order was rescinded, the President's body arrived in a body bag, inside a shipping casket, and the cranium was empty. O'Connor then repeated the same thing to me on August 25, 1979, in a telephone interview; and then again in a filmed interview in October, 1980--which was broadcast repeatedly all over America during my various book tours for Best Evidence, after its publication in January, 1981. (And those clips are today on YouTube).

Furthermore, if you have any doubt that the body arrived with a largely empty cranium, just look at the handwritten notes of FBI Agent James Sibert, who was there, and who has written, in a file of papers turned over to the ARRB: ""Brain had been removed from head cavity." [see ARRB medical document MD-216] (And the late Francis O'Neill, Fr., said essentially the same thing, to his businessman friend Wayne Cooke: "Wayne, there was no brain. The cranium was empty." I personally arranged for that material to be sent to the ARRB, and it is now at the National Archives.)

Mr. Bugliosi repeatedly misrepresents the record on facts pertaining to the invalidity of the Kennedy autopsy, and hides ignorance behind an easily pierced shield of arrogance.

And again, sorry if these facts cause you bladder problems.

Autopsy fraud is at the heart of the false case against Oswald, and provides the key to the truth about what happened in Dealey Plaza; and what was done to Kennedy's body to conceal it.

DSL

3/6/11

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Lifton

[David Lifton]

@David S. Lifton:

As I have said in previous posts at a different forum, Vincent Bugliosi was way, WAY too kind to David S. Lifton in "Reclaiming History":

"IMO, Vince is far too kind to Mr. Lifton and his "research abilities" . . .VB must have been in a super-good mood the day he wrote the nice things that he penned in his book about Mr. Lifton. But Bugliosi also gets down to the bottom-line brass tacks of the matter when he makes these statements about David L.:

"One theory that perhaps "takes the cake" is set forth by conspiracy author David Lifton in his book "Best Evidence". .... Out of his 747 pages, [Lifton] unbelievably devotes no more than 6 or 7 full pages, if that, to Oswald. ...."

-- DVP; April 21, 2008

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/16ac9042241cdc95

What a silly statement.

Of course my work has a lot to say about Oswald--not just explicitly, but more important implicitly. For Best Evidence is about the most important evidence of all "against" Oswald in this murder case--and that is the body of President Kennedy, someone whose body (in the condition it was in at Parkland Hospital) would be considered exculpatory of Oswald's guilt.

Best Evidence is all about the falsification of the most critical evidence in this case--the entire Bethesda autopsy protocol--that features a false autopsy report which creates the foundation in the evidence for the legitimacy of the so-called "sniper's nest" as the source of the shots; and from that springs the superficial appearance of Oswald's guilt.

Remember what Lee Oswald said to his brother on Saturday, November 23, 1963, in their brief jailhouse visit: "Do not believe the so-called 'evidence'."

I don't think Oswald had in mind the President's body when he made that statement, but . . Indeed, its legitimacy (as evidence) is the gist of the matter in this case, and that is what this case is all about--the validity of the evidence, starting with the body, the autopsy report, etc.

Of course, Mr. Bugliosi--who holds a law degree from UCLA--often seems to forget that. He prefers not to think of the legal concept of "relevance" or of the "chain of possession" of the evidence he takes so seriously. To the contrary, and in accepting much of the "sniper's nest evidence" against Oswald at face value (and--even more important--ignoring the blatant and obvious evidence of covert interception of the body--which would invalidate the autopsy report as evidence, not to mention the clear evidence that the wounds were altered). Bugliosi often behaves as if he got his legal education not at UCLA but at some third rate night school where the instructors, instead of teaching evidence by using the classic works, perhaps dispensed a legal education in the form of mimeographed handouts from the Inspector Clouseau School of Criminal Investigation.

Or perhaps he is confusing the reality of what happened on Dealey Plaza, and other events prior to the Bethesda autopsy, with the storybook version of reality he knows and loves so well, i.e., TV show where he could play "prosecutor", and ignore the true consequences of the very clear evidence of the interception of President Kennedy's body and the alteration of the wounds, prior to autopsy, a situation clearly recognized at the outset of the autopsy when Dr. James Humes said aloud, and the FBI agents wrote it down, that it was "apparent" that there had been "surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull."

I hope Bugliosi lives a long life and is around to witness the complete exoneration of Oswald as Kennedy's assassin, and the revised view of his book as what it actually is--an endless litany of excuses for all the evidence that shows there was a conspiracy in JFK's death, and that Oswald was innocent. As I have described it elsewhere, and for those who accept his kind of "argument," much of the content of Reclaiming History is, in that regard, a Ponzi scheme for the mind.

Like all Ponzi schemes, it will eventually collapse.

DSL

3/6/11; 6:30 PM PST

Los Angeles, CA

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Lifton

[David Von Pein]

Question for David Lifton......

If your theory is correct and no shots at all came from the rear of President Kennedy's limousine in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, then how can you possibly reconcile the slight wounding of bystander James T. Tague and the chipped curb on Main Street?

Or do you think that Tague is a xxxx when he said he was struck in the face by something DURING the shooting itself?

I know there are some people (John McAdams for one) who have serious doubts about a bullet being the cause of this very, very small mark on the Main Street curbing:

But even with some doubts about what might have caused the mark on the curb, it's difficult to deny the fact that Tague was hit by something DURING the assassination, and he told Dallas Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers that very thing within minutes of the shooting.

And it would be nearly impossible to reconcile Tague's wounding with a FRONTAL gunshot, unless the frontal gunman was totally blind, or unless the REAL target of the shooting that day was car salesman James Tague. (And I kind of doubt that even the most off-the-wall conspiracy theorist on the planet believes that Mr. Tague was being shot at on 11/22/63.)

As we can see from Commission Exhibit 875 (pictured below), given the location of the President's car throughout the ENTIRE time when gunfire was occurring in Dealey Plaza, the only possible source of any gunfire that would have been responsible for the cheek wound suffered by Mr. Tague would have been gunfire coming from BEHIND President Kennedy's vehicle, and not from in front of the car:

MORE TAGUE TALK:

http://JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/2010/07/james-tague-part-1.html

2005 RADIO INTERVIEW WITH JAMES TAGUE:

http://www.box.net/shared/3hqzkvub2a

http://www.box.net/shared/nhmn4rgf77

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

Another question for David Lifton......

If JFK's body was stolen off of Air Force One and was altered between Dallas and Bethesda, why do you think the conspirators were so unbelievably stupid to have placed the President into a BODY BAG after the covert body alterations were completed, instead of simply wrapping the body back up IN THE SHEET that he was wrapped in when he left Parkland Hospital?

Do you have ANY kind of a logical (believable) explanation for why the body-alterers would have done something so amazingly silly and inane?

Same goes for the casket ----

Why on Earth would the goofy body-alterers decide to throw JFK's body into a very cheap pink "shipping" casket, when those same plotters HAD TO HAVE KNOWN that they had stolen the body out of a very expensive mahogany ornamental casket?

Did they WANT their covert plan to be exposed as quickly as possible by blatantly switching around BOTH the body wrappings AND the casket?

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Von Pein

[Pat Speer]

Bugliosi uses experts in the wrong field all over the place in RH.

My favorite is Chad ZImmerman.

THis guy is a chiropractor. Got that, a back doctor.

Bugliosi uses him on the ballistics and autopsy. Not kidding.

Then of course, there is Lattimer, the urology doctor--or as Cyril Wecht so memorably labels him, "the piss doctor".

THen there is Michael West. Now this guy actually was a dentist, but he billed himself as a forensic orthodontist. But yet he was exposed as using fraudulent techniques for the DA's office, and then lying about it after the fact. What makes this worse is this: This exposure occurred before RH was published.

For a good sample of how bad this guy was, Google his name and Reason magazine. You will see an article from summer of 2007, a full year before RH was published. Yet the controversy about him goes back even further than that. To about 2005.

Dave Perry, Gary Mack's guru, placed the entire text of the phony Wecht indictment on his web site and kept it there even after the charges were dropped. Did he say a word about Bugliosi using this guy?

Unfortunately, few of the "experts" on either side of the fence are as "expert" as their supporters would like them to be.

[Pat Speer]

Great Cliff you now have the forum's most sex obsessed member in your corner you must be right!

This is another example of Len Colby's slimey rhetoric, proving he can stoop very low, indeed.

Cliff, Len has a point, IMO. Up through the mid-70's, when the HSCA was formed, many of those within the mainstream of American politics who were nevertheless intrigued by the idea Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy were of the Castro probably did it persuasion. This included, as I recall, not only Haldeman but Sen. Richard Schweicker, who famously claimed that Oswald had the "fingerprints of intelligence" all over him. Schweicker was to be Reagan's running mate in 76. Do you think Reagan would have picked a conspiracy theorist claiming the CIA killed Kennedy as his running mate? I don't.

The thinking of these men--and of men like Schorr for that matter--was that Oswald was a CIA agent somehow caught up in a plot to kill Kennedy, and that he either pulled the trigger himself or was framed by PRO-Castro Cubans to look like he pulled the trigger, and that the CIA opted to cover the whole thing up rather than let the truth sneak out. At the time, this made sense to them. The plots against Castro discussed by Pearson and Anderson were considered RUMORS up until the mid-70's, when the government finally admitted they were true. Around the same time it came out that the FBI had destroyed a note written by Oswald, AND that Dulles had told the WC in executive session that HE would lie to hide that Oswald was his agent, unless the president himself asked him not to. This led many of those normally within the mainstream to suspect that the plots had SOMETHING to do with the assassination, and that Oswald may have been an agent.

They took the easy way out, of course. That Kennedy was actually killed BY the CIA, or by the military, and that men like Garrison and Weberman were onto something, was a minority opinion, I'm fairly certain, until the 80's and 90's.

Edited March 7, 2011 by Pat Speer

[David Von Pein]

It wasn't "all by design", Lee. It was all by "human nature". (And it was "all by Oswald", too, of course.)

I.E., it's human nature to screw things up. Happens constantly, no matter what we do. I can't even toast bread without screwing up and burning it 5 times out of 10.

And you must agree with me on this basic "human nature = screw-ups" analogy, Lee, because your perceived Oswald patsy-framers screwed up virtually everything they did (one way or another), as I illustrated in a previous post. -- Such as allowing the patsy to roam free at 12:30 (how stupid can you possibly GET?), and leaving a MAUSER in the TSBD, and on and on.

Looks like they were TRYING to get caught, doesn't it?

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

Even though he [Vincent Bugliosi] is a lawyer, he never...qualifies people like Zimmerman, Lattimer, or West in any way.

But Lattimer and Zimmerman merely conducted experiments that ANYONE (even a garbage man) could easily have conducted (if they had the proper materials and resources).

Lattimer merely set up some shooting experiments using a Carcano rifle, some skulls, some cardboard targets, etc., and started shooting at them.

And every single test he conducted is documented in his very good 1980 book "Kennedy And Lincoln", and he even filmed many of his experiments, such as the head shot stuff, which proves for all time that a skull WILL definitely travel TOWARD THE SHOOTER when it is struck from behind. EVERY one of Lattimer's skulls moved toward the gun when shot.

And yet, NONE of Lattimer's excellent reconstruction experiments hold any water with the disbelieving conspiracy crowd whatsoever. (Gee, I wonder why? Not.)

Do CTers dismiss Lattimer's FILMED head experiments just because he was a "piss doctor"?

What DIFFERENCE does it make what Lattimer's occupation was when it comes to THOSE particular hands-on experiments? A two-dollar hooker in high heels could have proved what Lattimer proved (assuming she had a Carcano, a human skull to shoot at, and a camera with film in it).

===================

BUGLIOSI ADDENDUM:

Just yesterday, I discovered a new Feb. 2011 radio interview featuring Vince Bugliosi. Good stuff here too,

including some previews of Vinnie's newest book on religion (coming out in mid-April 2011),

entitled "Divinity Of Doubt: The God Question", which Vince says he is "more excited about"

than any other book in his whole career.

The whole 44-minute interview is below (and Vince weighs in some more on the conspiracy kooks too):

http://Box.net/shared/oql264kfze

http://Vincent-Bugliosi.blogspot.com

Edited March 7, 2011 by David Von Pein

[Pat Speer]

Great Cliff you now have the forum's most sex obsessed member in your corner you must be right!

This is another example of Len Colby's slimey rhetoric, proving he can stoop very low, indeed.

Cliff, Len has a point, IMO. Up through the mid-70's, when the HSCA was formed, many of those within the mainstream of American politics who were nevertheless intrigued by the idea Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy were of the Castro probably did it persuasion. This included, as I recall, not only Haldeman but Sen. Richard Schweicker, who famously claimed that Oswald had the "fingerprints of intelligence" all over him. Schweicker was to be Reagan's running mate in 76. Do you think Reagan would have picked a conspiracy theorist claiming the CIA killed Kennedy as his running mate? I don't.

The thinking of these men--and of men like Schorr for that matter--was that Oswald was a CIA agent somehow caught up in a plot to kill Kennedy, and that he either pulled the trigger himself or was framed by PRO-Castro Cubans to look like he pulled the trigger, and that the CIA opted to cover the whole thing up rather than let the truth sneak out. At the time, this made sense to them. The plots against Castro discussed by Pearson and Anderson were considered RUMORS up until the mid-70's, when the government finally admitted they were true. Around the same time it came out that the FBI had destroyed a note written by Oswald, AND that Dulles had told the WC in executive session that HE would lie to hide that Oswald was his agent, unless the president himself asked him not to. This led many of those normally within the mainstream to suspect that the plots had SOMETHING to do with the assassination, and that Oswald may have been an agent.

They took the easy way out, of course. That Kennedy was actually killed BY the CIA, or by the military, and that men like Garrison and Weberman were onto something, was a minority opinion, I'm fairly certain, until the 80's and 90's.

Pat/Jim

Quick question. In The Vantage Point 1971 p.27 Lyndon Johnson states:

"As for the makeup of the rest of the Commission, I appointed the two men Bobby Kennedy asked me to put on it - Allen Dulles and John McCloy - immediately."

What are your thoughts on this?

In some of the books I've read on Johnson--I think one was Dean Acheson's Present at the Creation--Johnson's decision making style is discussed. He was basically a weasel, a spineless snake. He'd say "so and so says so and so would be a good man for this job, what do you think?" and when the man he was speaking to, not wanting to say that the person purportedly making the suggestion was an idiot, agreed that that would be alright, Johnson would turn around and call someone else and say it was THAT man's idea... In that manner he could avoid responsibility for his decisions.

It's possible, even, that Johnson did not realize that HE was the driving force behind these decisions. A perfect example of this is the decision he made to take the oath in Dallas. From reading a number of accounts of what happened, it seems obvious that Johnson called Bobby and asked him if he SHOULD take the oath in Dallas, and when Bobby agreed that that would be OKAY, he turned around and told others that it was Bobby's idea. Later, when Bobby found out that LBJ had held the plane on the ground until he could be sworn in, and had made Jackie participate in the swearing in, and got mad about it, LBJ countered with "but it was HIS idea, wah wah wah..." (I believe Max Holland, in his book on LBJ's tapes, is one of those who discusses LBJ's weaselness in detail.)

As far as Dulles and McCloy...one of the LBJ tapes has him talking to Fortas about the make-up of the commission, and it is LBJ himself who first mentions McCloy. As a result, I suspect that somewhere along the line LBJ DID talk to Bobby, and DID tell him that he wanted Warren, two congressman, two senators, and two civilians on the commission, and then ask Bobby if he thought Dulles and McCloy would be alright. I suspect that Bobby, who knew both men and apparently got along fine with them, then said yes, and that LBJ then turned around and told everyone their participation was Bobby's idea. Apparently, that's just the way he worked. Weasel.

(While everyone assumes from JFK's firing Dulles that Bobby hated or distrusted Dulles, I've found no evidence this is true. Bobby worked with Dulles on the Taylor Commission, which looked into and studied the CIA's failure at the Bay of Pigs. Apparently, the two had a good working relationship. If anyone knows any different, of course, I'd appreciate their input.)

Edited March 7, 2011 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

PS: Unfortunately, few of the "experts" on either side of the fence are as "expert" as their supporters would like them to be.

Here is the difference.

VB is a lawyer.

He knows that to get an authority on the stand he has to be qualified in his field.

Even though he is a lawyer, he never makes this distinction in his book, or qualifies people like Zimmerman, Lattimer, or West in any way.

Agreed. As a further example, Bugliosi relies upon Scalice's study of the trigger guard prints without (if I recall correctly) noting that Scalice's methodology was frowned upon by other fingerprint examiners, and that Scalice himself, whom the HSCA held up as an expert fingerprint examiner, re-emerged in the nineties in the employ of a right-wing fringe group as a questionable questionable documents examiner claiming Vince Foster's suicide note was a fake.

Mantik's review of Bugliosi's book discussed his hiding behind and cherry-picking of experts in great detail. This makes it incredibly ironic that Bugliosi then cherry-picked words from Mantik's negative review and made it seem as though Mantik had written a favorable review. He then used Mantik's reputation among conspiracy theorists (expertise, if you will) to sell books by using Mantik's falsified quotes in the ad campaign for Four Days in November.

Von Pein, of course, knows about this last little bit, because he's the one who brought it to most of our attention.

Edited March 7, 2011 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

Great Cliff you now have the forum's most sex obsessed member in your corner you must be right!

This is another example of Len Colby's slimey rhetoric, proving he can stoop very low, indeed.

Cliff, Len has a point, IMO. Up through the mid-70's, when the HSCA was formed, many of those within the mainstream of American politics who were nevertheless intrigued by the idea Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy were of the Castro probably did it persuasion. This included, as I recall, not only Haldeman but Sen. Richard Schweicker, who famously claimed that Oswald had the "fingerprints of intelligence" all over him. Schweicker was to be Reagan's running mate in 76. Do you think Reagan would have picked a conspiracy theorist claiming the CIA killed Kennedy as his running mate? I don't.

The thinking of these men--and of men like Schorr for that matter--was that Oswald was a CIA agent somehow caught up in a plot to kill Kennedy, and that he either pulled the trigger himself or was framed by PRO-Castro Cubans to look like he pulled the trigger, and that the CIA opted to cover the whole thing up rather than let the truth sneak out. At the time, this made sense to them. The plots against Castro discussed by Pearson and Anderson were considered RUMORS up until the mid-70's, when the government finally admitted they were true. Around the same time it came out that the FBI had destroyed a note written by Oswald, AND that Dulles had told the WC in executive session that HE would lie to hide that Oswald was his agent, unless the president himself asked him not to. This led many of those normally within the mainstream to suspect that the plots had SOMETHING to do with the assassination, and that Oswald may have been an agent.

They took the easy way out, of course. That Kennedy was actually killed BY the CIA, or by the military, and that men like Garrison and Weberman were onto something, was a minority opinion, I'm fairly certain, until the 80's and 90's.

Pat/Jim

Quick question. In The Vantage Point 1971 p.27 Lyndon Johnson states:

"As for the makeup of the rest of the Commission, I appointed the two men Bobby Kennedy asked me to put on it - Allen Dulles and John McCloy - immediately."

What are your thoughts on this?

In some of the books I've read on Johnson--I don't remember which ones--it goes into great detail about how he made decisions. He was basically a weasel, a spineless snake. He'd say "so and so says so and so would be a good man for this job, what do you think?" and when the man he was speaking to, not wanting to say that the person purportedly making the suggestion was an idiot, agreed that that would be alright, Johnson would turn around and call someone else and say it was THAT man's idea... In that manner he could avoid responsibility for his decisions.

It's possible, even, that Johnson did not realize that HE was the driving force behind these decisions. A perfect example of this is the decision he made to take the oath in Dallas. From reading a number of accounts of what happened, it seems obvious that Johnson called Bobby and asked him if he SHOULD take the oath in Dallas, and when Bobby agreed that that would be OKAY, he turned around and told others that it was Bobby's idea. Later, when Bobby found out that LBJ had held the plane on the ground until he could be sworn in, and had made Jackie participate in the swearing in, and got mad about it, LBJ countered with "but it was HIS idea, wah wah wah..." (I believe Max Holland, in his book on LBJ's tapes, is one of those who discusses LBJ's weaselness in detail.)

As far as Dulles and McCloy...one of the LBJ tapes has him talking to Fortas about the make-up of the commission, and it is LBJ himself who first mentions McCloy. As a result, I suspect that somewhere along the line LBJ DID talk to Bobby, and DID tell him that he wanted Warren, two congressman, two senators, and two civilians on the commission, and then ask Bobby if he thought Dulles and McCloy would be alright. I suspect that Bobby, who knew both men and apparently got along fine with them, then said yes, and that LBJ then turned around and told everyone their participation was Bobby's idea. Apparently, that's just the way he worked. Weasel.

(While everyone assumes from JFK's firing Dulles that Bobby hated or distrusted Dulles, I've found no evidence this is true. Bobby worked with Dulles on the Taylor Commission, which looked into and studied the CIA's failure at the Bay of Pigs. Apparently, the two had a good working relationship. If anyone knows any different, of course, I'd appreciate their input.)

Thanks for your perspective, Pat.

I'm left thinking about the timing of this. 1971. Johnson's mental health is beginning to dwindle. Political turbulence on the streets of America. Bobby has been assassinated. The Anti-War movement is growing and becoming more and more organised. The scenes at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago giving rise to a swell of civil disobedience. 23,000 police officers and National Guard on the streets of a major U.S. city. Kent State had occurred in 1970.

I wonder how petrified Johnson was that the whole house of cards was on its way down at this historical junction? To throw into the mix that it was Bobby that requested Allen Dulles and John McCloy be on the Commission is quite odd in its timing. Five years after the fact and three years after Bobby's murder.

Just thinking out loud. It's a fascinating part of the story...

Agreed. I think someone could do a real service to this country by going through LBJ's book, line by line, and comparing it to what other people in the room had to say, and what his tapes revealed. I suspect they'd show him to have been a serial twister of truth and pretty much a pathological xxxx.

Ditto for Nixon.