Assassination of John F. Kennedy E-Book

[John Simkin]

I believe strongly that assassination related articles/pages on the wikipedia site and on John's Spartacus site should be reviewed and edited in preparation for heightened interest in the 50th anniversary year commencing as early as this coming 22 November, little more than 50 days from now.

I've wondered why more of what is posted in these threads does not appear in revisions of related Spartacus pages and I believe it is mostly because John's focus is on creating new articles.

In a few days time I plan to publish a series of e-books. This will include the title, “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy”. The book will be made up of my current website pages plus a few extras. This will enable students and researchers to study the subject offline. Unlike with traditional books, it is now possible to publish new editions immediately without extra costs. I therefore plan to publish a revised edition in time for the Christmas market.

The JFK assassination section is only a small part of my website. The Spartacus Educational Encyclopaedia has over 11,000 articles (apparently this is the word count of 23 copies of “War and Peace”). It has not been possible to keep my pages updated with the latest evidence. As people like Greg Parker have pointed out, I have not always kept to my intentions of providing in one place the different interpretations of people and events. Although I have expressed strong opinions about the case on the Forum I have tried on the website to provide a balanced view (as an historian I am aware that complete objectivity is not possible).

Over the next couple of months I am giving members the opportunity to suggest changes to the content of my web pages. This is quite an undertaking and therefore I would like your emails to take the following format:

(1) URL, for example: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoswald.htm

(2) A brief description of why you think the page needs changing.

(3) Number the paragraph and provide the suggested edit or write the paragraph that should be added. This will be more acceptable if you include a quotation, for example: Larry Hancock has argued in his book, Nexus: The CIA and Political Assassination (2011), that “….”

(4) I will be more sympathetic to adding additional interpretations than in removing interpretations that you disapprove of.

(5) You are also free to provide additions to the sources section.

I will notify the member by email if and when the page has been updated. This will be the page that will appear in the new edition of the ebook.

[Michael Hogan]

I believe strongly that assassination related articles/pages on the wikipedia site and on John's Spartacus site should be reviewed and edited in preparation for heightened interest in the 50th anniversary year commencing as early as this coming 22 November, little more than 50 days from now.

I've wondered why more of what is posted in these threads does not appear in revisions of related Spartacus pages and I believe it is mostly because John's focus is on creating new articles.

In a few days time I plan to publish a series of e-books. This will include the title, “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy”. The book will be made up of my current website pages plus a few extras. This will enable students and researchers to study the subject offline. Unlike with traditional books, it is now possible to publish new editions immediately without extra costs. I therefore plan to publish a revised edition in time for the Christmas market.

The JFK assassination section is only a small part of my website. The Spartacus Educational Encyclopaedia has over 11,000 articles (apparently this is the word count of 23 copies of “War and Peace”). It has not been possible to keep my pages updated with the latest evidence. As people like Greg Parker have pointed out, I have not always kept to my intentions of providing in one place the different interpretations of people and events. Although I have expressed strong opinions about the case on the Forum I have tried on the website to provide a balanced view (as an historian I am aware that complete objectivity is not possible).

Over the next couple of months I am giving members the opportunity to suggest changes to the content of my web pages. This is quite an undertaking and therefore I would like your emails to take the following format:

(1) URL, for example: http://www.spartacus...k/JFKoswald.htm

(2) A brief description of why you think the page needs changing.

(3) Number the paragraph and provide the suggested edit or write the paragraph that should be added. This will be more acceptable if you include a quotation, for example: Larry Hancock has argued in his book, Nexus: The CIA and Political Assassination (2011), that “….”

(4) I will be more sympathetic to adding additional interpretations than in removing interpretations that you disapprove of.

(5) You are also free to provide additions to the sources section.

I will notify the member by email if and when the page has been updated. This will be the page that will appear in the new edition of the ebook.

John, I can't imagine the amount of effort, imagination and dedication required to found, expand and maintain Spartacus.

You have provided a valuable and free historical resource. Any undertaking like this would surely contain some errors and omissions,

but I think you have always taken positive steps to improve accuracy and completeness.

You know the content of Spartacus better than anyone. Do you yourself have any suggestions for specific subjects or general areas

that might need review for possible updating?

[John Simkin]

John, I can't imagine the amount of effort, imagination and dedication required to found, expand and maintain Spartacus.

You have provided a valuable and free historical resource. Any undertaking like this would surely contain some errors and omissions,

but I think you have always taken positive steps to improve accuracy and completeness.

You know the content of Spartacus better than anyone. Do you yourself have any suggestions for specific subjects or general areas

that might need review for possible updating?

Greg Parker and Tom Scully have both made recent attacks on me for not being more critical of journalists or reporters who have written about JFK's relationship with women. For example, C. David Heymann. I have also been criticised for accepting Peter Janney's account of JFK's relationship with Mary Pinchot Meyer. Although I am not willing to remove these claims I am willing to add to these pages alternative points of view so the reader can make up their own mind.

If people send me their "edits" I suggest that they also post them on the Forum so they can see what I do and do not accept.

[Greg Parker]

John, I can't imagine the amount of effort, imagination and dedication required to found, expand and maintain Spartacus.

You have provided a valuable and free historical resource. Any undertaking like this would surely contain some errors and omissions,

but I think you have always taken positive steps to improve accuracy and completeness.

You know the content of Spartacus better than anyone. Do you yourself have any suggestions for specific subjects or general areas

that might need review for possible updating?

Greg Parker and Tom Scully have both made recent attacks on me for not being more critical of journalists or reporters who have written about JFK's relationship with women. For example, C. David Heymann. I have also been criticised for accepting Peter Janney's account of JFK's relationship with Mary Pinchot Meyer. Although I am not willing to remove these claims I am willing to add to these pages alternative points of view so the reader can make up their own mind.

If people send me their "edits" I suggest that they also post them on the Forum so they can see what I do and do not accept.

John,

I have no idea what Tom Scully said (and I generally don't have any idea - even when I read it), but it is disappointing that you would say I attacked you. What I did was point out that you have not done what you say you always do. That is not an attack on you, and is far more constructive than the poster boy for hypocrisy fawning all over you - especially if it helped you make this decision to request suggestions for updates.

That said, I did one post where I made my point in what could be seen as a sarcastic manner and I apologized for that.

If you want to know what a real attack looks like John... here is one aimed at me and addressed to one of your moderators:

In your novel "Front Row at the Loony Bin," will you be drawing on (or, as the movie credits say, "be inspired by") any material from the London forum?

This is the sort of comment I put up with silently for a number of years here and which has NEVER been taken to task by any moderator. Those same mods who failed to act however, have been quick as lightning to jump on me ever since I decided to start speaking my mind in reply.

I do believe you owe me an apology for saying I should apologize to Lifton for calling him a xxxx. What I said was a fact, but you fell for further lies to cover his past lies.

This is a newsgroup post made by Lifton in 1998 in which he goes to great lengths in setting out 5 reasons as to why Palmer McBride was wrong. Is there any mention here of 1956 Ft Worth news stories on riots - riots which surely would make anyone else's top 5 reasons why McBride was wrong? No. Not a word about them. The man is not just a xxxx - he is pathological.

It is understandable, on first glance, why someone might come to the

conclusion that Palmer McBride knew Oswald in 57 and/or 58---after all, that

is what he told the FBI on 11/23/63. But this was simply an understandable

error of recollection.

Should the Warren Commission have called McBride to testify, and gotten any

collateral records then readily available to straighten this matter out? You

bet.

But they did not. So now, along comes John Armstrong with the silly and

foolish interpretation---backed by two erroneious letters from the Memphis

IRS office---that McBride was right after all, that all Oswald's teenage

employment records were falsified, etc etc ad nauseum.

What utter nonsense.

First of all, a number of researchers, myself included, have written to the

IRS, urging that the ARRB, as part of its efforts, look into this whole IRS

area, and whether those letters sent to Armstrong are in fact valid; or are,

as has been previously posted, simply in error---the result of the IRS having

switched to a new computerized record keeping system back in 1964. Common

sense dictates the latter is the case. But let's see.

Second: there are numerous FBI interviews, in the early CD's, which have the

proper dates and amounts re Pfisterer, J. R. Michels, and Tujagues, for the

period 55/56. Were all those FBI agents in on "the plot", too, and did they

also falsify their reports? Really, this is pure garbaage.

Third: Oswald himself, on a junior high school questionaire published in the

26 volumes, notes that he works at a shoe store part time. When I pointed

this out to Armstrong back in 1995 and asked, How do you explain this?" he

retorted, "I don't explain it." In fact, he cannot explain it---because the

document is the truth, and excellent contemporaneous evidence refuting his

nonsense.

Fourth: John Hart Ely's reports are some of the best work I have seen done,

on Oswald's youth, and his period in the Marines. The record changed slightly

as the investigation unfolded---maybe that was what Jenner was referring to.

Or perhaps it was to the shooting incident in Japan, which many WC staff felt

strongly had nothing to do with Oswald,and should be deleted. But the

Armstrong interpretation is pure hogwash. I have had the Ely Reports for

some 20 years. They represent some of the best work done by the WC staff that

I have ever seen.

Fifth: I interviewed Palmer McBride in September 94, at length. We carefully

reviewed his teenage emmployment, and he concluded---on camera---what common

sense also tells us: that he knew Oswald in the Spring of 1956, and not

later.

I think its good that someone should go over the record with a fine tooth

comb. And every now and then, and particularly when dealing with FBI Field

office files, it is possible to come up with something new. But Armstrong

has not done that. The guy has completely misinterpreted the record; he

draws totally absurd conclusions from the data; he doesn't understand how to

deal with contradictory data when he encounters it; and so he has arrived at

the ludicrous conclusion that the IRS falsified all the key tax records, that

there are two Oswalds, two Marguerites, etc etc. (and he hangs out with those

tbat believe that Oswald is alive).

As a friend of mine recently observed: "This man is depriving some village

of an idiot."

David Lifton

Here are the posts which you deem as "attacks"

http://educationforu...240#entry259291

http://educationforu...=30#entry259994

http://educationforu...=30#entry260065

http://educationforu...=30#entry260339

If I missed any, it's not intentional.

Here is a blog I made about this situation:

http://www.reopenken...em-at-work.html

If you think I get any pleasure out of any of this, you are dead wrong. I am gutted that it's come to this.

You cannot keep trotting out "the British education system" as an excuse for your 100% positive bio of a right wing propagandist like Damore, let alone as an excuse whenever someone complains about negative material you put in their bio about them. That excuse is way too thin while ever Damore, Heymann and Lifton are painted as beacons of scholarship.

And if you think for one second that I would request you to edit out what you already have on those "gentlemen", you just don't know me at all. I am asking for no more or LESS than what you claim you always do - provide more than a one dimensional view.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Greg Parker

[Mike Rago]

No Message.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Mike Rago

[John Simkin]

I have updated my page on David Heymann that includes the criticisms of both Elaine Woo of the Los Angeles Times ("Though some critics gave Heymann points for assiduous research and engrossing subject matter, others found major flaws, including his reliance on single sources giving accounts of important events they did not witness and on sources who could not be questioned because they were dead.") and Margalit Fox of the New York Times ("Though some critics admired Mr. Heymann’s biographies for their comprehensiveness, others were far more caustic. Their concerns included his use of single rather than multiple sources in reconstructing historical events, and his reliance on hearsay accounts by people not directly involved in incidents he was describing.")

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

I have also delayed the publication of the e-book to allow more time for people to make suggestions for changes.

[Guest Tom Scully]

John, an edit suggestion submission.:

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

Priscilla Livingston Johnson was born in Glen Cove, New York, on 19th July, 1928....

Priscilla's name was Priscilla Mary Post Johnson

Priscilla Mary Post Johnson - History Matters

www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/.../WH11_PriscillaJohnson.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View

just happens to be one place that it appeared. It probably appeared in othex places too. (Priscilla Mary Post .Johnson Exhibit So. 3 was marked for identification.) ...