Mark Lane: Did the Secret Service help kill JFK?

[Robert Mady]

After listening to the podcast, LANE had reconfirmed my opinion of him.

I am sorry that I purchased all his books and wasted time reading them.

[Vince Palamara]

I wouldn't go to THAT extreme (excommunicating Mark)! I think he had to have merely been mixed up, similar to two other OLDER gentleman (hint hint: OLDER): Dr. Wecht, like Mark Lane, ALSO a huge proponent of conspiracy and cover-up in the JFK case, made a few mistakes of note during the 50th anniversary. The other person, Arlen Specter, intimated that Dr. Humes said the neck wound was an ENTRANCE (!) wound during his 2012 C-SPAN oral history (see my You Tube channel). I would chalk all these incidents up to old age and/ or not thinking clearly.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Vince Palamara

[Robert Mady]

LANE also claimed a shot from the rear entered KENNEDYS back and exited his throat.

So the throat wound according to LANE was an exit wound.

LANE had the opportunity to interview many witnesses first hand, he appears to have no clue how the assassination occurred or he is spreading disinformation.

Has anyone asked LANE to explain his connection with CIA's Jonestown experiment / murders?

[Robert Mady]

Vince, have you figured out why SSA did not react until after Z-313?

[Vince Palamara]

See my book. I was going to cut and paste a link to a blog of mine but it will not work on here anymore-aaaaaahhhh!!

[Vince Palamara]

http://vincepalamara.com/building-rooftops-were-regularly-guarded-during-the-fdr-truman-ike-and-jfk-eras/

[Vince Palamara]

It worked ^^^^

[Don Jeffries]

I have to agree with Vince. It's incomprehensible that someone like Mark Lane- who devoted most of his life to writing and lecturing about this case- would just cavalierly contradict so much of his work in a single statement, without even an explanation.

Mark Lane will be 88 in February, so I do think (and certainly hope) that this is just a simple case of confusion.

I will post his reply if he answers my email.

[Vince Palamara]

Don, love your book- I am about halfway through now!

[Pat Speer]

I have to agree with Vince. It's incomprehensible that someone like Mark Lane- who devoted most of his life to writing and lecturing about this case- would just cavalierly contradict so much of his work in a single statement, without even an explanation.

Mark Lane will be 88 in February, so I do think (and certainly hope) that this is just a simple case of confusion.

I will post his reply if he answers my email.

The program with Mark Lane was actually recorded in 2013. I talked with Mark a few times at the Wecht Conference in Pittsburgh, and he seemed pretty "with it" at the time. I suspect that when he was talking about the single-bullet theory he was speaking hypothetically, and then got confused. In other words, I suspect he had a senior moment.

[Robert Mady]

Protecting LANE is intriguing from the stand point that this man in retrospect interviewed witnesses such as BREHM for the documentary, but did LANE really clarify any evidence for the unsuspecting viewer with any witness interviewed in Rush To Judgment, or did LANE purposely produce this film to confound and further add to the confusion?

IMO - BREHM is a witness that was influenced by the FBI to change his story, evidenced by photographs of him and his son taken moments after the shots, where is BREHMS attention...toward the monument area not the TSBD, where does he claim the shots came from, "one of two buildings", a WWII veteran, why couldn't BREHM an X-Army Ranger determine that three rifle shots came from a window on the sixth floor, he was wounded multiple times in the battle for France, he had first hand experience with rifle shots. He immediately recognized the sounds to be rifle shots. Just absurd.

BREHM is alone in not pointing to the monument area, all the people around BREHM, HUDSON, SUMMERS, HILL, MOORMAN, ALTGENS, W NEWMAN, J NEWMAN, CHISM, MRS CHISM, FRANZEN, MRS FRANZEN, ZAPRUDER and GAYLE NEWMAN all claimed the monument area was where the shots came from. Why didn't LANE interview any of these witnesses?

Analyze the interview with BREHM,

What does LANE ask,-> about a piece of debris that came BREHMS direction, a piece of skull from the head shot no doubt.

IF LANE wanted to impress the viewer with the debris expelled as a result of the impact from the bullet, why didn't he interview PO HARGIS who was splattered with brain tissue?

Surely LANE read the FBI report on BREHM before the interview, what should LANE have asked; the most startling evidence from this FBI interview was this:

BREHM claimed that all three rifle shots occurred while "the Presidents car only seemed to move 10 or 12 feet" (mirrored by JEAN HILL, EMMETT HUDSON and JEAN NEWMAN)

Did LANE ask about the distance the limo traveled while the shots rang out? Where was the limo at the first shot, second and third?

Did LANE ask why BREHM was still applauding as the limo passed him and his son? LANE had BREHM point himself out in a published Nix frame, depicting BREHM applauding as the limo passed, I would ask Mr LANE how could a Lawyer miss such an obvious discrepancy, two shots have supposedly been fired and there you are BREHM applauding the President, what was going on, didn't you hear the two rifle shots, couldn't you comprehend you were applauding a wounded President as he was passing by you, why didn't you understand this? Why did you wait until after the third shot to get your son down on the ground?

LANE went to Dallas to prove OSWALD was innocent, why didn't he just go interview LOVELADY and have him point out exactly where he was on the steps in Altgens #6 photograph and end any controversy?

I believe LANE and the CIA went back longer than Jonestown.

This podcast, is more of the same from LANE. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.

This is also why it has taken 51 years to understand the assassination, because we trusted the pundits to tell us the truth, did LANE tell us the truth or was the message just carefully spun disinformation?

Edited January 1, 2015 by Robert Mady

[Pat Speer]

Geez, Robert. Mark Lane is the godfather of the CIA-did-it faction of the research community. You don't like the way Lane questioned Brehm. Well, neither did Brehm. He complained about it for years afterward--he complained that Lane tried to paint him as a CT when he actually had no problems with the WC. Mary Woodward had the same complaint.

What you apparently overlook is that the whole notion shots came from the front came from Lane. Before David Lifton realized that the Parkland witnesses were fairly uniform in their description of a wound on the back of the head, Lane tracked down the railroad witnesses and got them to talk about the smoke on the knoll. He also interviewed Lee Bowers. He even twisted Bowers' words to make it seem like he saw someone fire a shot from behind the fence.

You also question why he didn't talk to Hargis. Up until recently, researchers were looking for evidence the fatal shot came from the front and blew out the back of Kennedy's head. Hargis claimed he saw no such wound. Like Newman, et al, he saw a big splash of blood and brain from the right side of Kennedy's head. Up until recently, most researchers thought that meant he supported the official story. We now know different, however.

Bobby W. Hargis rode to the right of Martin and to the left of Mrs. Kennedy. (11-22-63 article in the Dallas Times-Herald) “About halfway down between Houston and the underpass I heard the first shot. It sounded like a real loud firecracker. When I heard the sound, the first thing I thought about was a gunshot. I looked around and about then Governor Connally turned around and looked at the President with a real surprised look on his face…The President bent over to hear what the Governor had to say. When he raised back up was when the President got shot…I felt blood hit me in the face and the Presidential car stopped almost immediately after that…I racked (parked) my motorcycle and jumped off. I ran to the North side of Elm to see if I could find where the bullets were coming from. I don’t think the President was hit with the first shot… I felt that the Governor was shot first." (Undated typescript of interview with Hargis found within the Dallas-Times-Herald's photograph collection, as reported by Richard Trask in Pictures of the Pain, 1994. This is almost certainly the basis for the 11-22 article) "I felt blood hit me in the face, and the presidential car stopped almost immediately after that and stayed stopped about half a second, then took off at a high rate of speed. I racked my cycle and jumped off. I ran to the north side of Elm Street to see if I could find where the bullets came from. I don't think the President got hit with the first shot, but I don't know for sure. When I heard the first shot, it looked like he bent over. I feel that the Governor was shot first. I could be wrong. Right after the first shot, I was trying to look and see if the President got shot. When I saw the look on Connally's face, I knew somebody was shooting at the car... The fatal bullet struck the President in the right side of the head. I noticed the people in the Texas School Book Depository were looking up to see the top. I didn't know if the President stopped under the triple underpass or not. I didn't know for sure if the shots had come from the Book Depository. I thought they might have come from the trestle." (11-23-63 UPI article found in the Fresno Bee) “I saw flesh flying after the shot, and the president’s hair flew up,” Hargis said, “I knew he was dead.” (11-23-63 article in the Houston Post, as quoted by John McAdams in his book JFK Assassination Logic. Note: the ellipse conceals Hargis' description of the head shot, and his claim it hit Kennedy on the "right side of the head.') "A Dallas motorcycle officer who was riding two feet from the presidential car described to the Houston Post Friday what he saw when a sniper fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Gov. John B. Connally. 'When the first rifle bullet spewed into the open limousine,' said Patrolman J.H. Hargis, 'The President bent forward in the car.'...Hargis said he jumped off his motorcycle and began a search of the building from which the shots were fired. 'I knew it was high and from the right. I looked for any sign of activity in the windows, but I didn't see anybody.'" (11-24-63 article in the New York Sunday News) "We turned left onto Elm St. off Houston, about a half block from where it happened. I was right alongside the rear fender on the left side of the President's car, near Mrs. Kennedy. When I heard the first explosion, I knew it was a shot. I thought that Gov. Connally had been hit when I saw him turn toward the President with a real surprised look. The President then looked like he was bent over or that he was leaning toward the Governor, talking to him. As the President straightened back up, Mrs. Kennedy turned toward him, and that was when he got hit in the side of his head, spinning it around. I was splattered with blood. Then I felt something hit me. It could have been concrete or something, but I thought at first I might have been hit. Then I saw the limousine stop, and I parked my motorcycle at the side of the road, got off and drew my gun. Then this Secret Service agent (in the President's car) got his wits about him and they took off. The motorcycle officer on the right side of the car was Jim Chaney. He immediately went forward and announced to the chief that the President had been shot."

(4-3-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 6H293-296): “I was next to Mrs. Kennedy when I heard the first shot, and at that time the President bent over, and Governor Connally turned around. He was sitting directly in front of him, and (had) a real shocked and surprised expression on his face…I thought Governor Connally had been shot first, but it looked like the President was bending over to hear what he had to say, and I thought to myself then that Governor Connally, the Governor had been hit, and then as the President raised back up like that the shot that killed him hit him.” (When asked about the blood) "when President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet him in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and kind of bloody water, It wasn't really blood. And at that time the Presidential car slowed down. I heard somebody say 'Get going' or 'get going.'" (When asked about the source of the shots) "Well, at the time it sounded like the shots were right next to me. There wasn't any way in the world I could tell where they were coming from, but at the time there was something in my head that said that they probably could have been coming from the railroad overpass, because I thought since I had got splattered, with blood--I was Just a little back and left of--just a little bit back and left of Mrs. Kennedy, but I didn't know. I had a feeling that it might have been from the Texas Book Depository, and these two places was the primary place that could have been shot from." (8-7-68 interview with Tom Bethel and Al Oser, NARA #180-10096-10005) (When discussing how he could have been sprayed with blood, if the shot came from behind) "Well, that right there is what I've wondered about all along, but see there's ah -- you've got to take into consideration we were moving at the time, and when he got hit all that stuff went like this, and of course I run through it." (When discussing his interpretation of the direction of the shots) "Well, like I say, being that we know that the shot came from the School Book Depository, right then it was kind of hard to say what run through your mind. You know you pick up these little things. You don't know why you do it. You don't know why you do 'em, you just do 'em. It's just kind of instinct. But I had in my mind the shots you couldn't tell where they was coming, but it seemed like the motion of the President's head or his body and the splatter had hit me, it seemed like both the locations needed investigating, and that's why I investigated them. But you couldn't tell, there was -- it looked like a million windows on the Book Depository.You couldn't tell exactly if there was anyone in there with a gun." (When asked if the shots could have come from anywhere) "Uh huh. That's correct." (When asked if he saw the President's head jerk as a response to a bullet's impact) "Yes. Uh huh...To the left forward. Kind of that way...I couldn't see what part of it got hit...If he'd got hit in the rear, I'd have been able to see it. All I saw was just a splash come out on the other side." (Interview with NBC broadcast on the 1988 program That Day In November) "It sounded like a firecracker to me and I thought 'Oh Lord, let it be a firecracker. And it looked like the President was bending over, forward. And then when he raised back up is when that second shot hit him in the head." (a 1971 interview of Hargis by "Whitney," someone working for researcher Fred Newcombe, as presented by Larry Rivera and Jim Fetzer on the Veterans Today website, 4-3-14) (When asked how long the limo stopped) "Oh – you mean after that first shot?...Only about uh, oh 3-4 seconds. Maybe about 5-6. That’s all...but you won’t find that in the Warren Commission report." (When asked if it said the limo stopped) "Ah no I don’t think it didn’t – you’ve seen a rolling stop have you? It’s going less than one mile an hour?...Well that’s what he was doing he wasn’t completely stopped or dead still."

The next three reports were posted on the Education Forum by Chris Scally, 6-21-11. (Interview by HSCA investigators James Kelly and Harold Rose on 10-26-77, notes transcribed 11-16-77, JFK document #003300, RIF 180-10107-10243) ""When they turned left on Elm from Houston, he was watching the President's car. Shortly afterwards, he heard a shot. He saw President Kennedy slump forward and Governor Connally turn. He felt at the time that Connally might have been hit and the President was leaning forward to find out what happened. He said the first shot sounded to him like a firecracker. The second shot hit JFK in the head. The presidential car had slowed almost to a stop. After the second shot, the car accelerated rapidly and sped to Parkland Hospital. Hargis said he pulled over to the curb at the grassy knoll. He got off the bike and went up the hill on the grass. He didn't see anyone with a gun, so he went over to the Texas School Book Depository at 411 Elm Street and helped other police officers seal it off." (Interview by HSCA investigator Jack Moriarty dated 8-8-78, notes transcribed 8-23-78, JFK document #014362, RIF 180-10113-10272) "When the first report sounded, he was "about one-third of the way down Elm", having made the last turn from Houston. It sounded like a firecracker, but he was unable to tell where it came from. He looked to his right and saw Connally turning and the President appeared to be leaning forward as if he was trying to hear what the Governor was saying. He had seen JFK lean forward in like manner during the motorcade as he and Connally had been conversing. This time, though, the President had an expression of pain on his face. When the second shot was fired - no doubt gunfire this time as it hit the President's head - the limousine slowed so much it practically stopped and he had to put his feet down to maintain balance. Then the driver accelerated and several motormen started the escort. Hargis remained behind parking his bike where it stood in the left side of Elm now about one half way down the hill. He ran to the grassy knoll and continued until he had reached the top section of the underpass. Finding nothing significant, he returned to his bike - still on the stand with the radio on (and working) and the engine off. He started the bike and drove back up Elm and parked just west of the front door of the TSBD where he joined Brewer as they became part of the effort to seal off this building, although, he adds, at that time no-one was certain just where the shots had come from." (Interview by HSCA investigator Jack Moriarty, 12-29-78, JFK document # 014224, RIF 180-10109-10354). "Reached Mr. Hargis at his new residence... today and developed the following additional information. At the sound of the first shot, he was "in position" - some five to six feet from the left corner of the rear bumper of John F. Kennedy limousine. At the sound of the second shot, he was a bit closer (the limousine slowed and nearly stopped) - perhaps four feet. By the third shot (although he doesn't recall the actual, but saw John F. Kennedy's head explode), he was "almost even with Jackie - no more than two or three feet, if that."

(6-26-95 interview with Mark Oakes, posted on Youtube by Gil Jesus) "There was not three shots; there was only two. I only heard two...The facts was there was two shots--one that hit him in the back and one that hit him in the head. And the one that hit him in the head just busted his head wide open... (On William Greer, the driver of the limo) "That guy slowed down, maybe his orders was to slow down, slowed down almost to a stop." (11-23-95 Dallas Morning News article found in the Herald Journal) "'I'm the only one living who was beside the car,' said Detective Hargis, now 63. 'When he was shot in the head, it splashed up, and I ran into all that brain matter, and all that. It came up and down, all over my uniform." (November 1998 interview with Texas Monthly) “About ten seconds after we made that left-hand turn, that first shot rang out…I remember Kennedy leaned forward to listen to what he had to say. And then when he raised back up, that second shot hit him in the head. But we figured out that he had got shot—that first bullet had gone through the upper part of his back, well through the seat, and hit Connally’s wrist and glanced off and went into his thigh.” (Interview within an 11-22-03 WBAP radio program found on Youtube) "Yeah I looked toward the President and I thought maybe John Connally was hit because he turned around to look at the President. He had a real surprised look on his face. Kennedy was bending over like he was listening to what Connally had to say. When he raised back up, that second shot hit him in the head. That's what killed him, There was only two shots fired." (11-22-03 article in the Dallas Morning News) “Hargis differs with the Warren Commission and most eyewitnesses, insisting that only two shots were fired. With the first, “a thousand million things went through my mind,” he says. After the last, “there was a plume of blood and brains and plasma. It was just like a fog, and I ran right through it.” (Oral History interview performed for the Sixth Floor Museum, 9-24-10) (When asked if his observations suggested that the fatal shot came from in front of Kennedy) "No." (When asked if it bothered him that people use his statements to suggest there'd been a conspiracy) "Yeah, it does...There was no conspiracy, whatsoever. There was two shots fired, and both shots, we found the bullet." (On the possibility there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll) "To me it sounds ludicrous."

Edited January 1, 2015 by Pat Speer

[Paul Rigby]

Geez, Robert. Mark Lane is the godfather of the CIA-did-it faction of the research community.

He wasn't and isn't. Lane's work between 1963 and the end of 1966 was studiously non-committal on the question of CIA involvement. Four examples:

1) Mark Lane, “The Warren Commission Report and the Assassination,” The British who killed Kennedy? Committee, December 1964 (Pamphlet, 32pp): Anything here on the CIA-did-it? Not a sausage.

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?1251-Suspicion-in-Plenty-An-anthology-of-scepticism-published-in-Britain-1963-1973&p=6831#post6831

2) Mark Lane, “Who is Jack Ruby?” The Minority of One, April 1965, (Vol VII, No. 4), 8-11. Here, on p.9 (and again later in the same piece), we find Lane approvingly quoting the Agency:

According to the CIA, among “the most promising sources of contact between Ruby and politically motivated interested in securing the assassination of President Kennedy” were a Dallas oil millionaire and an official of the John Birch Society. (26WCH471-473.)

3) Mark Lane interviewed: “Who Killed Kennedy?” Fact, Nov-Dec 1966 (vol 3, issue 6), 7-8.

From the Harold Weisberg archive: Anything here on the CIA-did-it? No, again.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/T%20Disk/Thornley%20Kerry/Item%2036.pdf

4) “Interview: Mark Lane,” Playboy, February 1967, 41-42, 44-64, 66-68. On p. 62, the following:

His mother, Marguerite Oswald, has also repeatedly stated in public that her son was a CIA agent; but I’ve been unable to find any independent verification for that charge. After his return to the States, Oswald maintained his leftist public image, but there are some strange contradictions here, too...Whether he was a rightist passing for a leftist, or a leftist passing for a rightist, or an FBI or CIA agent passing for both, or possibly just plain confused, I honestly haven’t been able to figure out. I’m inclined to believe he was a sincere leftist.”

Lane's position only shifted following his involvement with Garrison and the Shaw trial.

In so far as Lane lit after any of the intelligence-cum-law-enforcement bureaucracies in the period in question, it was the FBI.

He was even more of a late-comer when it comes to the question of Secret Service centrality to the plot. William Loeb, the right-wing editor of the Manchester Union-Leader, for example, beat Lane to the punch by a mere 40+ years, printing an editorial, on 26 November 1963, entitled "Investigate The Secret Service."

[Paul Rigby]

BREHM is alone in not pointing to the monument area, all the people around BREHM, HUDSON, SUMMERS, HILL, MOORMAN, ALTGENS, W NEWMAN, J NEWMAN, CHISM, MRS CHISM, FRANZEN, MRS FRANZEN, ZAPRUDER and GAYLE NEWMAN all claimed the monument area was where the shots came from. Why didn't LANE interview any of these witnesses?

A very good question, when we consider how content not merely Lane, but so many other of the first generation researchers were to ignore so many of the closest witnesses, not least the motorcycle outriders immediately behind and to the side of the presidential limousine.

This "oversight" reinforced the omissions of the Warren Report's compilers, and was only corrected thanks to the work, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, of Fred Newcomb and those interviewers working with and for him.

One point of fact on Brehm, though, his first quoted testimony to reach print pointed somewhere very different than the grassy knoll:

Charles Brehm (carpet salesman, south curb of Elm St.): The shot(s) came from “in front of or beside” the President. Source: Dallas Times Herald, first post-assassination edition, November 22, 1963, cited by Joachim Joesten. Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? (London: Merlin Press, 1964), p.176.

[Robert Mady]

Pat, in documentary 'Rush To Judgment' LANE never said or implied that BREHM claimed the shots came from the GK, BREHM protested afterwards in a propaganda entertainment special created for TV that LANE painted him in this manner, LANE merely implied that the shot produced debris that was expelled in BREHMS direction. Why didn't LANE ask BREEM if he could explain how a shot from the rear could produce debris from the limo to move back toward BREHM?

BREHM also made another claim during the interview that LANE should have taken him to task that the first shot occurred as the limo was 30 feet away and was 20-25 feet away when the second bullet struck. BREHM points to a picture LANE called a Nix frame but it was a Muchmore frame, in which BREHM claimed the President had already been struck by the first bullet, but the limo was passing by BREHM in the frame, BREHMS claims made no sense, but LANE allows BREHM to continue to spew non-sense without being questioned critically on what was being claimed.

Smoke that occurred on the GK, exactly what does this have to do with the assassination?

As far as anyone can determine there is no reason for a modern weapon to create the amount of smoke that was recorded on 11/22/1963, it should be obvious to anyone that this was not created as a result of the shot(s) but as a diversion to take attention away from where the rifle shots originated so as to allow time to evacuate the sniper team from the area without being detected.

LANES interview with MAX HOLLAND (4 rifle shots) (smoke from 1 shot from behind the picket fence, produced by specifically the third of four shots) did nothing more than add to the confusion.

Did LANE ask HOLLAND where the LIMO was during each of the four shots? No of course he didn't, same as BREHM, if it could have been determined were the limo was during the shots, the farce would have been over. The two most important aspects of HOLLANDS testimony was the smoke and four shots, yet LANE never asked HOLLAND to detail the four shots or BREHM to detail the three shots he claimed to hear. Some of the Zapruder frames had been published, why not request HOLLAND and BREHM to detail in which frames the shots were fired?

IMO 'Rush To Judgment' was merely a propaganda piece intended to confound and add to the confusion which would misdirect generations of researchers.

HOLLANDS interview also promoted the myth of the fatal head shot coming from behind the picket fence, a deception meant to concentrate peoples awareness on evidence without foundation, it also promoted the myth that the witnesses seemed to be confused, this being the reason why it was impossible to sort out the truth. Just a big fat lie.

Smoke and mirrors, deceptions and lies, just enough to fool the children who apparently prefer to stay asleep.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Robert Mady