Pat Speer

FWIW, there was a second moderator for the group for most of the years I was there. His name was Peter ffokes if I recall. And he was a CT.

I received this response to an email to John Simkin Hi Pat, I am still alive and well and still investigating political corruption. However, I am not involved with JFK research as I have enough on my hands with what is going on in the UK. I do not post on the forum and play no role in the way it is run. However, you have permission to quote this email on the forum. I initially set up the forum to discuss different interpretations of the past. Over time the JFK assassination began to dominate the forum. From the very beginning I allowed people to join the forum with a wide variety of different views on the assassination. That includes those who believed in the lone-gunman theory. One example of this was J. Timothy Gratz who was one of our most regular posters. I also arranged for people like Don Bohning and Nina Burleigh to join the forum to discuss their books on the forum although they did not believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK (see link below). Even when Bohning went on to write an article in a journal for retired CIA officers where he attempted to smear me with the claim that I was a "communist" I did not remove his membership. I am someone who believes in free speech for everyone, not just for people who agree with me. https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/forum/204-history-and-political-books-debates-with-authors/ John

This is one of the saddest things I've read on this forum.

Yep. And I'll go one further. Even IF one presumes LNers are here to spread "disinformation", one should not push for their removal, but instead confront their disinformation with what one considers more factual information. That is the nature of debate, IMO.

No one said it was a violation to talk about CIA disinformation. But there has been an effort to undermine and force certain people from this forum for disagreeing with what some here are dying to believe is gospel...under the pretense they are spreading propaganda.

Sandy wrote: 3. The purpose of the JFK Assassination Debate forum is to discuss the assassination conspiracy and cover-up, NOT whether or not they occurred. It has already been abundantly established that they occurred. Sorry, Sandy. This is complete nonsense. This forum was created by an historian and educator to lay out the facts of the case and present arguments for and against conspiracy for students of the case. His intention was that actual witnesses and actual researchers could meet here and add pieces to the story and/or share information. He was hoping to build a consensus of sorts but gave up and left after it became clear that this format--a format in which anyone with a computer can pretend to be an expert and offer up an opinion--invited a certain kind of behavior that he found unattractive. Now, there WAS a small group of members here who resented the input of LNers and double-checkers like myself, and left to start their own forum...a forum in which people already convinced of a certain viewpoint could share "at a-boys" and "look-at-me"s without ever being challenged. That forum was the Deep Politics Forum and it collapsed due to internal squabbling and was pretty much dried-up, last I checked. As for John, he still has an interest in the case, but restricts his comments primarily to email groups comprised of long time researchers and scholars--roughly half of whom are convinced of Oswald's guilt.

All this has been brought up numerous times and no one is claiming it is out of bounds. Heck, I am the one who discovered and brought to the public's attention that McAdams had CIA ads on his music station.

Let's cite this as Example 1A of what happens when a moderator thinks that attacking the motivations of others is okie-dokie.

Oh my... An interested party--let's say the U.S. Government--might take a position on something--let's say that Jim Garrison is spreading communist propaganda--that they then leak to a few writers. If these articles then get cited by other writers--who simply dislike Jim Garrison because he looks weird or comes across as homophobic--it can be claimed these people are publishing or repeating government propaganda. But it doesn't mean they are getting paid by the government or are even witting of the source of the articles they found so convincing.

You made a typo, I believe. You wrote: "The HSCA did contend JFK was struck by bullets from two different directions." when I think you meant to write "The HSCA did NOT contend JFK was struck by bullets from two different directions."

This story might lead somewhere, but is nothing as of now. What it amounts to is this. Some unidentified person told Jeff there are files in a building outside the control of the archives that contain a CIA review of the HSCA, which amounts to a damage control report. And this report made clear that the CIA had sought to mislead the HSCA. While I do not really doubt such a report exists, or even that it exists in the building Jeff has identified, the fact this all comes from an anonymous source is a big big problem, and will probably doom the story to oblivion. NOW...if, say, someone from congress takes an interest, and Jeff's source comes out of the shadows and testifies as to what he/she saw before a house committee, well, then, it's possible this will lead to an actual bombshell. But as it is...not so much...

John Simkin wanted McAdams and his ilk to become members of this forum, so that their ARGUMENTS could be challenged and possibly destroyed. That was the purpose of this forum--an all-hands-on-deck-let's hash-this-out-and-get-somewhere forum where a wide variety of arguments could be discussed. He grew discouraged, however, over time, by the prevalence among some to attack those with whom they disagreed or had a problem. As stated, he DEFENDED John McAdams when I thought I found some dirt on the guy. So, no, he didn't want to lure McAdams here to play GOTCHA! He wanted McAdams here to discuss issues regarding the Kennedy assassination. A key part of the forum at the beginning was a section in which authors could come and discuss their books. This dried up rather quickly because most members chose to fill these threads with "Somebody told me" and "Somebody else said" type stuff, and the authors were forced to discuss what others had said and not their own books. So, long story short. John would not have subjected members to questions about their motivations, and would have instead focused on questions about their ideas. The forum rule about questioning people's background was designed not just for the benefit of LNers, but everyone. John had seen how people such as Tink Thompson and myself were routinely attacked by people such as Fetzer as CIA defenders for simply disagreeing with their batshit claims. If you claimed the evidence failed to support that the limo came to a complete stop in the plaza you were a CIA puppet or shill. If you failed to support that Lee Harvey Oswald was photographed on the front steps in the Altgens photo--but that the photo was altered in a secret CIA lab hidden amongst the cars in the depository parking lot to disguise his face--you were a CIA puppet or shill. And so on. It was nauseating. So a rule was needed. And it works both ways. I'd had many talks with some of the most famous researchers by that time and the consensus was that, if anyone among the research community was put here to disrupt, embarrass, and discredit us, it was not someone like McAdams, but someone like Fetzer. SO...do we really wanna open that door--where we make it okay to accuse our fellow CTs of being sent here to disrupt? And have the forum collapse onto itself in an orgy of finger-pointing? And make a joke of John Simkin's dream?

Thanks, Joe. I was not charging anyone here of spreading Russian or Iranian or scientology propaganda. I mentioned Russia because I was approached by a Russian media company that assured me some publicity if I gave them some comments that reflected negatively on the CIA, or America, or some such thing. (I know others took them up on it.) And I mentioned Iran because a former member was featured at a conference in Iran, in which he denounced the American government. And I mentioned scientology because we had a prominent member who sought to re-invent the wheel and convince everyone the JFK assassination and Watergate were connected by a long-hidden conspiracy in which the U.S. government sought to suppress remote viewing techniques invented by L. Ron Hubbard (or something like that) whom I exposed as a scientologist using a fake name in an effort to sell some of his spy novels (or something like that).

I've mentioned this before, but the forum membership has probably had a lot of turnover since that time. I was a long-time contributor to McAdams' newsgroup, and routinely schooled him on stuff he did not know. I say this not as a boast, but because it's important to what follows. Several years into this, I was contacted by a representative of a mid-western university, who offered to fly me out and put me up for a weekend if would have a public debate against McAdams at the University. We spent a few weeks going back and forth, with my explaining that for the debate to be of value, we needed to focus on stuff on which John and I disagreed--stuff like the single-bullet theory, Oswald's marksmanship ability, and NAA. But then a few weeks before the date I was told that McAdams had essentially chickened-out and had contacted the University to tell them they could save money by replacing me with David Wrone, and that the two of them would just drive down together for the day...that it would then be two academics having a friendly discourse on the case, and not an academic getting confronted on his bs by someone like me. After the event, I contacted the representative to see what happened. And he told me it was as I suspected--the "debate" was open-ended, which allowed McAdams to derail the whole thing by talking about Mark Lane's commie ties, Jim Garrison's weird theories, and Wrone's own batshit belief it was Oswald in the Altgens photo. IOW, we were all set to debate the facts, but McAdams turned this into an argument about personalities. And yes, I see the irony. I mention this in a discussion of his personality.

It should be pointed out, moreover, that when I brought this to Simkin's attention, he, John Simkin, who suspected McAdams had CIA ties, told me he thought it was probably just a coincidence--that google's algorithm had matched up CIA ads with McAdams' website based upon the number of people--including himself--who had mentioned McAdams and CIA in the same sentence. As Rex Bradford--who was far more familiar with the workings of websites and ads and stuff than myself--told me the same thing, I let the matter rest. But I brought it back up when McAdams accused Simkin of being an agent or some such thing--I was like "Really? He defended you!!" When I then explained to McAdams the circumstances of my coming across his website and my noting of the CIA ads, he became incoherent, IMO. He insisted there was no way an algorithm could be responsible and that the appearance of the ads on his website must have been ENTIRELY RANDOM. Now I found that hard to believe then and find it even harder to believe now. I mean, I've combed the internet for hours a week for years and years, and don't recall noticing ANY CIA ads on the internet outside those I found on his website. So, for me, it's still a mystery.

Props to Ron and Steve for actually discussing the case and agreeing on a fact. Yeah!

Got it. That was not a reference to a specific person or specific post. That was an observation regarding the concerns of some about CIA propaganda...that these same individuals seem unconcerned about anti-American propaganda. As stated in an earlier post, this website and its members have been used for propaganda purposes--by Russia, Iran, and adherents to the Church of Scientology. But some see no problem with this. I do. I think we should be concerned about any use of this website or its members for propaganda purposes. But to be clear, those spewing lone-nut factoids on this website are not the problem. This website exists because there is a long ongoing dispute about what happened on 11-22-63 and why. It was formed so people from both sides of the conspiracy/no conspiracy divide could make their case. It's clear moreover that the health of the forum depends on having members with a divergence of opinion. If one chooses to participate here--but avoid the endless repeats of lone-nut factoids--one should steer clear of threads in which those factoids are likely to be repeated, IMO. Now that's my take anyway. I came to this case a bit later than some, and realized there was a mountain of excrement to sift through on both sides of the divide. As a result, I appreciate it when someone makes a deep dive, to see if a cherished nugget on one side or the other is true. My main complaint then is not that someone like Fred Litwin will offer up his own take on something which some have come to accept, but that he seems only interested in debunking conspiracy nonsense. IOW, I think people on this forum--if they are to be considered researchers--should delite in the debunking of nonsense on either side of the conspiracy-no conspiracy divide. I am not ashamed to admit it, but my role model in my approach is Tink Thompson. Some here may not know this--but he was widely denounced by a number of prominent figures on our side of the divide, because he wouldn't play along with Z-film alteration, body alteration, etc. He thought the official evidence suggested a conspiracy and spent years explaining why in his books. I am also a friend of Robert Wagner's, who resides on the non conspiracy side of the fence, but not because he worships Warren or Bugliosi, etc. In fact, he spends chapters in his books explaining why he thinks the single-bullet theory is crap. He gives me hope. if people can break from the orthodoxy on their side of the fence, they will see that there are many issues on which both sides can agree, IMO. And that it will then come down to a few facts, such as the single-bullet theory trajectory not being in alignment, and the president's wounds not supporting the official story. The true divide will then be clear. But as it is, there is so much smoke--with people claiming you're not a "true" LN if you don't subscribe to the single-bullet theory or a "true" CT if you don't feel certain the Z-film was faked, etc, that newbies and historians see our ongoing dispute as a catfight, and choose to look away.

Greetings, Joe. I don't recall saying any posters here were anti-American but wouldn't be shocked if I did. I do believe that some people here are overly focused on the CIA and this focus blinds them to other suspects, such as LBJ and the MIC. And I do believe with good reason that forces beyond the CIA (Russia...Iran...perhaps even China) have an interest in spreading propaganda on this forum, and that those unwilling to concede this point are naive, or worse.

Yes, John Simkin was suspicious of John McAdams, as was I. But I joined McAdams' newsgroup and spent years arguing with him and trying to understand his thinking. And the guy was most definitely not pro-government. He was an ultra-right Catholic who thought Big Oil and Big Tobacco had been unfairly targeted by crazed leftists within the government, and that Catholic Universities had been ruined by an invasion of feminists. He was a religious nut, IMO, and not a paid disinformation agent.

At this point, I find it highly unlikely. The JFK research community has been in a state of chaos for decades. And that's largely chaos of its own making, IMO. So I don't think the CIA would waste its time and energy sowing chaos in the research community. I mean, that would be like trying to disrupt the ocean by throwing a rock at a tidal wave. Now, do I think the CIA was involved in covering up the case in the sixties and seventies? Yes, but they weren't alone. A close examination of that period shows that most every element of the government assisted in a cover-up, and utilized their contacts in the media to perpetuate this cover-up. But I don't think much of it was because someone behind a curtain was planning it or controlling it. My understanding of history and media is that most people suck up to power, and most journalists both suck up to power and engage in groupthink. I mean, there were several brief stretches in out history where the mainstream media seemed interested in pursuing a new investigation, but these stretches either quickly passed or were cut off by the issue of some report...that the media just regurgitated as fact...when the least bit of real investigation would have shown them otherwise. I cite as one example the issuance of the Clark Panel's report, which "explained" the problem with the head wound trajectory pointed out by Thompson by claiming the autopsy doctors were incompetent fools who placed the entrance wound on the wrong bone--four inches from its actual location. The mainstream media--all of it--just reprinted sections of the report, along with its conclusion everything was fine. NOT ONE newspaper noted that the entrance wound had been moved, nor that the brain was not examined, even thought that should have been clear to anyone even pretending to be a journalist. Now, here's where William and I differ. I'm guessing he assumes this lack of response from the media was by design and that some baddy told them not to double-check the results of the Clark Panel. When I think they were just lazy suck-ups who had other things they wanted to write about...

As an American tax-payer I would hope that the propagandists hired to do a job would effectively do their jobs, AND reach a wide audience. The only people in LN-land of recent years who might fit that description, IMO, are Posner, Bugliosi, McAdams, and Holland. Bugliosi proved he was not a CIA shill, IMO, when he wrote a book calling Bush a war criminal, and traveled around the country promoting it. And McAdams, IMO, was also unlikely, as he was such a blowhard on other matters, and spent so much time arguing with people like me, as opposed to pushing out material on YouTube or making TV appearances. And Holland is also unlikely, as his books and blog never reached a wide audience, and his pet theory about the assassination tended to divide the LN position, rather than solidify it. Well, that leaves Posner. While we can't rule him out, IMO, I think his overall footprint has been minimal.

Two points. One which will you not like. And one which you may find interesting. The first is that you seem really really concerned about Op Mockingbird on this forum. If you go back into the archives on this forum you will see that John Simkin wrote about this extensively, and pretty much introduced the term into the CT lexicon, and that I was a major contributor to those threads, and supporter of those threads. But it baffles me as to why you seem to have no concern for the dissemination of anti-American propaganda on this forum. IF, as you claim, those continuing to stick to the LN mythology are knowing misinformants, what do you have to say about those pushing utter nonsense--such as Hickey did it or Greer did it--which ultimately undermine the credibility of the research community? That's the first point. The second point will intrigue you, I suspect. I worked for a number of years in the record industry, in a position where I was given thousands upon thousands of free compact discs. Upon my leaving the industry--or more like the industry leaving me--I started selling some of these CDs online under an assumed name. Over a five year period or so, I sold roughly 15,000 individual CDs to 15,000 individual buyers, and mailed them out to addresses around the world. Well, sometimes I'd recognize a name. Over the years I sold CDs to known authors and TV personalities, and even a few well-known musicians. And on two occasions I recognized the names of someone from the JFK research world. And on both occasions it was to a well-known LN. And those two LNs were the two you cited as possible agents of mockingbird: McAdams and Reitzes. I found this quite the coincidence. But the world is filled with coincidences.

FWIW, John Simkin created this forum with the specific intent of allowing an open exchange of ideas between people of different convictions, AND the sharing of information between those of a similar mindset. He mentioned this many times--that his background as a British educator led him to believe that varying approaches and understandings of a topic should be presented to the reader so that the reader can decide for themselves...that TRUE learning comes not from reciting what someone else has said, but from weighing divergent interpretations of facts and coming to one's own conclusion. I would like to address something else as well--that some of what is shared on this website is propaganda. This is usually a one-sided argument--that the American government is behind this propaganda. But this is ahistorical. The reality is that the computer attacks on this forum--which in the past has led to shutdowns--had come from a pro-Israeli groups, and that the only known instance of a member using a fake name in an effort to fill the forum with deceptive nonsense--to push an agenda beyond discovering the truth of 11-22-63--came from a scientologist. So, yes, the forum is vulnerable to outside pressure. But I, for one, have never been contacted by the government to see if I could refine an argument against a conspiracy point for future use by the government or some such thing, and am unaware of any of my arguments being repeated by anti-conspiracy talking heads. I was involved in many discussions and arguments on the late John McAdams' newsgroup, for example, but never saw any of my arguments against specific conspiracy theories repeated by McAdams or anyone of his ilk. My take was that they were afraid to give any credit whatsoever to a conspiracy theorist such as myself--because that would destroy their whole argument that conspiracy theorists were wackos and not to be trusted. And yikes...that might mean someone such as myself or Jim D could be invited on...PBS...or NPR...or any of the places McAdams had claimed as friendly soil. (In the years since, we've seen Jeff Morley slip into these territories, but only after assuring the muckety-mucks he is a journalist and not a conspiracy theorist.) In any event, I was approached by Russian media at one point. They were gonna write a CIA did-it type article for international release and wanted some quotes from me. Well, I asked them if they were allowed to say anything negative about Putin or Russia--if they were serious journalists who questioned their government as well as others--and asked if they could send me a link to any article they'd written which reflected negatively on their own country. And I never heard back. And there's this to consider... One of the forum's loudest voices back in the day reached a sufficient volume where he was invited to Iran to give anti-American talks...and happily agreed. SO...IF this forum is being used for propaganda purposes, it would follow that this propaganda could be coming from a number of parties, with a number of agendas.

I beg to differ. Garrison's investigation was a search for truth. He was after the truth, and MAY HAVE used a man he thought to be innocent--Shaw--as a pawn in a larger game...designed to uncover the truth. Specter and Belin, however, felt they had a client--the LBJ Administration---who wanted them to CONCEAL the truth--for which they lied and suborned perjury. And lied until the end.

I apologize for misrepresenting your actions. I thought you had refused to read anything written by a member of this forum, and had urged people to ignore his writings, even though you had no personal knowledge of what he had written. My bad.