Pat Speer

Wait. When did Wecht speak to DeMohrenschildt? The phrasing makes it sound like 1964. Wecht was not a leading light of the research community at that time. I highly doubt he spoke to DeMohrenschildt in 1964, let alone about Dulles.

Brennan specified that the shooter was NOT wearing the shirt matching the fibers found on the rifle. IF one is to cite Brennan as a witness of Oswald, one SHOULD also cite him as a witness supporting the fibers were planted. The WC's refusal to acknowledge this is proof of their dishonest investigation. And yeah, I know, SOME prefer to believe Oswald was wearing his T-shirt when firing the rifle, and wiped down the rifle with his shirt. But there's a problem. THIS IS TOTAL NONSENSE, as the rifle was not wiped down and non-smudged prints were all over the trigger guard.

Yikes. It's clear to me that the forces behind Trump are the forces that killed JFK. The fascist-leaning billionaires scared to death of brown people, and the Christians who think the whole wide world is a lion chasing after them.

I could open them and read them. The one thing that stuck out was that when first speaking to Hosty after the shooting Ruth told Hosty Oswald was not violent. I think that is significant seeing as so many have tried to make out that those who knew Lee thought he was physically abusive to Marina. Ruth said no such thing.

I hope it doesn't ruin your day, Cliff, to know, I've agreed with pretty much everything you've said in this thread.

A couple of points. We don't know the young man's motivation. We don't even know if this is real. It's kind of surreal reading these posts. It's like we've learned nothing from studying the Kennedy assassination. I would hope that the circumstances of all this would force some to pause and not follow the bouncing ball. Maybe just maybe things are not what they seem. (I hope I'm not the only to have seen Shooter, or the Parallax View, or...) As far as the Secret Service not shooting a guy for having a gun on a roof... That is not incompetence. That is by design. The Republican Party, backed by the NRA (which is in part funded by Russia Russia Russia), has been trying to normalize carrying weapons in public for decades. In many states there are no laws preventing one from doing so. In all states one must brandish a weapon in a threatening manner before a police officer (or SS agent) can fire upon you. So maybe the laws will change as a result of this--where the SS or police can shoot someone who is not committing a crime if they think he may commit one. But as it stands right now, the SS was following protocol in holding off shooting a 20 year old in the head. I mean, can you imagine... "Joe Biden's SS shoots young Trump supporter in the head at a rally for flaunting his second amendment rights!!!...Deep State kills boy!!!..." IF this young man was indeed there to kill Trump, but killed before even getting off a shot...Trump and his supporters would have made a martyr of HIM, instead of Trump...and this poor firefighter. P.S. Is there any explanation as to how the firefighter was shot? Was he near the stage and killed by a stray sniper's bullet? Or did the sniper continue firing after coming under fire and fire a few shots into the crowd? I am asking because if it turns out the bullet striking him came from a different rifle than the one found on the kid...well...

FWIW, I have been to a number of conferences in which this topic has been discussed, and have had many personal talks with people whose primary focus is on who did it, and the vast majority of "scholars" if you will believe the assassination and cover-up were separate acts. To the minds of many, the CIA was somehow connected to the assassination. To the minds of almost everyone, the FBI was involved in the cover-up. Even a surface understanding of the history of the time should lead one to understand that the FBI hated the CIA, and would not be involved in one of their plots. So I seems apparent to some, myself included, that the "plan" was to kill JFK and blame it on the commies, and that Johnson, Hoover, and Warren then concurred on blaming it on Oswald. Now, Johnson was a sneaky SOB. So it wouldn't surprise me if he had his hands in both pies--that is, that he encouraged the first plot, but then changed course after the fact. WW III would have been a bit messy, after all, and damaging to his legacy.

It's important to note that the majority of law enforcement within or on the fringes of the plaza heard something from the knoll, and that a number of witnesses on the railroad bridge saw smoke in that area. As a result, it's hard to fathom that the the planners of this "event" "wanted" everyone to conclude all shots came from behind, and were fired by little ole' Oswald. IF they wanted everyone to think the shots came from the building, they would not have included shots or sounds from the front within their plan, IMO. I mean, they could have had multiple shooters in the building, or in the neighboring buildings, and people would have readily swallowed that all these shots came from one building. But the loud sound or sounds heard from west of the building? Many witnesses could not then or in the years to follow reconcile that with the shots coming from behind...

I think I heard him say some time back that he once thought his line about "After all, it was you and me" was clever, but rapidly realized it was rubbish.

It's doubtful there was a "Bill Smith" or anyone using that name. An NPIC employee tried to recall the circumstances of their studyingthe Z-film in the days after the assassination, fifteen years after the fact, and said he thought some guy named "Bill Smith" or something like it brought the film to them. If I recall he thought he was an SS agent. Sure enough the SS had a copy of the film and was anxious to get it analyzed. So it makes perfect sense that an SS agent with a boring name brought the film to NPIC. Now, through the conspiracy prism, it has become a CIA agent who was using an alias. But that's just speculation... There is nothing in the record to indicate someone named or even pretending to be named "Bill Smith" brought the film to NPIC. No receipt. No memo. Nothing. It's just an old man's grasping at straws. Now, the head of the SS' investigation was Thomas Kelley--Tom Kelley--which is a pretty boring name when you think about it. So it wouldn't surprise me if the film was brought in by Kelley.

I didn't mean to imply you were the least bit guilty of anything. I was letting you know WHY the moderators of this forum have historically tried to limit discussion of Israel's role in the assassination. Such talk inevitably spreads to claims of Jewish involvement in other crimes, and a downward spiral.

A bit of background is in order. When John Simkin started this place up it quickly became clear that a special problem arose every time anyone mentioned Israel's possible involvement in the assassination. First, someone would say that it's anti-semitic. Then the person starting the thread would defend his post by, as often as not, saying things that were obviously anti-semitic. Much as some here see the CIA as the boogeyman behind all things bad, these people would start pushing that Jews and Israel are the real boogeymen. And the discussion would eventually move on from the JFK assassination to the awful things done by Jews. This happened on a number of occasions. These threads would almost always end up getting closed by the moderators, as they had gone so far off topic (The JFK assassination) and had instead become nasty diatribes focused on one tiny fragment of our world. In any event, as a proponent of free speech, Simkin refused to "ban" this topic entirely. So it kept popping up. But then the shutdowns began. As I recall, there were several instances where the Forum came under cyber-attacks, where thousands of new members applied at the exact same time or some such thing. John, the creator of the Spartacus website, however, knew how to get to the bottom of it, and realized what was going on--that a pro-Israel hacker group had targeted the website as a source of disinformation and hate speech and was trying to shut it down. SO... the decision was made by John and approved by the moderators that we would severely limit discussions of this type in the future. Now...some were upset by this because they saw it as the Forum caving in to terrorists and stifling free speech. But to me it's the old "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" argument. The discussion of Israel as THE mover and shaker behind the assassination inevitably disrupts the audience, and threatens the life of the forum. So, yes, a modicum of censorship is justified, in my opinion. This is a privately-owned website, and the website owners and moderators have the right and even have the duty to limit content. I mean, think about it. There was a forum member who decided that the private sex lives of public figures was the key to understanding history...who began filling the forum with detailed posts of the (rumored) perversions of numerous public figures, including many who were still alive. I think you will agree that this was both a distraction from the matter of our agreed-upon discussion, and a possible danger to the forum--as it would drive the readers we hope to have away from the forum, and subject the forum to a possible lawsuit. So lines have to be drawn. Re-posting on this website the diatribes against Israel one can find elsewhere is over the line, IMO. P.S. I became way too controversial a long time ago and am no longer an active moderator, so this is not an "official" explanation for Ben's decision. But am offering this post for historical context...

Why do you continue to pretend Horne is a reliable source? One of the first to interview Jenkins was author Harrison Livingstone. Well, In his 1992 book High Treason 2, Livingstone described Jenkins' actions or quoted him directly as follows... “Jenkins was not allowed to leave the room, except once when Captain John H. Stover told him to go eat his lunch. He was only gone a few moments. He said it had to be after 3:30 P.M.” (Page 132) “As soon as they told us classes were cancelled, I was never allowed to leave. I think that was at 3:30.” (Page 133) “I was in the morgue all night long.” (Page 225) “I was there all of the time. The only time I was away from the table was probably five or ten minutes when I was told to get a sandwich. But I did not leave the room.” (Page 227) “Stover was the one who finally told me to go and get something to eat. I walked behind him to the three little rooms just back there, got a sandwich, took a couple of bites, and went back to the table.” (Page 228) “Jenkins was not allowed to leave the room, except once when Captain Stover told him to eat his lunch. He was only gone a few moments. He said it had to be after 3:30 P.M.” (Page 231) “As soon as they told us classes were canceled, the duty people were told to report to the morgue. I was never allowed to leave. I think that was at three-thirty.” (Page 232) “Jenkins said that he and Paul were told to go to the morgue at three-thirty to four P.M. Jenkins was not allowed to leave the morgue. “Paul was a kind of courier. He always had an escort, and was in and out the morgue.” (Page 238) “Jenkins told me that no one had access to the body in the morgue that night, or in the cold room.” (Page 247) “Jenkins insisted to me that he never once left the morgue from about three-thirty or four in the afternoon until nine A.M. the following morning.” (Page 249) Now Livingstone also interviewed Jenkins' friend and co-worker, Paul O'Connor, and quoted him as follows... “Jenkins was in there full-time.” (Page 276) And this wasn't a one-time thing. When interviewed by William Law years later, Jenkins said something similar. Law: Were you asked not to leave the morgue? Jenkins: I did not leave the morgue...We were not allowed to leave. Now, as stated, this is TOXIC to Horne's theory, which holds that Dr.s Humes and Boswell performed post-mortem surgery on Kennedy's cadaver in the very morgue where Jenkins worked,. So Horne needed to convince his readers that Jenkins, whose credentials among the research community had already been established, was in and out of the morgue that night and failed to see what Humes and Boswell were up to. Here's Horne in his Magnum Opus Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: “...James Jenkins...[is] dismissed...” (Page 1003) “...[Roy Kellerman] readmits...Jenkins...” (Page 1008) “If Jenkins was dismissed from the morgue...as I infer...” (Page 1036) “...Prior to 8:00 PM...Jenkins...[was] outside of the morgue.” (Page 1039) “...Jenkins...[was] outside of the morgue.” (Page 1040) “...Prior to 8:00 PM...he [was] not present in the morgue...” (Page 1048) Now, it should come as no surprise that Horne's persistent lies about Jenkins did not stop with his book. On 11-26-13, he blogged about Jenkins, saying: "I have concluded that it was during this 85-minute interregnum—a period of almost an hour and a half—that the clandestine surgery took place. O’Connor and Jenkins were clearly excluded from the morgue at the time, otherwise they would also remember the modified “skull cap” performed by Humes, just as Robinson and Reed did...“ He then concluded: "James Jenkins and Paul O’Connor were not in the morgue, before 8:00 PM.” Horne was thereby not only incorrect about Jenkins, he was making up facts and inserting them into his scenario to fool his readers. As far as Jenkins, he does not agree that illicit surgery took place. He accepts the possibility, but has not concluded as much. Here is what he had to say on this matter... (Douglas) "Horne is adamant about surgery to the head and believes that the surgery was done in the morgue by Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell. The only problem with this theory is that I was present in th morgue all the time from approximately 3:30 P.M. Friday until 9:00 AM Saturday, the following morning. If Dr. Humes and Dr. Boswell did Mr. Horne's 'illicit' surgery then it would have had to have been done outside the morgue at another facility...I have no direct knowledge of whether Dr. Humes or Dr. Boswell performed Mr. Horne's 'illicit" surgery. The only thing I know for sure is that it was not done in the Bethesda morgue between 3:30 P.M. and 9:00 A.M. the following morning." P.S. Since you love math, you should have no problem realizing that Horne has Jenkins out of the morgue until 8:00, when Jenkins has long claimed he was there from 3:30 on. So in claiming Horne had Jenkins out of the morgue for hours after he said Jenkins said he was in there, I was actually understating the case. You claimed it was "minutes" but it was really FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Let that sink in. If you wanna propose body alteration etc you should do so without relying on Horne.

The problem is this. Kuhn was talking about scientific theories that can be tested. Horne is pretending it applies to his theories which are not scientific at all, but historical in nature, and based on wishful thinking, if not dishonesty. Some examples. He claims Robinson saw a bullet hole on the forehead. This is not supported by the record. Robinson said he recalled a small wound by the temple and then later told Horne it was two or more small wounds on the cheek. He specified, furthermore, that no bullet holes were discovered on the front of the head during reconstruction. He also claimed Robinson saw the body brought in and out--when Robinson actually said this as an example of what did not happen. He more recently told an international audience it was James Jenkins who saw this bullet hole on the forehead--when James Jenkins had claimed no such thing, and had long specified that he saw no such wound. He claims Ed Reed saw Dr. Humes perform surgery to the head BEFORE the x-rays were taken. Only Reed said the opposite. That he saw Humes cut into the head to remove the brain...after the x-rays had been taken. Now, James Jenkins had weighed in on this as well, and had insisted no such surgery occurred and that he was in the morgue from hours before the autopsy until the next morning, after the body had been re-constructed. So Horne invented from whole cloth for his book that Jenkins was kept from the morgue for hours, and only allowed in after the "surgery" had been completed. He also pieces together the statements of old men many years after the fact to claim a Zapruder film showing an explosion from the back of the head was shown to Brugioni, and then altered to conceal the explosion from the back of the head and add an explosion from the top of the head...when Brugioni's statements fail to support this. To be precise, when shown a frame from the Zapruder film depicting the explosion of brain and skull by reseacher Peter Janney, in 2011, Brugioni said it failed to match his nearly fifty-year old memories of the film he saw on that first weekend. He explained: "I remember the scatter was high--say three or four feet above his head." Well, hold it right there. Horne's theory holds that there was no explosion from the top of the head in the film viewed by Brugioni, and here his (supposed) star witness--Brugioni--claims the explosion he remembers was more, well, explosive than the one in the current film. Well, okay. Maybe Horne assumed Brugioni was tallking about a spray of blood, and not an explosion of blood and skull. Uh, NO. A few years later, when speaking to a second interviewer, in a filmed interview available in Shane O'Sullivan's film The Zapruder Film Mystery, Brugioni described the film as he recalled it in similar terms, only adding in that what he saw three or four feet above the President's head included a "chunk of body." So, huh. Not spray from a bullet hole on the forehead. An explosion from the top of the head. Got it. Making matters worse... In 2023, some 10 year-old footage of this same interviewer asking Brugioni questions while he showed him the Zapruder film was released in a French documentary, and posted online in the states. After viewing the film , and being asked by his interviewer if it was a different film than the one he studied in 1963, Brugioni said "No, I think it's the same film...I just thought the missing frames--there's something missing out of this." Then, after studying close-up images of the large defect on top of the head and questioning not the size and location of the large defect but the dark area on the back of the head, Brugioni commented further. He said: "I thought the blast to the head lasted longer...I thought I saw a glob in the air higher and there was mist." So, wow. While Horne had long nit-picked discrepancies between various descriptions of the film, and had used these to claim 1) Brugioni had viewed the original film, 2) his co-workers had viewed an altered film, and 3) the current film was the altered film, Brugioni's statements to this interviewer made it crystal clear he believed the film he saw--the film Horne holds to be the original film, a film Horne insists showed an explosion from the back of Kennedy's head and no explosion from the top of his head --had shown a massive explosion from the top of the head. And Horne knows this because, because, you guessed it, he was the interviewer. There's no "there" there people. If you want to talk about someone getting access to the film and all its copies and painting in the back of the head , or something like that, have at it. But citing Horne's theories like they are a new paradigm--when they are in fact easily debunked nonsense--is an embarrassment to the research community spawned by men like Weisberg, Wecht, and Thompson. It's time to move on from the shadow of Fetzer. I mean, 9/11 researchers have moved on from space lasers, right? I certainly hope so.

And that's not even to mention that... 10. An 80 year-old former NASA employee recalled seeing some photos in which the moon was more rugged than it is in the currently-available photos. And 11. Those pushing (and selling) that the moon-landing was faked use his recollection of seeing slightly different photos to support a theory holding that what he actually saw was a smooth marble floor. When his recollections--along with their response to his recollections--suggests a different scenario entirely... That it's all a bunch of nonsense.

I thank you, Chris, for your participation in this thread, and your insertion of actual information. I had mentioned earlier that I was under the impression Zapruder held onto a first day copy of the film, and that this remained in the possession of his family. I was subsequently told my impression was incorrect. But I now see that you believe he held onto a copy after selling the original to Life. Do we know what happened to that copy? Is it still in the hands of his family? Or is it, perhaps, at the Sixth Floor Museum?

Reagan was destroyed by Mondale in 84 but won anyways. Joe lost his train of thought a few times and it was embarrassing to watch. But Trump had no plans or anything of substance, and lied and lied and lied. IF this was an actual debate as opposed to a TV show, Biden would have won handily. He had plans, He had ideas. He tried to listen to the moderators. Trump just ranted, and ignored the moderators. Content... Biden 7. Trump 1. Performance. Biden 2 Trump 7.

Well, we can agree on something. I think you are correct in that no one planted a blanket fiber in the bag. They didn't find enough fibers to make a conclusion. And the few fibers they did find could have come from contamination. But the rest of Gil's post I pretty much agree with. IF Oswald had made the bag, and realized the only way to get the rifle into work would be to take it apart, he would have found a way to make the bag larger, IMO. As a Marine he would have known that taking a rifle apart and putting it back together would have seriously affected its accuracy. That it takes a few shots to "settle in" And then, of course, there's also the problem of how he put it together...assuming he did. No small screwdriver was found in the sniper's nest or on his person. None was reported missing from the Paine house. Well, this led the FBI to claim he'd put it together with a dime. Now Griggs found this extremely difficult and uncomfortable. So it would seem unlikely, at best.

FWIW, I sat with Moorman at a conference and she explained to me that the confusion stemmed from her stepping into the street to take a photo of a motorcycle officer. She insists her famous photo is authentic and that she took this from the side of the road. When this all heated up some time back Tink Thompson demonstrated that the photo only made sense if she was on the grass, exactly where she is shown to be in the Z-film. This particular "proof" of forgery is dead and buried, IMO.

In Chapter 16b I run through the wound ballistics of M/C ammo and cite dozens of early reports and articles which have largely been overlooked by everyone...from the WC on down. The bottom line. A bullet traveling on the trajectory proposed by the WC and HSCA etc does not explode the head The explosion of JFK's skull is thereby the smoking gun, strangely enough. Here is a cadaver fired upon at a closer range than JFK was supposedly fired upon, on a similar trajectory, (although from front to back instead of back to front.) The skull remained intact. This should have been the expected result.

My point was not that the remaining documents are nothing-burgers, but that the vast majority of the public will come to believe they are nothing burgers. The Northwoods documents came out what? 30 years ago? And yet how many TV shows or history textbooks even mention them? Now, in the long run, this stuff is important and may change the perception of what went on. But the likelihood of a "smoking gun" that will excite the public in the immediate future is next to nothing, IMO.

Straight up question, Jim. Do you honestly believe there is anything in the remaining records that will be a game-changer? I suspect a lot of hoopla will be made if the records get released, and that the historians will then be brought in to say it's all a nothing-burger, and that the public will then lose interest, permanently. Like with the dog that caught the car, it will be like...uhhh...what now?

I think it was earlier in this thread, but am not sure. But I recently cited the Greer-did-it theory as something we should all agree is without foundation. Well, you guessed it. Within 24 hours I received an email from someone telling me I am wrong, and that it's clear Greer shot Kennedy when one studies the Zapruder film--and then linked to some video using blurry copies of the film to argue Greer shot Kennedy. The film has become a Rorschach test. Some look at it and say "Oh my! The skull damage isn't where I expected it to be damaged. So it's gotta be fake! That proves conspiracy!" While others look at it and say "Oh my, his head goes back and to the left. That roves a shot from the front. That proves conspiracy!" And still others look at it and say "Hey! The top of the head explodes--as one would expect for a shot fired from behind! And the head goes forward and explodes backwards--as one would expect for a shot fired from behind! This suggests no conspiracy!" Now, here's the bottom line. The last two are flat-out wrong. The Jet Effect explanation for the President's movements is a hoax. The claim the temporary cavity of an M/C bullet will explode the top of the head into the sky is a hoax. The film shows the President first go forward and then spring back. The film shows the top and right side of the head explode--which indicates an impact at this location and thus two head shots. So we have a divergence in the woods. The film does not show an explosion from the back of the head so those expecting to see such an explosion think it's been faked. This necessitates all sorts of conjecture involving faked evidence. That's a winding path through the woods. Or one can accept the film as real and realize that it proves there were two headshots and thus a conspiracy. That's a more direct route through the woods. I guess it all comes down to how much one likes the woods.

No one with any power actually wants anything to be released...ever. Some know that as long as stuff isn't released they can claim the unreleased stuff shows their favorite bad guy was involved. And some know that as long as stuff isn't released they can claim the unreleased stuff shows their own favorite bad guy was involved. No one wins by actually releasing anything...unless by some odd chance the files actually reveal something beyond that x was an informant for y etc. I think Gerry is correct in that the only files likely to show anything truly damaging--the Joannides files--are not even included in the collection, and will likely never be realized under any circumstances.