Pat Speer

Don, If you are familiar with the WC executive session transcripts, then you know a frag coming out the throat was being discussed ... near the end of January 1964. Seems they still had some things that needed to be figured out on the autopsy ... which is baloney, of course, if the autopsy report had actually been signed and delivered the weekend of the assassination. That's the tip off, imo, that the autopsy report we know and love as "the" autopsy report, was *not* the one signed, sealed and delivered that weekend in November. It's the January 27th session. Here's a link to the pages where this is discussed by Rankin and pals: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=69 And, of course, as late as April 1964, memos from the Zfilm conferences stated they expected to report three shots/three hits ... a stray bullet (Tague) and the SBT had not yet been born. Barb :-) Barb, I feel quite sure that the "throat wound was created by a skull fragment" story was never in an autopsy report, but was made up by the FBI to explain the throat wound before the FBI got around to reading the autopsy report. From chapter 1b at patspeer.com: "The confusion caused by the divergent accounts offered by the Parkland and Bethesda doctors was only exacerbated by the actions of the FBI. In mid-late December, even after Dallas Special Agent in Charge Gordon Shanklin had alerted Hoover that the FBI's report on the wounds could be in conflict with the official autopsy report, the FBI began pushing its own version of the President's wounds, one based not on the statements of the emergency room doctors, nor on the official report of the autopsy doctors, but on what Hoover's loyal FBI agents recalled hearing discussed at the autopsy, mixed-in with some pure speculation as to the cause of the otherwise unexplained throat wound. Even though the Zapruder film in its possession showed Kennedy reaching for his throat five seconds before his skull exploded, the FBI Supplemental Report of January 13, 1964 makes it clear the FBI believed that a fragment of the bullet striking Kennedy in the head created the throat wound. In a section on Kennedy's clothing, the report contains the following passage: "Medical examination of the President's body had revealed that the bullet which entered his back had penetrated to a distance of less than a finger length. There is a slit...in the overlap of the shirt the President was wearing...The slit has the characteristics of an exit hole...There is also a nick on the left side of the tie knot, which possibly was caused by the same projectile...The coat and shirt were x-rayed for metal fragments...but none were found...The Chief Pathologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital had advised that the projectile which had entered the President's skull region had disintegrated into at least 40 particles..." This unique assertion, not found in the FBI report possessed by the Justice Department and Warren Commission, nor in the autopsy report in the possession of the Navy and Secret Service, was, upon repetition in the news media, as good as a confession that Hoover (almost undoubtedly through DeLoach), or someone quoting Hoover or DeLoach, had been the original source for the story. Hoover's leaking of the report to let certain conclusions out to the press was almost casually mentioned in the December 14 column of Washington insider Drew Pearson. It seems likely, however, that Hoover had failed to fully realize just how noticeable his footprints had become.. A 12-18 article by Nate Haseltine in the Washington Post was the first to bear the mark of Hoover. Here it was reported that the autopsy pathologists had found that Kennedy could readily have survived the first bullet to strike him, and that this bullet was "found deep in his shoulder". Even worse, it was reported that a fragment of the second bullet, which "tore off the right rear portion of his head...was deflected and passed out the front of the throat." Now watch as Hoover's poison spreads. On 12-18, an article for the Associated Press repeats some, but not all, of the FBI's findings. Citing "a source fully acquainted with results of a post-mortem examination," it reported "The first shot struck Kennedy in the back, made what was described as a small neat hole, and penetrated two or three inches without damaging vital organs. The bullet may even have entered Kennedy's back after first glancing off some part of the presidential limousine, since its penetration was not deep when compared to the damage done by the other shots fired by the assassin...The second bullet to strike Mr. Kennedy --the third bullet fired--left a large hole in the back of the President's head, destroyed considerable brain tissue and severely damaged the forehead." Note that there is no mention of the throat wound here. This suggests that the writer of this article had not yet been briefed by the FBI. Tellingly, on 12-19, the next day, a follow-up article by the AP reported that Dr. James Beyer, who previously had argued that Kennedy's large head wound was not consistent with a military jacketed-bullet, repeated his assertions and built upon the previous day's conjecture that the first bullet to hit Kennedy hit the limousine first by guessing that the second one did as well. Beyer stated that "the slight instability imparted to the missile by the ricochet could have resulted in the large wound described." (Beyer's second- guessing of "official" autopsy results would boomerang back at him many years later when he would conduct an equally contested autopsy--that of Clinton lawyer Vince Foster.) Note that there is still no mention of the throat wound. These articles confirm then that the AP was not yet under Hoover's spell. But you can't keep a good leaker down... A column in the Washington Daily News by Richard Starnes on this day repeated the wound description given the Post the day before. No mention of a ricochet. More than a mention of a fragment exiting the throat. Starnes reported as fact that the first shot "struck the president high in the shoulder from behind, causing considerable damage to the massive muscles of the neck and shoulder. The second shot fired by the assassin struck Gov. John Connally. The third shot inflicted the wound that killed Mr. Kennedy by smashing away the back of his head. The confusion over the wounds was caused by a fragment of the third bullet that coursed down thru the President's head and exited thru his throat approximately at the collar line." The red flag indicating the FBI as the source of these leaks gets even redder, however, as we look at articles from the rest of the month. In the December 23 edition of Newsweek, an article quoted the supposedly secret FBI report extensively and said the bullet entering the right shoulder fell out, which left no explanation for the wound in the throat. The next week's Newsweek, however, cited the 12-18 article in the Washington Post, and reported that the throat wound was created by a fragment of the bullet creating the head wound. Similarly, the December 27 edition of Time stated that the "unofficial" word of the autopsy report had been released for a week and that it says a bullet struck Kennedy 6 inches below the collar line and fell out, and that the throat wound had been created by an exiting bullet fragment. A 12-30 U.S. News article followed suit, and claimed the autopsy "showed that the wound in his neck was caused by the exit of a splinter from the shot that struck the back of his head." A January 4, 1964 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, moreover, repeated these assertions. As late as January 26, 1964, incredibly, even the great New York Times was still reporting that the first bullet fired lodged in Kennedy's shoulder, that the second bullet hit Connally, and that "The third bullet, according to an autopsy in Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, ripped away a portion of the back of the President's head on the right side. Fragments from the bullets cut a wound in the president's throat and damaged the windshield of the limousine." But the New York Times was not the only news organization routinely mis-reporting the basic facts of the story of the century months after they should have known better. U.S. News and World Report, in its June 1, 1964 issue speculating on the Warren Commission's conclusions, asserted: "The official autopsy of the President's body the night of November 22 shows Mr. Kennedy was first hit in the right shoulder. A second bullet struck Texas Governor John Connally. A third hit the President's head and killed him. There was no fourth bullet." It then added "A wound in Mr. Kennedy's throat was caused by a fragment of the bullet which entered his head from behind." It took so long for the actual autopsy results to reach the public, in fact, that an entire motion picture, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, was written and completed before the autopsy report's description of the wounds was made available to the public. Clearly basing their description of the wounds on the leaked FBI report, the film-makers depicted a Navy doctor reading from an autopsy report. He states: "Our examination reveals that the President was struck by two bullets. The first bullet struck the President in the back, just below the collarbone, and lodged in his body. The second bullet struck the President in the back of the head and fragmented. A splintered piece of the second bullet went through the President's neck and exited from the lower part of the neck." When asked about the bullets, the doctor in the film testified "We recovered one, the one bullet that had lodged in the upper shoulder." Officially, of course, the only intact bullet recovered was found in Dallas and the "missile" recovered at the autopsy was just a fragment recovered from the President's brain. To repeat, as no explanation for the neck wound was contained in the December 9 FBI report given to the Justice Department and Warren Commission, and as the published explanation for this wound was only offered in the FBI's January report, it seems doubtful that the Justice Department and/or Warren Commission were the sources for all these leaks about the neck wound, which started in December. It seems obvious from the nature of these mistakes then that the source of all this misinformation was in fact the FBI. It follows then that The FBI's refusal to look at the autopsy report in a timely manner, its continuing to champion outdated information in its December 9th and January 13th reports, and its decision to invent its own explanation for the throat wound ultimately backfired and fueled many of the conspiracy-oriented books which exploded on the market in 1966 and 1967. Not to be facetious, but perhaps the ever-suspicious Hoover should have had himself investigated as a possible communist."

Pat, Was the Chicago conference you are talking about sponsored by Jerry Rose/Third/Fourth Decade? Also, I would think the best resolution for all of the medical Parkland/Bathesda autopsy evidence is to just dig up the body and do it right with a proper Forensic Autopsy - with all of the new MRI, etc. advances in technology. Why argue about stuff that has lost its ability to be entered into evidence, when a new, proper, independent autopsy would answer all the questions and end all the arguments? And don't tell me that it will never happen because of the Kennedy family, as the family of the victim has no say as to procedures in the investigation of a homicide. Thanks for all you do, as I recognize the medical evidence is significant, Bill Kelly Yes, I think it was put on by Rose. He is one of the listed participants. Midwest Symposium on Assassination Politics April 1-4, 1993, Chicago, Illinois The participants Gary Aguilar, M.D. George D. Lundberg, M.D. Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D. Daniel Alcorn, J.D. David Mantik, M.D. Ph.D. Wayne S. Smith, Ph.D. Robert R. Artwohl, M.D. Philip H. Melanson, Ph.D. Dee D. Smith-Simmons James A. DiEugenio Marc Micozzi, M.D. Ph.D. Eugene Sturges, J.D. Roger Feinman, J.D. Wallace Milam Anthony Summers Gaeton J. Fonzi Robert Morrow Robert Tannenbaum, J.D. Jack Gordon, Ed.D. John M. Newman, Ph.D. Josiah Thompson, Ph.D. Judge Burt W. Griffin Carl Oglesby William Turner Paul L. Hoch Ph.D. Michael Parenti, Ph.D. Cyril H. Wecht, M.D. J.D. John Judge Jerry Policoff Michael H. West, D.D.S. Robert Blair Kaiser Jerry Rose, Ph.D. Leslie Wizelman J.D. John Latimer, M.D. Sc.D. Jane Rusconi Mark Zaid, J.D. James H. Lesar, J.D. Dick Russell David S. Lifton Gus Russo Edwin J. Lopez J.D. David E. Scheim, Ph.D. West was pretty much the ringleader for the LN side in the debate on the medical evidence... and he has since been proven a fraud, who would not hesitate to lie under oath...

Bump. I just thought people would be interested to know that one of the leading LN "experts" of the early 90's has been exposed as a total fraud, without any respect for science or decency.

Stone does read the title of the book--just not the full title. The book is called "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters." Stone reads aloud the second part--which is the hook and selling point. No one would buy a book called JFK and the Unspeakable. The "Why" is the hook.

Those assuming that they need to play along with the "conservative" view of the assassination in order to get ahead in the medical profession miss that the medical professionals who have chosen to associate themselves with the single-assassin theory have been among the least credible individuals associated with the case. We have already discussed the failings of Dr. Michael Baden, and the many foolish and easily disproved statements he's made about the assassination. We have also discussed Dr. John Lattimer, a Urologist, with his strange belief Kennedy was a hunchback, and his odd diagrams presenting Kennedy's lung above his throat, and his long-time obsession with Nazis, and his odd habit of collecting celebrity genitalia. We have also discussed Dr. Chad Zimmerman, a Chiropractor, and the many flaws in his "experiments". But what we haven't fully discussed is that there has been virtually NO ONE from the world of medicine to publicly associate themselves with the single-assassin conclusion over the past 20 years, with whom other doctors would want to be associated. If one gets the opportunity to view a video of the 1993 symposium on the medical evidence held in Chicago one will see precisely what I'm talking about. First up was Dr. George Lundberg, then editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Thanks to researcher Dave Reitzes for posting Lundberg's statements online.) Lundberg opened by admitting he knew next to nothing about the case, and then concluded: "What then and whom then do I trust? I have known Dr. James Humes, the principal autopsy pathologist, personally since 1957. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, who was paraphrasing Lloyd Bentsen: I know Jim Humes. He's a friend of mine. I would trust him with my life. Dr. Humes is an outstanding general pathologist, before and after 1963, acclaimed by his peers for thirty years -- forty years, perhaps -- but never was before, during, or after a fully trained forensic pathologist and never claimed to be. He didn't volunteer to do that job; he was assigned. Moving from 1963 to 1968, the United States Attorney General appointed a four-person, blue-ribbon panel to study and reevaluate the JFK autopsy. The reason that was appointed was a request by the second autopsy pathologist, Dr. Jay Boswell, that there be such an independent investigation. This four-member panel had developed unanimous support for the autopsy report, results and interpretation. A key member of that panel was the late Dr. Russell Fisher, Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Maryland, probably the world's top forensic pathologist of his time. I knew Russell Fisher. He was a friend of mine. I would trust him with my life. He concurred: two bullets from the rear. A simple story. In 1979 the forensic pathology subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Assassinations included nine members. It voted eight to one in support of the autopsy findings and basic interpretation. One of the members was Dr. Earl Rose, a forensic pathologist in Dallas in November 1963 whose legal responsibility it was to autopsy President Kennedy and who tried to stop the illegal movement of the body from Dallas. I have known Dr. Earl Rose since 1973. He is a friend of mine. I would trust him with my life. He concurs: two bullets from the rear. Another member of that 1979 subcommittee was Dr. Charles Petty. Dr. Petty is Professor of Pathology at the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas. He heads up the Forensic Science Institute there, which was built in large part because of the Dallas embarrassment over the assassination and their recognition of the need for outstanding forensic science. Dr. Petty has been quiet on the JFK issue for many, many years. This year he volunteered to write for JAMA on this subject. Last week's JAMA has his editorial, which confirms and explains the Single Bullet Theory. I have known Chuck Petty since 1968. He is a friend of mine. I would trust him with my life. These are the keys to trust: Jim Humes in 1963, Russell Fisher in 1968, Earl Rose in 1979 and again in JAMA in 1992, Chuck Petty in 1979 and again in JAMA in`1993, and then there is me. To imagine or state that somehow these people say we have been duped, misled, or are somehow part of the conspiracy to deny the truth on this issue for all ages, strains the vocabulary to find strong enough words to describe such absurdity. Such charges are somewhere among the descriptors: wild and crazy, off the wall, out in left field in Cubs Park, incredible, insulting, or worse." Well, this was not exactly scientific, was it? In 1999, for reasons apparently unrelated to his controversial stance on the Kennedy assassination, Lundberg was fired from JAMA. Next up was Dr. Lattimer, reciting material from his book, claiming he knew Kennedy and Kennedy had a big hump on his back, etc. Then came Dr. Michael West, reciting more stuff from Lattimer's book. Well, what happened to Dr. West, you might ask? The 1998 book Tainting Evidence notes that Dr. West was a forensic dentist from Mississippi who, up through 1996, appeared as a scientific expert more than 60 times in 10 states. The book notes further that other medical examiners began testifying against West when it became clear that he was seeing marks on bodies that others failed to see, and that at least 20 of his appearances were in murder cases in which a suspect's life lay in the balance. The 2008 book Forensics Under Fire fills out the story, and uses West as a case study of an expert gone awry. On multiple occasions, Dr. West testified that he saw bite marks on murder victims unseen by the pathologists at autopsy, and then matched these marks to the teeth of the police department's #1 suspect. Despite West's claims that a special blue light he'd personally developed had allowed him to reach these conclusions, the "science" of this light was never quite established. As a result other experts began to question West's conclusions, and he gradually fell out of favor. Within a year of his presentation at the 1993 Symposium, in fact, Dr. West was pressured into leaving the international Association of Identification and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He was also suspended by the American Board of Forensic Odontology. As a result, the convictions of two men against whom he'd testified were overturned, and the charges against still another were dropped. Word rapidly got out that his word was suspect. His court appearances dropped off considerably. In 2008, after the arrest of a man who'd admitted killing two toddlers in the early nineties, the lawyers for the two men previously convicted of these crimes--after West had testified that he'd found their bite marks on the victims--called for West's arrest. Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that examines questionable convictions and has won the exoneration of more than 200 inmates, declared in an ABC News report that West was "a criminal" and that he'd "deliberately fabricated evidence and conclusions which were not supported by the evidence, the data or the rules of science." Neufeld then explained "If you fabricate evidence in a capital murder case, where you know that if the person's convicted they are going to be executed — as far as I'm concerned that's the crime of attempted murder.'' He then concluded "These are not cases of sloppy forensic science. This is intentional misconduct. It's fabricated evidence to send people to death row.'' Pretty harsh words. Provocative words. Still, even though Neufeld's charges would seem a clear case of libel (should he not have been telling the truth), West refused to respond to his charges. West did, however, tell CBS' Steve Kroft that he stood by his prior testimony, and that if the DNA evidence implicated someone other than the defendants in the rapes and murders of the children they'd been convicted of killing, it meant only that someone else had raped and killed the children after the defendants had bitten them. Not willing to give an inch, West even stood by his absurd testimony that one of the defendants had bitten his victim 19 times--using only his upper teeth! And from there things got even worse for West. In February 2009, Reasononline posted links to a 1993 video of West (http://reason.com/news/show/131527.html) rubbing a suspect's dental impressions on the cheek of a dead child, so that the man responsible for her apparently accidental death could be accused of deliberation, and receive the death penalty. Dr. Michael Bowers, a dentist and medical examiner for Ventura County, California, broke ranks with his colleague and told the writers of the article that marks appeared on the young girl's cheek after West rubbed the impressions because "Dr. West created them. It was intentional. He's creating artificial abrasions in that video, and he's tampering with the evidence. It's criminal, regardless of what excuse he may come up with about his methods...You never jam a plaster cast into a possible bite mark like that. It distorts the evidence. You take a photograph, or if there are indentations, you take an impression. But you don't jam plaster teeth into them." Dr. David Averill, a former President of The American Board of Forensic Odontology, concurred with this appraisal. He told the Reasononline "The video is troubling. I don't know how you can explain where those marks come from. And there's just no justification for him to push the cast into the skin like that...That isn't an acceptable way to perform a bite mark analysis." But that wasn't the end of it. The writer of the article, Radley Balko, reported that Forensic Odontologist Richard Souviron, who'd served as an expert for the defendant, Jimmie Duncan, was never shown the video prior to Duncan's trial and conviction, and had signed a new affidavit claiming the video showed "'Dr. West, violently and repeatedly, forcing a mold of Jimmie Duncan's teeth into Ms. Oliveaux's right cheek. In doing so, Dr. West creates a mark that was not previously present. Dr. West's behavior and methods are absolutely not supported by any scientific standards or protocol.' Souviron added in the affidavit that hospital photographs show that 'none of the marks were present when Ms. Oliveaux was at the hospital,' and that the abrasions that Reisner testified about for the prosecution 'were created by the flagrant misconduct of Dr. Michael West.'" Is it any wonder then that single-assassin theorists have stopped citing West as an authority? But Dr. West was neither the last to speak at the symposium nor the one to make the strangest claims. Shortly after West's presentation, Dr. Robert Artwohl, an emergency room doctor, took the stage and discussed his recent trip to the National Archives. He then flipped through the Kennedy autopsy photos available to the public and discussed his impressions of these photos after inspecting the originals. His impressions were eye-opening. Significantly, and amazingly, Dr. Artwohl insisted that the scalp in the mystery photo had been reflected over the left forehead. This was a unique interpretation. He also claimed that what appears to be neck lines in the photo was in fact a yellow block holding up Kennedy's head. Another unique interpretation. This is almost laughable. There was not on that night, nor on any other night since Kennedy's death, a consensus among America's doctors on the locations of the President's wounds...even among those arguing that one sniper, firing from behind, killed Kennedy. There simply is no "established truth" or "established wisdom" to which one can defer. The doctors blindly "trusted" by Lundberg couldn't agree about the location of the head wound. The doctors on the stage with Lundberg disagreed with those he'd "trusted" on the location of the back wound. This is not as it should be. While the case may never be solved, it's not nearly as solved as it could be, and ought to be. Certainly, with enough discussion, America's doctors can reach some sort of consensus on what can be observed in the President's autopsy photos and x-rays.

Dawn Meredith tells me that Oliver Stone gave Bill Maher a copy on air last night and told him to read it. That must be the reason for the huge jump in sales. It seems that Stone still has very much a keen interest in the assassination. It's been a slow but steady build for the book from the beginning, but Oliver Stone's bringing it on the show and endorsing it, and Bill Maher's response--where he equated being a conspiracy theorist with being educated--clearly brought it to the tipping point. Still not carried by my local Borders, however. They'll special order it but won't carry it. They carry Bugliosi in both hardback and paperback, and carry Waldron, and have even carried Mellen and Fetzer. But not Douglass. ----- Pat, I have noticed the same thing about all the "carried" books you have mentioned, but NOT A SINGLE BOOKSTORE IN NYC will carry Unspeakable. It is a decision that runs directly counter to the market, as Douglass' has far outsold all of those mentioned,in spite of its invisibility. Makes one wonder if it might have something to do with content. Still, it is difficult to imagine NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND SUCH A POPULAR BOOK IN ONE SINGLE BOOKSTORE IN NYC! Why am I the only person who finds this noteworthy? Nathaniel, in this instance, I doubt it has anything to do with the book itself, and suspect it has everything to do with the book's publisher and distribution network. Larry Hancock's book ran into a similar problem. These books are essentially "indie" books, with poor distribution. People don't know where to find them, so they just buy them on Amazon. Thus, their high-ranking at Amazon in comparison to the NY Times best-seller lists. I suspect this because I was an "indie" buyer for the record industry. I bought hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory for a large wholesaler, and resold them to small mom and pop stores (remember them?), and exporters. Since EVERY chain store in the country carried records like Thriller and Sgt. Pepper's, some of our best sellers were "indie" records without large corporate distribution. At one point, I remember noting that we sold more Ani DiFranco records than Mariah Carey. At another point I remember noting that we sold more Dead Kennedy's records than Michael Jackson. The biggest selling cd we ever had was Offspring's Smash. We sold something like 150,000 copies. By way of comparison, we only sold something like 50,000 copies of Alanis Morrissette's monster seller, Jagged Little Pill (which sold 5 times as much as Offspring nationwide).

Dawn Meredith tells me that Oliver Stone gave Bill Maher a copy on air last night and told him to read it. That must be the reason for the huge jump in sales. It seems that Stone still has very much a keen interest in the assassination. It's been a slow but steady build for the book from the beginning, but Oliver Stone's bringing it on the show and endorsing it, and Bill Maher's response--where he equated being a conspiracy theorist with being educated--clearly brought it to the tipping point. Still not carried by my local Borders, however. They'll special order it but won't carry it. They carry Bugliosi in both hardback and paperback, and carry Waldron, and have even carried Mellen and Fetzer. But not Douglass.

I've seen the Enemy Within, and it's a good film, with a fine performance by Forrest Whittaker. I'm not so sure HBO thought they could do a better job. It seems far more likely they thought they could update the story, so that its insights could reach a new and younger audience.

Interesting thread. I must admit that both The Twilight Zone and Mad Magazine were huge influences on my youth, and probably helped sculpt my progressive sensibilities. As most here know, JFK thought a Seven Days in May scenario was possible, if a young president made a number of mistakes like his mistake at the Bay of Pigs. He didn't seem to know that the likes of LeMay considered his performance re the Cuban Missile Crisis and test ban treaty equally deserving of condemnation. The initial reaction to Seven Days in May is also of interest. From patspeer.com, chapter 1b The next day, February 12, 1964, the cinema classic Seven Days in May was released to the public. The film, a cautionary tale directed by John Frankenheimer, depicted an attempted military coup within the United States. Its creation was encouraged by President Kennedy, who'd told a number of his friends that he thought such a coup was a real possibility should the president lose the support of the Pentagon. The initial response to the film reflects that elements of the media and government, even months after the assassination, still believed that their primary responsibility was to assure a worried public that everything was OK. As reported in David Talbot's Brothers, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner publicly questioned whether the film should even have been made, as "The world is on too short a fuse," and the film could damage "the American image abroad." Across town, the Examiner's larger rival the L.A. Times shared this concern but instead took the time to assure its readers that nothing like this could happen in America. Meanwhile, congressmen called for the film to be clearly labeled fiction before it could be shown overseas. Meanwhile, across the country, Americans picked up the February 15, 1964 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. Inside was an article by the CIA-friendly columnist Stewart Alsop, not surprisingly defending the CIA against some recent charges that it was out of control and was conducting its own foreign policy. No doubt concerned about the effect these charges might have on the public, particularly when combined with the almost simultaneous release of Seven Days in May in the theaters, Alsop tried to cut off any speculation of CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, and made out anyone questioning their involvement to be a communist dupe. He complained about the recent treatment of the CIA in general, and then reported "a few highly respectable journals have even half-echoed The Communist Worker's charge that Lee Harvey Oswald, murderer of President Kennedy, went to the Soviet Union in 1959 as a CIA hireling." Alsop then shared even more certain knowledge that he could not possibly know, assuring his readers: "Lee Harvey Oswald never at any time had any connection whatever with CIA, although suspicions on that score are perhaps natural in view of the mystery surrounding Oswald's travels and his sources of income. The highest officials in the CIA are ready to so testify--and indignantly--before the Warren Commission investigating the murder. 'If anybody in the CIA had hired so obvious a psychotic,' says one of the greatest experts in the intelligence business, 'he should have been fired on the spot." One might rightly wonder if Alsop's "expert" wasn't Allen Dulles himself, seeking to cut off the questions he knew would not be answered by the Warren Commission. One might also wonder why the "highest officials in the CIA" would be so "indignant" about being asked such a reasonable question, by men who fully understood that they would lie without impunity. Two days later, on February 17, 1964, probably at the prodding of the same CIA employees who'd probably prodded Alsop (this might have been Allen Dulles-let's be realistic), Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut made a long speech defending the CIA. Dodd repeatedly, and cynically, quoted President Kennedy, in support of the CIA. He concluded "I think it can be stated as a certainty that many countries that remain free today would not be free if it had not been for the CIA." The possibility that the CIA was involved in killing Kennedy was not among the litany of criticisms dismissed by Senator Dodd. Apparently, such talk was not to be acknowledged within the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate. The next week, in its February 21, 1964 issue, Life Magazine ran an article about Oswald, and, for all intents and purposes, convicted him in the public eye. The cover featured a photo of Oswald holding a rifle, with a pistol on his hip. The caption read "Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit." The cover story was entitled "The Evolution of an Assassin." Oswald had been convicted as the sole assassin by President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the New York Times, Newsweek, T.V. Guide, and Life Magazine. The only witnesses called by the Commission up to this date had been members of his own family. If there'd been conspirators still at large, they were now specks off in the distance.

I hope not. Having met Bill Turner, in fact, I can pretty much say definitely not. It is true, however, that the attention span of most grows shorter and shorter as time goes on and no "smoking gun" is found.

I think what Don is getting at is what I get at on my webpage. The missing cufflink is proof that a bullet or bullet fragment could have "disappeared" from the limo. Either no one noticed the cufflink--or it was stolen. Either way, its disappearance destroys the all too often repeated LN argument that no third bullet was found, and that it's therefore illogical to assume one entered the limo.

No doubt someone will come along and claim these guys are working for the CIA, and trying to divert attention from the real Watergate mastermind...John Dean (sigh).

For a clear demonstration of Specter's vulnerability regarding the SBT, one can take a look at Part 2 of my video series: The second half proves Specter guilty of deliberate deception, IMO, not because he initially pushed the SBT, but because he allowed the Rydberg drawings to be published, and the SBT to be pushed, AFTER he knew they were dubious. It also seems clear that he orchestrated the false testimony of Thomas Kelley in furtherance of this deception. The HSCA, if it hadn't been a gutless political body, SHOULD have investigated Specter. He knew this, and showed up in full defense mode, telling them as little as possible, and acting guilty as heck. Somewhere along the line, I wrote someone in the Democratic Party telling them of this video, and suggesting they use it against Specter in his next election. Maybe they used it instead to blackmail him into changing parties. Now, that would be a hoot.

With help from Jack White, Gary Shaw, Paul Hoch, and Rex Bradford, I've written an essay on the conflicting documents first uncovered by Shaw. While it answers a few questions, it raises quite a few others. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Good luck, Tosh. I think we all understand your frustration.

Tosh, a I recall, the main person attacking you was Gerry Hemming. My take on Gerry was that he liked attention but wanted to protect HIS friends in the anti-Castro movement, while casting suspicion on others. Are you now asserting that Gerry was attacking you on behalf of the CIA? I'm just trying to understand.

Assuming the tone of Bohning's article is much the same as his earlier article on Max Holland's website, I'm not so sure if I read Bohning's article as an attack, per se, as much as a warning to spooks and friends of spooks that they should stay away from this forum. He came here, after all, in hopes of convincing us the anti-Castro Cuban community had nothing to do with Kennedy's death. He even went so far as to try and convince us that Operation 40 had nothing to do with assassinations. Having failed to convince anyone of the innocence of his friends' and colleagues, however, he went running to Max Holland crying that John Simkin is a leftist meanie who won't swallow what he's fed. I think Don has a case of MelAyton-itis. He thinks forums like this are fine as long as everyone agrees with him. When people persist in disbelieving what he's selling, however, he gets upset and runs for the hills... I wonder if The Intelligencer would accept a response... When Bohning wrote his article for Holland, I found a few documents demonstrating why one should believe Op 40 had an assassination capability. If I recall, I found one of these docs on the CIA's own website, dated just days after the Bay of Pigs. I believe these are all mentioned on an earlier thread on the earlier article. One should wonder then if Bohning is still playing his already-debunked card--that he recently spoke to some members of Op 40 and they say they had no assassination capability--which would have to be considered self-serving tripe in light of the earlier documents and testimony stating the exact opposite.

In 2007, I was told that the Weisberg Archives was in the process of being digitized. I'd be interested in knowing the progress that's been made. Clayton Ogilvie, who works for the department of energy in Idaho, is in charge of the Weisberg Archives being digitized. Gerald says that Clayton is making good progress and several sections of the material has already been completed. In 2007, the Weisberg Archives, for a small fee, had Clayton send me a CD of the documents relating to Weisberg's neutron-activation analysis FOIA case. A lot of the information in my chapter on the neutron-activation analysis of Oswald's cheek cast came from this CD. Although many of these documents are now available on the MFF site, there was much in there that was never in the national archives, but came straight from the AEC or FBI. At another point a researcher shared with me a great deal of correspondence between Weisberg and CBS, which he'd received from the Weisberg Archives. Some very interesting stuff. In sum, I think we can all look forward to a time when the Weisberg Archives is more widely available. Many thanks to Clayton for his efforts.

In 2007, I was told that the Weisberg Archives was in the process of being digitized. I'd be interested in knowing the progress that's been made.

I honestly don't understand the point of all this, Tom. Are you trying to say this was a manufactured incident? Well, if it was, it would have to be one of the lamest in history. I mean, four guys in a lifeboat who were so inept they let one of their own be taken hostage by an unarmed crew does not exactly rise to the level of danger or evil that would make this Captain's rescue "miraculous" and the stuff of legend. Some stupid criminals messed with the wrong guys. These guys fought back. The cops arrived, and shot the criminals in the head. It's really everyday stuff. The only thing that pushed it up a notch or two was media interest, and that's as unpredictable as the wind. A few years ago the big rage here in Southern California was car chases. They'd stop all the local programming whenever some guy in a mini-van decided he didn't want to stop for a speeding ticket, and then follow him for hours via helicopter as he dodged the police. In 1999, I went to Australia. I flicked on the tube. And what did I see? A car chase in Southern California. Evidently, local news teams in California had figured out that if they followed a car chase, they'd get interest around the world, and make money off the feed. So that's what they covered. Unfortunately, some depressed guy ended up shooting himself in the head on live TV, which led to a few moms complaining and threatening to turn off their set if it happened again, and now the coverage is more cautious.

I found The Sword and the Shield credible. We can feel fairly certain that there were KGB plots to manipulate American opinion, just as there were CIA plots to manipulate Russian opinion. What those on the right who claim the Mitrrokhin papers prove that the early CT movement, particularly Mark Lane, was under the thumb of the KGB, miss, is that the papers suggest the opposite. The Sword and The Shield is explicit in that, while the KGB tried to influence the early critics, they had virtually no success, as the critics had minds of their own. The money the KGB gave Lane was marginal, and filtered through other organizations so that Lane would have no idea where it was coming from. The Hunt letter was supposed to implicate Howard Hunt, but many of the critics thought it implicated H.L. Hunt, and so on... If the Mitrokhin papers were a CIA-backed fraud, I suspect they'd have done a better job of implicating the early critics, and, in particular, Jim Garrison. Richard Helms expressed the opinion, in his posthumous autobiography, that Garrison had been co-opted by a KGB disinformation campaign. If I recall, there was nothing like this mentioned in the Mitrokhin papers. As far as Nechiporenko, I found his book credible as well. As I recall, he concludes that there were plots to kill Kennedy, but that Oswald beat them to it. He bases this largely on Oswald's behavior, and relationship with Marina. I think he missed that a lot of what we've been told about Marina and Lee's love life has been sculpted by the WC and by Priscilla Johnson, both of whom were trying to sell that Oswald acted alone, and neither of whom was particularly credible. If he'd been sponsored by the CIA, as many suspect, I think he'd have made a much more convincing case for Oswald's sole guilt.

See Post#9 for the correct answer. P.S. Others at least figured out that CE585 showed the date 2/7/64 long prior to my having confirmed it with the full size copy of the "revision date" written in. Perhaps you should take up golfing or something of that nature. Tom, 1) did your image of the block, with 2-7-64 written in, come from CE 585, or the 2-7-64 plat provided by West? Never mind, I know the answer. Then 2) if CE 585 is the 2-7-64 plat, where is the 267 that is written underneath the 294? Or was that written in after CE 585 was entered into evidence, more than month later?

Tom, that insert is from the 2-7-64 plat given you by Robert West, and is not a blow up from CE 585. On my webpage I have an image of CE 585 courtesy Gary Murr, and there is no writing in the box. I suppose now you'll tell me that Gary Murr sent me images of the original 12-5 plat, and only pretended they were of CE 585...

Bill, you may be able to get some interest from an enforcement agency if new scientific evidence is discovered. With that in mind I suggest you approach Bond, John Bond, a UK forensics chief from Northamptonshire PD. I've read where Bond has learned how to develop fingerprints off shell casings, where none could previously be found. It seems the salt from the sweaty fingerprints of a person loading a weapon can get burned into the casing when the weapon is fired, but remain invisible to the naked eye. Bond has developed a system to make these marks visible. I have no idea if there's a time limit on this test, but it seems worth a shot. I mean, can you imagine the uproar if the fingerprints on the shells at the Tippit shooting matched the unidentified (Wallace?) print found in the depository?

Let's back up, Tom. Do you agree or not agree that the 2/7 plat had a 267 written below the 294 on the trajectory? Now, do you see such a number under the 294 on either CE 585 or the Dallas plat? I don't. It only makes sense then that they were copies of the 12/5 plat, which, by your own admission, had a line drawn for 294 but not for 267... Unless you think there are two versions of the 2/7 play, one with the 267 and one without the 267... If this is so, however, what the heck difference does it make if CE 585 is not the 12/5 plat but a 2/7 plat, which is exactly the same outside a handwritten date in a blurry box at the bottom? The WC played a lot of games, but I don't think Eisenberg's lying about the date of a plat in order to make it look like it was an earlier plat that was EXACTLY THE SAME was one of them. I mean, how would calling a plat which shows the final shot at 294 feet (the 2/7 plat without the extra line) a plat which shows the final shot at 294 feet (the 12/5 plat) hide anything from anybody? Now, if Eisenberg had called a 12/5 plat (which showed the final shot at 294 feet) a 2/7 plat (which had the re-drawn line and showed the final shot at 267 feet) you might be on to something, as this would have helped conceal that the SS had originally claimed the the third shot was fired from 294 feet. But, as it is, I think you're writing in circles, and creating a lot confusion.