Pat Speer

Tom, the Gauthier to Callahan memo can be found here... http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=29 I re-wrote some of my webpage after finding this memo on the Mary Ferrell site. It's hard to believe they were really this lame. I looked through the FBI's files and was able to find squat on the 2-7-64 re-enactment you keep mentioning. Do you have any links to information about this re-enactment? Perhaps this re-enactment came as a result of Gauthier's exhibits, which clearly portrayed the head shot as the second shot at the same time the description of his exhibits said it was the third shot. Perhaps the existence of this re-enactment was kept from the files to protect the FBI.

Tom, on 12-9 Gauthier wrote a memo detailing his re-enactment. I believe this matches the exhibits given the WC on 1-20. Are there memos detailing the 2-7 re-enactment you describe? From patspeer.com, chapter 2b. "On 12-9, we see a memo from Gauthier himself, describing his efforts in Dallas. He is preparing floor plans of the depository and of the police station where Oswald was killed, as well as a mock-up of Dealey Plaza. He lists the advantages of having these exhibits and then declares "The marks on the freeway indicating where shots one, two, and three were believed to have struck the Presidential car, have been noted and this information can be indicated on the model. From this information, it appears that shot one struck the President momentarily after he came within gun range when his car moved passed the tree top as viewed by the assassin. Shot number two which is believed to have struck Governor Connally occurred after the car had traveled a distance of 95 feet at approximately 15 m.p.h. The markings on the Freeway indicated that shot number three which is believed to have struck the President occurred after the car had traveled another 45 feet. At 15 m.p.h a car moves forward at a speed of about 22 feet per second or one car length. The President's car length is 21 feet long. Based upon this information the second shot occurred about 4.36 second after the first shot was fired and the third shot occurred about 2.0 seconds after the second shot was fired. The total elapse time to fire shots two and three was approximately 6.4 seconds during which time the President's car traveling at 15 m.p.h. covered approximately 141 feet."

If most of those on this forum are correct, if Kennedy had successfully destroyed Castro, Dallas might never have happened, because the right-wingers and anti-Castro Cuban terrorists who killed him would have had their own banana republic to play with. Tim, most people who've looked into the Bay of Pigs, including myself, have concluded it was hopeless. No military invasion would have been successful beyond the short term, and no short term invasion would have been successful without the U.S. paying a penalty somewhere else, most probably Berlin. Only a few anti-Castro zealots and CIA agents in denial will still say it was a good plan till Kennedy messed it up. If you really think it was all peachy till Kennedy messed it up you should read the CIA IG report, that chiefly blames Bissell and Barnes. You know, the report the CIA hid away for thirty years so they could continue blaming Kennedy. I trust you realize, by the way, that the "Kennedy canceling the second air strike because he was chicken story" is a myth, acknowledged as such by Hunt, among others. Adlai Stevenson and Dean Rusk were concerned with U.S. credibility, and urged it be canceled. Kennedy put it to Cabell, who failed to say it was necessary. The next day, after it became clear it was necessary, Kennedy ordered a second strike. This strike was attempted, only the CIA and Navy failed to coordinate watches and, as a result, the brigade's planes were without air cover and easily shot down. Several Americans, flying against orders because the anti-Castro Cuban pilots were too tired and scared to return and fight for their country, were killed. In short, there was plenty of guilt to be passed around, and blaming Kennedy personally for the failure at the Bay of Pigs is nonsense. His greatest error was in not stopping the thing altogether. If he'd done so, what happened in Dallas would probably have happened sooner.

Perhaps VB can explain exactly why, on 2/7/64, the FBI took the relatively accurate 3-shot/3-hit SS survey plat of 12/5/63 and decided to attempt to delete the Z313 impact point and move it back up Elm St. some 28+ feet. http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/...Vol17_0144b.htm But then again, I would suppose that he would also have to explain how it was that the US Secret Service, during December 2, 3, & 4th, with an original copy of the Z-film, determined that Z313 impact was the second shot fired and that the third/last/final shot impact was some 30-feet farther down Elm St. http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/...Vol17_0449a.htm Tom, I'm confused about the reference to 2-7-64. If I recall, Gauthier had mentioned a post 313 head shot as early as December.

Hey Gary, nice to see you around. Tim, after looking through a mound of Weisberg material re the paraffin tests, it became obvious to me that the Government feels original source material is none of our g-darn business. The FBI and the Attorney General for years held that reports and conclusions could be released to the public, but not the actual test results. What it really meant was that, in the name of National Security, the American public is forbidden from second-guessing the FBI, or allowing other experts to second-guess the FBI.

Doug, I hope my follow-up questions seem reasonable. You acknowledged that you received a grant from the Schuchman Foundation. My questions are...did you have to apply for this? Or did they find out about your work, and offer it to you? And how did you find out about the Seay documents in the first place? You also said you were working out of Rockefeller's office in 74, just before he became Veep. You were the first man called by the Watergate burglars. You received a grant from a right-wing foundation. You received public praise from Ford. It seems that you were very much an insider. I'm not trying to make that sound like a bad thing. What I've been trying to find out is if this level of connection is common in Washington. Should we assume most books to come out by Washington insiders are funded by foundations? When we see someone plugging an inside scoop book on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, should we assume this book is something he really cares about, or that it's something he was encouraged to write to bring some balance to the partisan political atmosphere.

But Tim... Bishop is almost certainly Phillips, as demonstrated by Fonzi. This suggests the rest of Veciana's story is true. And Phillips lied to the HSCA about not knowing Veciana. One would have to ask then why Veciana would invent this "lie" about Phillips. There's no evidence he tried to profit from it. The only innocent explanation could be that Veciana saw Phillips with someone other than Oswald, and Phillips, filled with the contempt for congress and oversight so common in men of his profession, decided that they (and therefore we) were undeserving of the truth. Not exactly innocent, is it? I think your presumption that Phillips would not let Veciana see Oswald is, well, presumptuous. It could very well be that Phillips wanted the opposite--for Oswald to see Veciana. Veciana's cousin Guillermo Ruiz worked in the embassy where Oswald was headed. Perhaps Oswald was supposed to contact him. If so, being able to describe Veciana would have been to his advantage.

Wim, can you tell us if Veciana was paid for the interview? I fully believe that Phillips was Bishop. But the thought occurs that Veciana is still denying that Phillips was Bishop in hopes he can stretch this out awhile. Another thought, one from a few years back... I've always wondered if the Knight/Bishop angle was a reference to J.C. King, the head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere division. King was, I believe, the original impetus behind both the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala and the assassination plots on Castro. He was heavily connected to men like Pawley.

Good point, Mike. It does seem a bit of a coincidence, Doug, that, subsequent to your involvement in Watergate, you wrote two books that, at least on the surface, seemed designed to help the Republicans, and Gerry Ford in particular, retain control of the White House. Was this an honest reflection of your concerns at the time? Or were you encouraged to go in this direction? How did Washington work in 74-75? Does it still work that way today? Should we assume that most pro-Bush or anti-Bush or pro-Hilary or anti-Hillary books are being encouraged by forces behind the scenes?

I have been reading Jerry terHorst's book on Gerald Ford. TerHorst was Ford's press secretary, but he resigned after one month when Ford pardoned Nixon before Nixon had even been indicted for a crime. In the chapter on the hearings to determine if Ford was fit for the Vice-Presidency, terHorst discusses Robert Winter-Berger, a lobbyist who'd written a book on political pay-offs in 1972. While Winter-Berger's biggest revelation was that he'd witnessed Speaker of the House John McCormack and LBJ discussing a 1 million dollar pay-off to Bobby Baker, to assure his silence, he also mentioned a few smaller schemes involving Ford. He gave Congress a signed affidavit confirming these schemes, but backed-off when they used his IRS returns to argue that he'd never had the money to bribe Ford as claimed. To continue, of course, would have forced Winter-Berger to admit he was a tax cheat. (Elsewhere in his book, terHorst notes that Ford was convinced that the government "whitewashed" over the Bobby Baker scandal once LBJ became president. Was Ford really so blind that he could not see that the Warren Commission was a similar "whitewash"?) Anyhow, reading about Winter-Berger reminded me of two other books on pay-offs from this time period. One was by Michael Dorman, entitled Payoff, and detail mafia payoffs of politicians. It has a section on Marcello's use of bagman Jack Halphen in the fifties, and notes that LBJ and Ramey Clark's father were among those on Marcello's payroll. At another point it has an interview with Marcello, in which Marcello asserts he is a businessman, with as much right to make political contributions as any other businessman. The other book was by Douglas Caddy, entitled The Hundred Million Dollar Payoff. It focused on the incredible influence organized labor wielded in Washington, predominantly over the Democratic Party. This book came out in 74. The realization that Caddy's book came out after the others led me to suspect it was written in part as a response. Here Winter-Berger muddies Ford's name and reputation, and therefore the reputation of the Republican Party as a whole, and here Caddy comes out with a book muddying up the Democrats. Adding to my suspicion this was no coincidence is a quote on the cover of Caddy's book. It reads "A very serious study of the tremendous amount of political clout organized labor has...President Gerald Ford." So...Doug, now that we're back in an Ashton Gray-free zone, can you help us understand the context of your writing of this book? Was its writing encouraged by the Ford Administration? If so, who? Did you know Don Rumsfeld? Was it partially funded by a right-wing think tank? Or was the writing of this book purely your own idea? If so, how did you get the plug from Ford for your cover? While I don't think these questions are of crucial importance, your answers can help us better understand the climate of the time. Thanks.

Steve, who wrote that handwritten memo? Do we know?

Tim, people voted for Reagan primarily because Carter appeared weak. Reagan promised he'd balance the budget. A few total frauds convinced him he could balance the budget and have a large military build-up at the same time. When it became clear he couldn't do both, he said the hell with the budget, and built up the military against the wishes of the people, running the country into the largest debts in recent history, prior to Bush II. By doing this, he was basically abandoning the conservatism of Goldwater and Taft, etc. Subsequent studies of the intelligence available to Reagan, Carter, and Ford indicate that the Soviet Union was collapsing under its own weight before Reagan was anywhere near Washington, and that Reagan's policies effectively shifted hundreds of billions of dollars from the public, which could have been spent on schools and health care, and gave it to investors in the MIC, who were already quite fat and rich. And this from a man whose party professes to believe that the government shouldn't get involved in social engineering and the transfer of wealth. It's clearly a one-way street. At one point you said, re D-Day, that American soldiers' "bravery resulted because of Ike's planning." If you check your history books, you'll see that the planning of D-Day had some real problems, and that many men died because of the screw-ups of higher-ups. If the Germans didn't make a few mistakes themselves, it might have been a disaster. This statement, however, reveals a lot about yourself--you have a need for heroes, and look for them from the top on down. This is dangerous, IMO, and is one of the things that is destroying this country. The guy on the bus taking care of his sick mother and supporting his wife and kids on a minimum wage is a bigger hero than Reagan ever was, outside the roles he played in the movies. Kennedy, with help from Sorensen, wrote a book on politicians who demonstrated courage. I can't think of one instance where Reagan demonstrated real courage. The man was so personally weak that he couldn't tell Nancy NO when she insisted he plan his schedule around his astrology chart. And thinking God has a plan for you and is looking out for you is not the sign of a religious person, it is the sign of a deluded person. A religious person does things because it is right, even when there is no personal glory involved. Not being from California, you probably never had to deal with the mentally ill people thrown out on the street by Governor Reagan, but I did, and my mother, a registered nurse, always made sure I knew it was Reagan that put them there. If you can show us where Reagan performed acts of charity or volunteered at the Midnight Mission I might begin to believe he was religious. Otherwise, what I see is a self-involved actor propped up by sycophants reciting scripted dialog in order to make the country feel good about itself, while his cronies rape the Savings and Loans, and rape the Treasury via an unnecessary military build-up. Hardly the stuff of heroes... even if he was a nice guy.

Tim, you're embarrassing yourself on this thread. Please list all YOUR sources of information. I doubt there'd be one book that wasn't given a full thumbs-up by the National Review. The amount of Reagan hero worship in your posts and in this country is disturbing. Consider: 1. You cite as a credible source a boot-licking fool who BLAMES Kennedy for the failed assassination attempts on Castro. This same boob implies that Reagan telling Gorbachev to tear down the wall caused the wall to fall, when Gorbachev did not tear down the wall and it was torn down two years later by the German people. That's not scholarship, Tim, that's hero worship, the kind of stuff they parade at the Reagan shrine/Library down the street from here. People who respect Kennedy stopped repeating that he SCARED Khruschev into pulling the weapons out of Cuba a long time ago. When are right-wing hacks gonna grow up and realize that the fall of the Soviets was a complicated affair? Even if one should take the approach that Reagan's policies were the number one cause, it wasn't Reagan himself that scared the Soviets, it was the HUGE build-up in the American arsenal, and star wars. These weapons were built at the expense of the American people, primarily the middle-class and the poor. Look in the mirror. You did more to end the cold war than Reagan. It's a lot harder to pay the bills with 10% of your income being wasted on scaring the Russkies than it was for Reagan to go on TV and spout crap about the "evil empire" and "tear down that wall", and authorize a hundred billion dollars to be given to his biggest supporters, that's for dang sure. 2. You then go on to imply that God intervened and saved Reagan's life so he could save the world from Communism. That is ridiculous, IMO, and an insult to everyone, including myself, who has lost someone dear to them. Since you profess to know the mind of God (isn't that a sin?) please tell me why my six year old nephew dropped dead on a playground in front of his friends. Get with God and get back to me on that, will ya? If there is a God, as described in the Bible, saving Ronald Reagan would most probably not be a priority. You should remember that Reagan was probably the least religious President of modern times. He was an irregular church-goer, and is still the only President to get a divorce. He was also a hypocrite. It is an historical fact that his daughter Patty was conceived out of wedlock and that he and Nancy lied about this to the end. That some, in retrospect, have tried to paint Reagan as a Christian icon is indicative of re-writing history, and is the kind of stuff that inspired Orwell to write 1984. Uncle Ron as Big Brother. Blecch.

Still too big an issue for Barry Scheck and his ilk. Once announced that he was double-checking the establishment's case against Oswald, he would be painted as a conspiracy nut, which would undermine his other efforts, Men might literally die because he opened his mouth and stated what was obvious--that the case against Oswald deserves a review from head to toe.

Thanks, Doug. I have been reviewing much of the FBI's work on the Kennedy assassination, and am confident that a wise lawyer like yourself could successfully tear it to shreds. Stombaugh, the fiber analyst, would later give wildly subjective, and disputed, testimony in the Jeffrey MacDonald case. Cadigan, the paper analyst, would get censured after making serious errors at Ruby Ridge. The FBI, as policy, kept no records that could be used against them. They would say things matched or didn't match, based entirely on the opinions of its experts, but not make their lab work--the statistical analysis on which they based their conclusions--available to the public. (This was due to Hoover's pathological fear of public embarrassment. When the FBI found out that the Warren Commission wanted to double-check some of their findings with outside experts, the FBI threatened to cut off contact with the Commission.) The problem with this method was amplified by the fact that most of the FBI's experts were not trained scientists but were criminal investigators handed a job--"Here, it's your turn to be the fiber expert." By the eighties, and possibly running back all the way to the beginning, the FBI crime lab had the attitude of "what can we use to get our man"...the defendants were assumed guilty. As a result, agents quite often over-stated the value of their testimony, leading jurors to believe that since "something was similar" or "consistent" that it was a match and strong evidence for the defendant's guilt. In the Warren Commission, we have agent Cunningham stating his "personal expectation" that gunshot residue from a rifle would not end up on a defendant's cheek. He testified to this "expert" opinion weeks after his fellow agent had tested this, using Oswald's rifle, and demonstrated it not to be true. As mentioned in the article, the fun and games in the FBI's crime lab was finally exposed in the 90's by Dr. Fredric Whitehurst. (Thanks to Bill Turner for bringing this to my attention.)

The polls mentioned by Tim are not indicative of the world. Many American historians rate "likability" and the president's ability to pull the American people into his corner as signs he was a good president. As a result, Reagan is held high more for being liked than for anything he actually accomplished. When compared to recent republican failures like GWB, GHWB, GF, and RN, it's no wonder he seems so "great." When it comes to actual policy, the American people were much more in tune with Walter Mondale than they were with Reagan. The Reagan/Mondale debate in 1984 was the most lopsided battle in recent history. Mondale destroyed Reagan on every point. Made him look silly. He beat Reagan so bad that, when Reagan barely survived the second debate, through gimmicks "Now, there you go again", the people breathed a collective sigh of relief that ole Ronnie was still on the ball. (Of course, he wasn't.) This is Reagan's true legacy. He was the triumph of style over substance. He misled people into voting for him, and then charmed them with his aw-shucks folksiness, so much that they voted for him again, as if he was a KING and deserved to reign as long as he made the people feel good about themselves. In this manner, he was truly a throwback to Ike: the President as mascot and lapdog for the MIC. The one difference being that Ike finally bit back.

About Reagan and the economy, etc. The income of the upper class grew greatly under Reagan, at the expense of the middle and lower class. This continued even under Clinton. During the 90's, in part fueled by the dotcom explosion, corporate CEOs decided they were the rock stars of today, and began pushing companies to reward them with HUGE payments and stock options, REGARDLESS of their long-term performance. The income of the average CEO to average worker grew from 20 to one to 400 to one, if memory serves. This unparraleled parade of greed put the pressure on these CEOs to justify their "rewards". To demonstrate their "skills" and earn their inflated rewards, they embarked on needless down-sizing and ridiculous mergers, excessive diversification, etc. The majority of these moves were a waste of time and money, but they looked good to Wall Street investors. The one move that DID guarantee short-term growth, that became the standard play of every Harvard Business grad, was to lay off workers and re-hire them as private contractors, or lay off full-time workers and re-hire them as part-time workers. All these moves were designed to shift the responsibilities of the employer, e.g. health care, onto society as a whole. For every dollar saved by these ploys, the CEOs took out 2 for themselves via stock options, etc. When this bubble market finally collapsed during the first years of George I's reign, many former middle-class investors, weary from their losses by the criminal CEOs, and the basic con of Wall Street, decided to invest in real estate instead, as the real estate market seemed more stable. Desperate for the APPEARANCE of a stable economy, Bush pressured Greenspan and others into keeping interest levels low. Now, even this stunt has run its course, and the housing market is collapsing from the number of home owners unable to keep up with the rising interest rates. This is hitting banks HARD but not as hard as one might think. Due to globalization...many U.S. banks have passed their bad notes onto foreign banks. That's right. A class of corporate criminals conducted a 20 year rape-fest on the American economy, while kneeling before the altar of of St. Reagan and voodoo economics, and now the rest of he world has to pay. Have a nice day.

Tim, I don't think there's anything wrong with giving Reagan credit for helping to end the cold war. He may have been more responsible than any other American. But one should not forget that he was also MORE responsible for building up cold war tension than any other leader. He, in effect, called them evil and then shook their hand, and America sat back and applauded his courage for shaking the hands of evil people (when they really weren't evil at all). It's quite possible, even probable, that the Soviet bloc would have fallen under its own weight. Intelligence estimates in the Carter era said as much, but the Reagan people refused to believe them and subsequently blew a few hundred BILLION of our tax dollars on unnecessary bombs. IMO, Gorbachev clearly deserves more credit than Reagan for ending the cold war. He could have destroyed his country--better dead than not-red--but CHOSE not to. What I resent is this attempt by Republicans to deify Reagan. It's ludicrous. It's like Southerners harking back to the good old days before the carpet-baggers came and ruined everything. I suspect it is in part a reaction to Democrats deifying Kennedy. And there are similarities. Both were charming and well-liked. Both got off an occasional quip. The difference is that many of Kennedy's policies were designed to help the middle class and the poor. And few of Reagan's policies were designed to do anything but make his backers rich off abstract ideas. Reagan idea...let's build a shield in space! One trillion dollars and counting later...the shield still doesn't work and even if it did what's the point when nukes can easily be smuggled into the country. Reagan's idea...cut taxes on the rich and everyone will benefit. He passed the ramifications of this policy onto Bush I, who finally gave in and raised a few taxes, which made him look foolish. Ironically, it took a Democrat to (temporarily) save us from Reagan's mess. Unfortunately the new regime cynically saw how promising tax cuts to the middle class and delivering tax cuts to the rich rich could get you elected, and have subsequently dug us a hole half-way (metaphorically) to China. Brilliant. What a way to lose Cold War II! I think we can agree that one of Reagan's personal objectives in ending the cold war with Russia and building the shield was to eradicate nuclear weapons. I think we also understand that he was unable to do this because those around him, like Bush and Baker and Weinberger, wouldn't stand for it. They wanted an empire, more so than Reagan. One can not push that Reagan won the cold war and was an efficient leader without noting that he deferred to others on almost every major point, the most notable exception being HIS decision to trade arms for hostages. I am 100% confident that history will conclude that, while a likable figurehead, Reagan was not a great leader of this country. P.S. On a personal level, I liked Reagan. But I thought he was lousy for the country. If my analysis of his record seems mean-spirited, perhaps it's because you are unable to separate yourself from your admiration of the Republican idea of Reagan, from the reality of Reagan's accomplishments.

Tim, an honest right-winger can make the case that our invasion of Iraq was a well-intentioned mistake. But I doubt you'd find one soul who's been to Iraq who would actually make the claim that the people of Iraq, 15% of whom are now homeless, are currently better off than they were with Saddam. Your claims about St. Reagan are also off the mark. Read any book by ANYONE who really knows about the cold war--I don't mean some right-wing revisionist hack, but a real scholar or witness--and they will say that it was the combined efforts of every president from Truman to Bush that helped the fall, and that the efforts and attitudes some guy named Gorbachev had a lot to with it as well. Read Robert Gates' book. He gives Jimmy Carter--who right-wingers like to paint as a weakling because YIKES he thought that morality should play a part in foreign policy--major props. The right-wing move to sanctify Reagan--whose first term was a decisive failure and whose second term was a haze due to his Alzheimer's--is truly horrific. It's as if to say the economy doesn't matter (Clinton did a far better job), and foreign policy doesn't matter (both Bush I and Clinton did a better job)...all that matters is that we FEELS GOODS about ourselves, by golly. Reagan appealed to the ugliness in America, the stupidity of America. In his world, poor people were lazy, and Aids patients deserved it for putting the square peg in the round hole. He led by smiling and telling people everything is gonna be alright. He, as GWB, was notoriously lazy, and had a notorious distaste for actually knowing what he was talking about. He believed the world was black and white and surrounded himself with lackeys who let him keep on believing it. The father of the current president once reflected that Reagan never could understand that he traded arms for hostages. The implication was that in Reagan's child-like mind, trading arms for hostages sounded bad, and he thought himself incapable of doing anything that was bad. He probably never grasped the evil that he did at other times in his life as well, such as when he sold out the members of his union, and cut a sweet-heart deal with mob-affiliated MCA, which just so happened to be his own agency. He probably never thought about the mentally ill people he put out on the street as Governor, or the students whose heads he helped bust during the sixties. I saw him speak once in 1980. He was warm and friendly, and talked glowingly of the good old days when blacks got lynched and young girls died with coat-hangers in their wombs. At one point he was walking through the crowd, maybe 15 feet from me. Sometimes I think there was something I could have done that would have prevented what came after, and the incredible decline he helped hasten would have been averted.

John, thanks for your input. I'm sure there are a few mistakes. The memo in question is not, from what I can gather by looking through the FBI files at the Mary Ferrell Foundation, in their normal files. It seems that Weisberg was able to get, via his FOIA case, a number of internal memos from the FBI Laboratory. All discussions of the work being outsourced to Guinn, for example, were made in these internal memos. (No doubt some LuNatic will offer that Weisberg faked these memos, so that they could sit around in his archives for thirty years until McKnight decided to mention them in Breach of Trust). I've talked to Rex about this, and we hope to put some of these internal memos up at the Mary Ferrell Foundation site in the near future.

I'm sorry to see it come to this. Evidently, Ashton believes he has special insight, and has trouble seeing how anyone could ever disagree with him, and takes all disagreements personally. The irony is that, among his list of perceived sins against him by myself, there were a number of incidents where I was trying to help him. He kept asking Tom Purvis whether or not he'd had special training in Special Forces. I have a friend in SF. I asked my friend if he'd received such training. I told Ashton that SF didn't regularly receive that training but that the CIA would frequently sheep-dip officers into SF, and it's possible Tom received the training from CIA. That's it. A horrible sin in Ashton's eyes. I suspect John Simkin has better things to do than read rants like this. While I am with John and his defense of freedom of speech, Ashton's rant is self-serving at the expense of the forum as a whole. If the moderators like they can take all the parts where he talks about how evil I am and keep them online. But I think this thread, particularly the parts where Ashton attacks John and the forum as a whole, should be removed, as they serve no educational purposes, and appeal only to those looking at the forum as a "soap opera."

I have spent much of the last few months reading about the paraffin casts put on Oswald's hands and cheek by the DPD, and trying to understand their significance. I'm still working on it, but I've put most of what I've gathered here: http://www.patspeer.com/chapter4c%3Acastsofcontention I think this is fertile ground for investigation, as it not only demonstrates that Oswald may not have shot Kennedy, but that the FBI and WC deliberately hid this from the public.

I hope this isn't a stupid question, but has it ever been established who wrote "Hunter of Fascists" on the back of the photo found by the De Mohrenschildts? It occurred to me today that Michael Paine later admitted he'd seen the photo. Many years later, he claimed Oswald had showed it to him. Michael Paine was also in the chain of possession of the record albums in which the De Mohrenschildts found the photo. He returned them to a friend, who put them in the De Mohrenschildts' storage space. Well, this makes me suspect that Paine found the photo in a record album, thought how ludicrous it was for Oswald to be playing the tough guy, and wrote this disparaging comment for De Mohrenschildt's benefit, as BOTH of them knew damn well that Oswald did not kill Kennedy to fulfill a communist agenda. Has Paine ever been asked about this? Do we have samples of his writing to compare to the writing on the photo? I know the consensus is that Marina wrote this, but has it really been established? And why wouldn't she remember it if she did?

In defense of Tom Spitz, I've noticed that his "domination" of the forum usually goes on in the middle of the night. Once upon a time, he and I would be the only ones on the forum in the wee hours, and we would exchange ideas. It appears that he's once again in a position where he can post late at night. I would bet that there are other times of day when he never posts at all. While Tom may be annoying to some, I don't consider him a xxxxx. He has, behind the scenes, been involved in a number of projects keeping the case alive. He has also published several articles on the assassination in his local paper. This is more than most here have accomplished. While some find his "Castro or the mob or Castro and the mob" did it theory too much to stomach, I think a little diversity is good for the Forum. Maybe it will prepare some here for the upcoming "Oswald did it all by himself and you are all idiots" onslaught after HBO puts out its Bugliosi BS. (FWIW I recently had a talk with a network VP about creating something to counter HBO's BS. The VP seemed interested. A week later I received the bad news. The network wasn't interested in creating anything related to the Kennedy assassination, because it's already being covered by HBO and they didn't want to appear to be copying them. ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!)

I do too. Such "exits" strike me as hyper-theatrical. And the erasing of all past posts is hyper-theatrical to the point of absurdity. John, you've expressed this viewpoint more than once and I don't understand the logic at all. If sincere researchers have a common goal of spreading the truth about the murder of President Kennedy it makes sense to pool resources, to use all possible means of reaching people, and to go where like-minded people are to discuss theories and evidence. Furthermore, I can't imagine a less selfish endeavor than striving to inform an uncaring populace about the hideous crime(s) committed by a "government" of gangsters. If we fail at the endeavor we're beating our heads against the wall year after year decade after decade. If we succeed, presumably that means selling a lot of books or making a high profile movie, then we make enemies of the government gangsters. There's almost no scenario where truly selfish motives can come into play for sincere (non-xxxxx) researchers. If you're sincere about spreading the truth, and I think you are, then I fail to understand why you begrudge fellow researchers the resources you freely and willingly provide. That part I agree with. Myra, I think John is expressing a common frustration. Many, if not most, researchers, stopped researching years ago, and now mostly want to sit back and spout opinions based on something they heard or remember hearing way back when. Few veterans ever change their minds about anything. And that's exactly why this thing has never been solved, IMO. People won't let it be solved, because then most people would have to admit they were wrong. Perhaps a hundred years will go by, and people will stop caring, and then some liberal guy will say it was a conspiracy and some conservative guy will go "yeah, so what" and then we'll have our consensus.