Pat Speer

Dawn, FWIW, Sibert and O'Neill both remembered the head wound as being towards the back of the head. They also both believed the back wound was too low to be an entrance for a throat exit. If I remember correctly, they both believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. Unfortunately for Lifton, they also dismissed that their surgery to the head comment was a reference to wound alteration. Presumably it was a comment related to the straight tear of scalp on the forehead or perhaps even to the tracheostomy incision.

Ashton, please do a little research before spouting your paranoid claptrap. If you read the executive sessions--never meant to be released to the public in part because they're so damaging to the official lies--you'll see that McCloy and Dulles discussed the autopsy photos with Warren and agreed that Warren should look at them with Humes. Warren subsequently admitted he saw them by himself. Specter subsequently admitted he got the SS to show him the back wound photo. There is no evidence whatsoever that either Dulles or McCloy saw the autopsy photos. If you have any, please cough it up. Over and over again, Ashton follows the same pattern. He takes something damaging--Specter and Warren's behavior regarding the autopsy photos--and tries to blow it up into some vast conspiracy involving others purportedly working for an unseen hand. Forget Warren. He was a puppet. Forget Specter. He was a puppet. I'm sure before too long he'll be saying that LBJ was nothing but a puppet in the Kennedy assass and that the real evil culprit were those G14 civil servants waiting for their government pensions over at Langley. Oh wait, that's right. He's already said this. Never mind. And I'm the supposed apologist!

No, Pat, I'm not taking you to task for sticking up for the witnesses. You have, once again, attributed to me an argument I haven't made. I am a champion of the first day witnesses. I am taking you to task for exactly what I quoted you as saying: You're sticking up for the Warren Commission's wound conclusions, are you not?Aren't you expressing contempt for the should-be-oh-so-obvious fact that the Warren Commission covered up, deliberately sowed confusion, and otherwise acted as accessories after the fact of JFK's murder? Got it. It's a miscommunication. My line about sowing confusion was not meant as a reference to sowing confusion in general, but specifically to Ashton's assertion that all the doctors, including the Parkland doctors, were given a script to follow, and that this script included references to wound on the back of the head, even though everyone involved knew it wasn't there. I was trying to say that it was ridiculous to assert such a thing, as having the wound be on the back of the head only hurt the government's case for a single shooter. Presumably, although it's tough to say for certain due to his slipperiness, Ashton believes the CIA wrote a script saying the wound was on the back of the head when they knew it was on the front of the head, in order to mess with the minds of latter-day researchers, and sow confusion. Those not familiar with his writings on Watergate might not realize the master thesis of his work--and that is that virtually everything we've been told about Watergate and the assassination, including all the contradictions, have been scripted and controlled by the CIA from the very beginning, in order to throw us off the track of what's really going on. Spooky.

Some very good points. I took the story line to be a fictionalized account of the CIA in its infancy. The Angleton character was definitely used to frame Damon's characterization. The "Dulles" character however, at least to me, was just a marginalized fictional character and did not represent Dulles, who was an adept compared to Angleton, in the late fifties early sixties (at least from reading Dulles' writings). How do you parallel the Billy Crudup character with Philby? The timing was approximately right, but Philby was the chief liason from MI6 to Washington. I didn't see this established in the movie. On point about the Castro conspiracy, I didn't give it a second thought in the movie. I thought the defector business was a sort of aggregate of different characters, as there had been a few change ups on defector credibility through the sixties. Overall, though, wouldn't you agree that there has really never been a movie, to date, that tried to capture the CIA mentality as well as The Good Shephard? The film has been hyped as the "Godfather of CIA movies" and it is actually quite appropriate. Mario Puzo based a lot of his story on real incidents and real people, but confused the issue by mixing incidents and characters. One assumes it was not safe for him to tell the real story. This film also blurs together fact and fiction. I just wonder why they chose to do so, when the main characters are all dead and a much more accurate story was possible. The Crudup/Philby connection seemed a natural, as Philby was the Brit traitor with whom Angleton was the closest. I highly recommend the film. I just felt it could have been even better if it stuck closer to the facts as we know them.

Ashton is wrong, there is a third option. The photos are not fake. The doctors did not spew scripted lies. The third option is that the doctors saying the wound was on the back of the head were innocently mistaken. I studied this and found that these kinds of mistakes have been studied and documented. We look at words all day long, but have tremendous difficulty reading upside down. Similarly, we have tremendous difficulty determining relative distances on objects normally seen upright, when they are laid flat. A wound behind the ear while laying flat was interpreted as being a wound behind the ear while upright. The Bethesda witnesses were discussing the back of the skull after the brain had been removed and as it is seen in the open-cranium photo. That's it. The level of nastiness and religiosity involved in this issue is truly amazing. Here, when I try to defend them, and denounce Ashton's ridiculous assertion that all the doctors, including the Parkland doctors were controlled and forced to go along with a scripted lie that the wound was on the back of the head, Miller and Varnell attack me as naive. What the? Take the time and read what people are saying, will ya? If Miller and Varnell honestly believe that the Parkland doctors were forced to lie about the wound location, starting with their earliest reports, I'll eat my hat. No, better yet, I'll eat Ashton's hat. The WC tried to avoid the head wound location. Some witnesses said it was on the back of the head. Some said it was more to the side. The Rydberg drawings showed it to be on top but towards the back. Since no one compared the drawings or descriptions to the autopsy photos it was a non-issue. The real issue, as Cliff well knows, was finding a way to get the back wound above the neck wound. The Rydberg drawings were created demonstrating what the doctors felt must have happened. But without access to the photos they were deprived the opportunity of seeing if they were right. Only one employee of the commission has acknowledged comparing the drawings to the photos, and that is Arlen Specter. He KNEW the drawing was inaccurate, yet said nothing. By arguing endlessly about the head wound, and speculating that everything in the WC report was a scripted lie, we let Specter off the hook for what is inarguable. He knew the single-bullet theory as presented by the WC was doubtful, yet presented it anyway. He is thus either a co-conspirator or a coward or both. P.S. The x-rays and photos all compliment each other perfectly. They were taken at different stages of the autopsy. The x-rays were taken first, revealing a bone flap draped behind the ear. The top of the head, left lat, right lat brain photo, and stare of death photos were taken next, with the body lying flat and the bone flap still visible. Then they rolled him over on his side, cleaned the hair a little and inspected the body. They took the back of the head photos and back wound photos at this time. By this time, the bone flap had fallen or been pulled from the scalp. Later, after reflecting the scalp to the left and removing the brain, they took the final photos.

I was a bit disappointed in the film. It captured some of the paranoia of Angleton and the corruption of the CIA in general, but was misleading on a number of points. While the film changed the names of its characters it also changed some important facts. 1. It insinuates that the Bay of Pigs failed due to a mole. This is complete hogwash that lets the CIA and Pentagon off the hook for their incredibly lame planning and execution. 2. It insinuates that Angleton forced out Dulles, with the help of the FBI. This covers up the cult of personality Dulles developed among his men, and the possible backlash against Kennedy for Dulles', Cabell's and Bissell's ouster. 3. It features the Skull and Bones and their sing-alongs, but ignores that one of the best singers among the Bonesman was a prominent Senator, a golfing buddy of Eisenhower's. Named Prescott Bush. 4. It has the credibility of a defector come into question when another defector comes along, and the Angleton character make the wrong choice when it comes to which one he should trust. But it hides that the credibility of this second defector fell into question because he said the Russians failed to have a hand in the assassination of Kennedy, and that the Angleton character always believed they did in fact play a role in Kennedy's death. 5. It has a character based on Kim Philby, who defects to Russia. But it fails to show how the Angleton character naively trusted this character, even after a grizzled former FBI man had him pegged as a traitor. 6. It has a major plotline take place in Leopoldville, Congo, but fails to note that the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president of that country. 7. It shows the Angleton character approach the mob about killing Castro. It would have been more honest to have the Helms character perform this function. It was in fact Richard Bissell and Sheffield Edwards through a middle man... and yet it ignores that it's quite possible this approach was a factor in the assassination of Kennedy. Perhaps this will be covered in a sequel... In short, the movie has some nice characters and gives a nice over-view of the period, but pulls the chicken-switch time and time again in order to steer clear of controversy and make the Angleton character more sympathetic. Is it a coincidence that the film Bobby follows this same pattern?

First, generally, the Warren Commission was stacked with the father of the CIA—John J. McCloy—and the man who wrote the book on disinformation and psy-ops—Allen Dulles. And I could just leave it right there and go have a drink myself, you dawg, you. I really don't know what else needs to be said. Of course the WC didn't argue for a frontal shot, finding the exact opposite. And equally of course, at the same time, the WC also planted the seeds of endless controversy by having every medical person who testified swear that there was a gaping wound at the back of JFK's skull. And realize, please, that although they did not release it at the time, at all relevant times—while Count Specter the Spectre was carefully leading each doctor and nurse and hospital personnel through their rehearsed "testimony" <SPIT>, ALL of them claiming there was a huge hole in the back of the skull—you can bet that every person on the Warren Commission had access to and had seen this: Here's the drill: look at that photo with your eyes (just as everyone on the Warren Commission had), and then go to this article that has a nice condensation of the relevant WC testimony, then come back here and look at that photo, then go back and read that testimony again, and then come back here and look at that photo, and then... Well, probably just go out on a balcony and puke over the rail. Your head will stop spinning and you might feel better. Note that Specter <SPIT!> never bothers to mention this troublesome photo, and never once questions the "testimony". Ashton Ashton, you're just making stuff up now. Specter belatedly admitted to seeing one autopsy photo--of the back wound--courtesy of the Secret Service. His acknowledgment of this event proves he knew the Rydberg drawings were inaccurate. And yet he said nothing to the WC about it. There is nothing to indicate he saw the other photos. The only member of the WC to admit seeing the photos is Warren. Others saying they saw a picture or pictures were apparently referring to the face sheet or Rydberg drawings. It's ridiculous to think the WC covered up the location of the back wound while simultaneously deliberately sowing confusion about the head wound. Why would they do this? To deliberately confuse the public and damage the public's faith in institutions--exactly the opposite of their presumed mission? And why would all the doctors go along with a scripted rear head wound, knowing that the shot was purported to have come from behind? Were they too out to destroy the public's faith in its government? Is there anyone EVER in your opinion whose sworn testimony was not "controlled" or "scripted" in some way?

Bill, Myers didn't make mistakes, he LIED. When one looks at his overhead view of Connally at the moment of the SBT, one can see that he shrunk Connally's size in order to suck the right armpit into the bullet trajectory. I demonstrate this in the Single-Bullet Theory section of my presentation. Secondly, Ashton is not entirely wacky to use the entrance location he uses. This is, after all, the official exit location of the HSCA FPP. This is purportedly the location of the beveled exit on the mystery photo. But no matter where Ashton notes the entrance/exit the problem for your theory is the same. You hold that the shot came from Kennedy's right, and yet the left side of Kennedy's brain was undamaged. Now this means that either the bullet came from in front of Kennedy (the middle of the railroad bridge) or only slightly to his right (the far north end of the bridge/far west end of the knoll). Or that the bullet came from below and was deflected upwards (the highly unlikely gutter shot). Or that it GULP came from behind. A shot from the badgeman location or the corner of the picket fence does not work. I've been to Dealey Plaza and stood in these locations. Everyone's first impression is on how close the cars on Elm are to these positions. Their second impression is often how little time one would have to get off a shot at a car moving across one's view at any kind of speed. Their third impression is often that they are looking at the sides of the faces of the passengers in the cars rolling by. This should make them wonder how the bullet entered on the right side of the head and failed to continue on to the left side. As a result many walk away scratching their heads. Often into the Sixth Floor Museum, where they hope to get the REAL story. The stubborn and illogical insistence that the head shot was fired from the knoll has done more to drive people over to the LN side than any other issue, IMO. People come to Dealey Plaza in droves, take a look, and decide all CTs are nuts. It's a shame.

Ashton says a lot of things that aren't accurate, but accuracy is not something he strives for anyway. Pat, you are another one who chooses not to fit all the pieces together. For you to take the position that the Dallas doctors, among the 30 witnesses who said the same, didn't see nothing but hair and mistook that for avulsed bones on the back of the President's head is ridiculous. Bill Miller Bill, you are 100% wrong in this instance. I started out by reading Groden, and looking at the "Groden head" in The Killing of A President. He had a large entrance wound on the front of the head AND a large exit wound on the back of the head. The Parkland doctors saw only ONE wound and described the wound seen in the autopsy photos, with the exception that they remembered it being towards the back of the head. I decided to research whether or not looking at someone lying down could lead someone to misremember the location of a wound in the middle of that person's hair, and found a MOUNTAIN of research suggesting not only that such a mistake was possible, but likely. When I realized that Kennedy was not only on his back but in the Trendelenburg position, I realized that this is what happened. If you want to continue to believe in the mythical rear head wound, go right ahead, but you should really stop deceiving people into believing the "volcano shape" in the Zapruder film for a split second represents an exit. As stated, it was just hair. (I never said that the Parkland doctors were confused by this hair--that would make no sense as they hadn't even seen the Zapruder film.) As far as Dr. Clark, he saw one large wound and assumed it to be both entrance and exit. I share his appraisal. You seem to be saying there was a large entrance on the top of the head AND a large exit towards the back. If I am incorrect and you share my appraisal of the head wound--that it was one large wound--I apologize. As it is, we share at least one perception--both of us feel certain there was no impact on the back of the head at frame 313, and that the bullet impacted on the top of Kennedy's head at the purported exit. I just think it came from behind and you just think it came it from in front. If it came from in front, how do you explain the fragments on the front seat? It's not that it's impossible they were planted. I'm just trying to understand your perspective...

A couple of points. 1. Ashton is way off base in calling Bill a WC defender. What nonsense! The WC tried to avoid the whole back of the head/in front of the ear dichotomy in the eyewitness statements. They accepted testimony that the wound was on the back of the head AND in the front of the head and never tried to resolve the issue. The HSCA tried to resolve the issue by lying about it. 2. Ashton is right on in that there is NO evidence for a large exit wound on the back of Kennedy's head visible in the Zapruder film. This is why Livingston and Lifton joined the Fetzer camp and now believe the Z film is fake, if i understand them correctly. Miller is pretty much alone in asserting that the avulsion (or "volcano shape" as Groden calls it) apparent on the back of the head is anything but hair. IT WAS HAIR. A quick snap of the skull causes long hair to react a split second later. That Kennedy's haircut was long in this part is confirmed by the left lateral autopsy photo. A close look at Kennedy's arrival in Fort Worth allows one to see Kennedy's hair responding to the wind. It blows into a similar volcano shape. I've captured this image and include it in my greatly-expanded presentation, which will hopefully be made available in the near future. 3. The misperception that Kennedy's wound was on the back of his head was caused by his being viewed while he was lying exclusively on his back. This leads to rotation errors. Think about it. How could any of the witnesses claiming to have seen a wound on the back of Kennedy's head have seen it if he was lying on his back the whole time. Particularly in that he was lying in the TRENDELENBURG position. In the Trendelenburg position a wound on the top of Kennedy's head above his ear would be at the far back of the space occupied by his head. Is this a coincidence? No freakin' way. It's time for people to get over the whole "the witnesses said the wound was on the back of the head therefore the autopsy photos must be fake" red herring and look at the actual evidence. Guess what? It shows there were two shooters. FROM BEHIND. And quite possibly a third shooter or distraction somewhere to the west of the TSBD as well.

I've been trying to make this point for two years but here I go again. Lean slightly forward. Look at your left knee. Now from behind your head SLAP your head above your right ear downward. Voila! Kennedy's movement in the Zapruder film has been replicated! No mystery about it at all. The x-rays show the fractures at the top of the head preceded the fractures at the back of the head. The x-rays show that bullet fragments were scattered all over the ENTRANCE location above the right ear. The section of brain purportedly holding these fragments DID NOT exist, as there was no cerebrum in the upper right quadrant. Furthermore, there is no backspatter squirting from the back of the head in the Zapruder film. There is NO impact on the back of the head apparent in Z-313. As the skull was travelling forward at almost a foot per frame, and the flight of the Harper fragment indicates the impact occurred midway between 312 and 313, there should be a cloud of blood stretching 6 inches to a foot behind Kennedy's head, IF there was a high speed impact on the back of his head. And yet there is nothing. Sturdivan's and Lattimer's filmed skull tests ALWAYS showed forward AND backward spatter. Sturdivan testified about this before the HSCA and showed them an impact on a can of tomatoes. The explosion goes both ways. One should conclude therefore that there is NO impact on the back of the head at 313. Only by the temple. FROM BEHIND. Dr. Clark testified that the large head wound was in his opinion a tangential wound, a wound of both entrance and exit. Tangential wounds leave keyhole entrances. When placed into position on Kennedy's head the Harper fragment forms the upper margin of a keyhole entrance. This is all discussed and demonstrated ad nauseum in my presentation. P.S. Shock of all shocks Ashton and I agree on something...

For three years now I have read and heard people complaining about Halliburton getting rich off their Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) service contract with the US government for Iraq. A quick perusal of Halliburton’s cash flow at Yahoo Finance shows how much they are actually making. In 2003, Halliburton did not make a profit. They had a net loss of 820 million dollars. In 2004, they lost 979 million. In 2005 they made a profit of 2.3 billion. The actual profit from the KBR contract is a very small percentage of Halliburton’s overall profit. The gross revenue from the KBR contract is high, but the overhead expenses eat up most of the profit. In 2005 Halliburton’s gross revenues were 21 billion. For the first 9 months of 2006, KBR’s gross revenues were 7.1 billion, roughly a third of Halliburton’s gross revenues. However, KBR’s net profit for the first nine months of 2006 were a mere $119 million. KBR has been a low-performing subsidiary of Halliburton for quite some time. They would like to sell it but there aren’t any buyers. Whatever numbers you are reading, forget 'em. They have no bearing on reality. Remember that Halliburton was found to have over-charged the government by hundreds of millions of dollars, and that this was written off as a misunderstanding without their having to repay the money. There have undoubtedly been some games played with the books. (Seriously, do you think Bush's SEC would ever go after Halliburton?) The real issue is why was Halliburton given a COST-PLUS contract. The Bush Ad said it was because the war came upon us so suddenly that there was no time to take bids. Of course, it came out later that they'd been planning the invasion since 2001. OOOPS. A COST-PLUS contract is a crime against humanity in my opinion. The nature of such a contract guarantees corruption and inefficiency. Many of the Halliburton employees in Iraq make 4-5 times the amount of the serviceman beside them. And yet the more they are paid, the more profit Hallibuirton is guaranteed according to the terms of a COST-PLUS contract. This has been disastrous for American morale. And should be investigated. It would have to be considered more than a coincidence that Cheney's company was awarded a 7 billion dollar cost-plus contract just when it was bleeding money, and that the existence of this contract assured investors of the solvency of the company and its stock value grew as a result. I believe it was no less than the Wall Street Journal that looked into this and found that Cheney made over 20 million on the deal. I'm going on memory here but the whole deal smells BAD, even to the GAO.

Gerry, you may very well be right about Robertson. I'm pretty sure I read that he was responsible for the bombing but it didn't make a whole lot of sense seeing as he was in charge of PM operations and was not himself a pilot. Was DeLarm working under him? Perhaps what I read was that Robertson was held accountable for the bombing, and only inferred that he'd performed the bombing. In any regard, would you agree with me that the agents I named were on the wild side, and not the "yes sir, anything you say, sir" types? As far as your work in L.A., I was reading recently (remember, I'm a book reader) about a series of bombings in L.A. from the mid 60's to mid 70's. These bombings were almost exclusively against leftist targets, and were apparently not investigated with the full force of the LAPD. Were you aware of any militant right-wing groups in L.A. during this period? Besides the Minutemen, of course. Were any of them affiliated with any religious groups?

If memory serves, in the 1950's, between 1953 and 1956, NINE senators died in office. Several of these were replaced by governors of a different party with senators from a different party. A number of these deaths were suspicious. As a result of these deaths, the contol of the senate changed hands three or four times. At one point during this period JFK was deathly ill on his back. Nixon is purported to have sent word that should there be a tie vote, and his vote as veep be the tie-breaker, he wouldn't take advantage of JFK's illness and vote any way different than JFK. If this is true, it was Nixon at his best. Anyhow, the net result of all these deaths was that another JOHNSON came to power--LBJ. And then he had a heart attack and almost lost it all. Since that time, only a handful of senators have died in office, most by accidents of one kind or another. It makes me wonder if there wasn't some curare in the drinking water up on Capitol Hill.

An observation with a great deal of reason and rationale to back it up. Ashton Okay, now we're talking. Who had ties to United Fruit? Dulles, Dulles, Beetle Smith, Cabot Lodge, Tommy the Cork, etc... These men were all closely affiliated with, or members of, the Eisenhower Administration. Operation Success was an operation performed by the Eisenhower Administration, on behalf of members of the administration and their cronies... If one is to use this as an analogy, it is inescapable that someone in the Kennedy Administration was gonna personally benefit from Kennedy's death. Who would that be? Johnson... And who was backing Johnson? Oilmen, military contractors... To exclude them from the list is illogical, IMO. IF, in fact, Helms was the orchestrator of the assassination, and McCone was cut out of the loop, what would be Helms' motivation? Helms had close ties to Johnson. Helms was Johnson's boy, not the other way around... Johnson, the FBI, and the Justice Department orchestrated the cover-up. To exclude Johnson from the list of those most likely to have inspired the assassination simply makes no sense...

Oh hell yes and twernt no "rouge" elements. Ashton Oh, common guys and gals.....some of the others mentioned played bit parts in the piece...... Thank you, Peter. To say that the CIA did it on its own and not as part of a policy designed or co-ordinated with one of the groups listed above is juvenile and idiotic, in my opinion. You might as well say the BOOGEYMAN did it. To say that the CIA as an organization did it is to say that John McCone ordered Kennedy's death, and that Barnes, Hunt, Phillips, Morales, Robertson, etc were just taking orders from above. I see no reason to think these men, who had reputations for exceeding their authority, were so gosh-darned loyal to anything beyond their determined hatred of communism. Hunt, Morales and Robertson had huge emotional investments in the anti-Castro cause. Barnes hated Kennedy for blaming Dulles and Bissell for the Bay of Pigs. Barnes sent guns to anti-Trujillo forces in a diplomatic pouch and gave orders to the embassy not to tell the state department. Robertson, without receiving any orders to do so, bombed a British ship during the Guatemalan operation. These men were cowboys. I find it quite curious that Mr. Gray, who came to this forum insisting that Nixon was framed in the Watergate affair, is now dipping his toes in the Kennedy assassination, and insisting upon Johnson's innocence. Ashton, what is it about Washington that makes you think that corrupt scumbags intent on performing horrible acts end up only at Langley? Is there a force-field stopping such monsters from entering the city limits? If you could list the presidential crimes of recent history, and the impeachable offenses performed by Richard Nixon, you'd have a lot more credibility, IMO. Like you care, I know...

Ashton, what are you getting at? Do you suspect Tosh of spreading CIA disinformation? As far as myself, if repeatedly stating on the internet and in public that I believe CIA agents played a role in Kennedy's murder makes me a CIA sockpuppet, I'm proud to be one. Now just tell me, whose hand is in my opening?

Ashton, what are you getting at? Do you suspect Tosh of spreading CIA disinformation? As far as myself, if repeatedly stating on the internet and in public that I believe CIA agents played a role in Kennedy's murder makes me a CIA sockpuppet, I'm proud to be one. Now just tell me, whose hand is in my opening?

Throughout the past year, I've been creating a small database of eyewitness statements regarding the sound of the shots. The first signed statement of Ralph Yarborough is his statement to the Warren Commission in July, 1964. Here he said that the l;ast two shots were bunched together. Besides that, I have a quote from him printed in the Texas Observer from 11-29-63. Here he says the first two shots are bunched. This quote is in opposition to his statement to the Warren Commission. I'm looking for any other early quotes from Yarborough, so I can decide whether he was simply misquoted by The Texas Observer, or whether he had in fact changed his mind about the shots. Any help appreciated. Thanks, Pat

Christopher, if you have the relative figures cited above, please provide them. I am very skeptical they spent even ten percent as much on Gates as they did Bin Laden. I, for one, wish they'd spent more energy going after Gates. It may have helped prevent the actions of Enron etc, and the subsequent theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the American public by criminal businessman.

Myra, you may also be interested to know that there was a move in the seventies to update public school history books, and teach history from multi-cultural view points, and downplay the "and then on blank day the president did blank" approach to history so prevalent in the standard texts. During the Reagan years this met a huge backlash. One conservative congressman's wife started a national campaign to have the school books re-written to focus more on the incredible accomplishments of Washington, Lincoln, etc and less on the accomplishments of Big Bill Haywood and Harriett Tubman, etc... Somewhere in my stacks I have a book written by the All-American family that brought this textbook crisis to this woman's attention. In any event, this congressman's wife's campaign helped her husband's career immensely and made him a "darling" of the Reagan right. Her name was Lynne Cheney and her successful campaign gave us Dick.

Excellent. Thank you John! Myra, a few years back, a best seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me addressed the questions in your first post. It was written by James Loewen, a college history professor who was disgusted by the amount of misinformation contained in the high school texts. He goes through, point by point, from Columbus to Lincoln to Wilson to Helen Keller to Vietnam, and shows how American high school history texts are largely propaganda, designed to convince the people that, while the U.S. has occasionally stumbled, we are bound for glory and the "shining city on the hill" Reagan fantasized about. He shows how the texts avoid Columbus' religious zeal and slave-taking, Wilson's racism, and Helen Keller's communism. He also shows how, for the past 100 years, the text books have down-played Lincoln's anti-slavery stance, and the south's pro-slavery commitment, as pre-texts for the civil war. He says this was done to appease southern states, pre-dominantly Texas, that have extremely conservative review boards and will prevent schools from carrying books which make the south look like the bad guy in the war. TFB. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest.

_______________________________________________ Not at all a fanciful scenario, that. And let us keep in mind what transpired after the pardon: there were TWO assassination attempts on Ford -with Nelson waiting in the wings. Interesting, for want of a better word, how the media handled those unsuccessful assassination attempts...there were a couple on Clinton, also, but they seemed more like warnings and were carried out from somewhat of a distance. JG Omygod I forgot all about the attempts on Ford. Hm. Thanks John. Geez, they tried twice within seventeen days?! "...Those were the words composed by Sara Jane Moore just before her failed assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford on September 22, 1975. Ford had survived another failed assassination attempt by one Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme a mere seventeen days earlier." http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Sara%20Jane%20Moore But Fromm's gun wasn't loaded--weird: "Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme ...Witness testimony of the incident varies. Lyn was very calm, "Easy boys, I'm still." One witness said Lyn had said, "It wasn't loaded anyway." That testimony was withheld from the trial." However... "Sara Jane Moore ...At the tender age of 42, she embraced the so-called "counter-culture" way of life and went underground. Apparently she didn't go too deeply underground. The FBI managed to dig her up and in their infinite wisdom, decided she would be a prime candidate to gather information about the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Poor Sara. I guess she wasn't that good of an undercover agent. She was quickly found out by her friends in the underground circles and ostracized. What's a poor girl gotta do to win her friends back and get a little self-esteem? How `bout shooting the President? As President Ford was leaving the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore was about forty feet away. She pulled out her .38 caliber Smith & Wesson and took aim. Fortunately for President Ford, a bystander in the crowd by the name of Oliver Sipple saw what was about to happen and grabbed Moore's arm just as she fired. Instead of hitting its intended target, the bullet ricocheted off a wall and slightly wounded a nearby cab driver. She was quickly apprehended and brought to trial. At the proceedings, she never once tried to claim her innocence. As a matter of fact, she had this to say. "There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun." Sara Jane Moore received a life sentence. In 1979, she managed to escape prison but it was short lived. She was apprehended the next day and returned to prison." Myra, when your "evil Nelson" theory starts taking wings, whereby Manson follower Sqeaky Fromme and wacko Sara Jane Moore are part of the plot, it's time to let it rest. Rocky was never gonna get elected in 76. He didn't even run. Ford dumped him from the VP slot, in fact, because he considered Rocky a political liability, WITHIN HIS OWN PARTY. It was feared that Reagan would get the nomination, with Kennedy assassination conspiracy-promoter Richard Schweicker as his VP, unless Ford made an overture to the right-wing by bringing Dole aboard. Now if you really want to confuse the plot, you can have Reagan--a member of the Rocky commission--picking Schweicker on purpose--to ruin Schweicker's career, and Rocky and Ford, Warren Commission defenders, giving him the "wink-wink-you'll get it next time, Ron." But how reasonable is this? Do you see Reagan, who was already a geezer, putting his presidential hopes aside and taking a fall for Ford? I don't. It's important to understand that the Democrats had total control of congress in the seventies and that much of what Nixon and Ford did, including the selection of their veeps, was done to appease the Dems. As far as Agnew, he was not forced out by a Rockefeller-led cabal, but was sacrificed by Nixon himself, in order to slow down the Watergate investigation. Agnew himself knew this to be true and makes a case for this in his little-read book. (As opposed to Mao's Little Red Book.) Ford was picked as Nixon's VP because he was one of the few Republican loyalists popular enough with the Dems to get confirmed. Ford picked Rocky as his VP for the exact same reasons.

Larry, I was just taking a look at some of the new documents on your site. On one of the Jenkins documents, it lists his experience, including his stint in the USMC. Do these coincide with Oswald's experiences in any way? Was Jenkins ever at Atsugi?

One of the many ironies surrounding the Rocky Commission is that its chief counsel was David Belin, one of the Warren Commission's investigating attorneys and a close ally of Gerald Ford's. (He accompanied Ford during Ford's HSCA testimony.) The irony is that CIA director Colby was forthcoming about the assassination plots proposed on foreign leaders, and Rockefeller told him to cool it, and Belin wrote about the assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the Commission's report, but was told to cut it out. Neither man understood that the Rocky Commission was an attempt at curtailing the upcoming congressional investigations, with only a tangential interest in getting at the truth. As far as smelliness involving the medical testimony, besides the deliberate distortion of Wecht's testimony, there is a problem with the report of Fred Hodges. Hodges said the Kennedy photographs and x-rays supported the findings of the autopsy report, apparently oblivious that the Clark Panel determined that the entrance wound was four inches higher. Where things get smelly is that no one seems to have noticed what Hodges actually said. It has been reported ad nauseum that the Rockefeller Commission medical panel confirmed the higher entry of the Clark Panel. When I brought these findings to a radiology forum a few months back, and asked the forum members who was right--radiologist Fred Hodges of the Rockefeller Commission or Russell Morgan of the Clark Panel, I couldn't find ONE radiologist willing to offer an opinion. Not one. The medical evidence is undoubtedly the key to breaking this whole thing wide open but the problem is that we first must get some doctors willing to talk about these things. And they don't exist.