Pat Speer

So whats hanging over the lower chrome strip John? Ever going to deal with that little tidbit again or are you still trying to undersand how reflections work? John, I'm confused by this photo. (Obviously.) The two versions of the photo scanned directly from the Sat. Post by Floyd and Jack seemed to show an intact shape, looking like the toe area of a shoe, hanging over the chrome strip. Now you're posting images where the strip seems to run through the "toe of the shoe." Did this line show up when you lightened the photo? Is this from the Yarborough Exhibit? Where did this line come from? If this line is real, then Craig's observation that the dark shape is overhanging the chrome and could not be a shadow would appear to be incorrect...

Pat This post does not make any sense. What'cha smokin out there in LA land??? I know you are not asking my opinion, but I am responding none the less. Indirectly and, then directly: On a different thread you mentioned that you'd just seen Stone the other day. If you see him again would you tell him for me that I personally consider "JFK" the most important film made in my life. (Prior to that "Executive Action" - ( Donald Freed and Dalton Trumbo)- held that position, tied with "Seven Days In May". In fact I advise people to see both movies, in that exact order. What was and what could have been; if only.... So Helms SAID JFK was "KGB influenced"? Do you know how utterly silly this sounds here??? To us? YOu can peddle this bs with the "uneducated -in- the -school -of conspiracy politics, but it won't wash here. Stone read Jim Garrison's book, "On the Trail Of the Assassins" and decided to film it. (I read his words long ago on this in an interview) ... Of course he borrowed from Jim Marrs and that GREAT patriot, Col. Flec Proudy (ably played by Donald Sutherland -"Just cal me 'X')- so who the hell cares what Helms; allegedy SAID??? Are you flipping back to your CIA -spy mode here? Or are you simply still stalking Ashton? Whatever, it comes across as terribly insincere. Imagine that ? As to Ashton Gray "thinking Stone's "Nixon" was "CIA-influenced" your logic here is sorely lacking: EARTH TO PAT: NO ONE THINKS TRICKY DICK WAS A GOOD GUY. HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO SAY IT? THIS AIN'T SOME INSIPID GAME OF 'EITHER/OR' . Sorry to have to raise my voice but you keep rehashing this same nonsence. I do not know Ashton Gray, never laid eyes on the guy. But, that said, I have read his work here and there is ZERO to even remotely suggest that he's a fan of the Trickster. You have seen me on this forum for almost two years now Pat. You have seen the lengths I go to try to have us all work TOGETHER, toward a common goal of understanding and solving this stuff. But when I see words twisted, repeatedly, I am compelled to take a stand. Makes no difference to me who is doing the twisting. It could be my own husband and I would have the exact same response. A lie is a lie is a lie. Repeating it 40 times does not make it true. Dawn Dawn, as stated on the Question For Ashton thread, I do not believe he is who he says he is. I do not believe that is even his image on his avatar. One of the things that made me suspicious about him was his vicious attacks on men such as Caddy and Baldwin. I suspected he was a Nixon defender, out to resurrect Nixon's image. I asked him, perhaps pestered him, to answer a direct question--"Was Richard Nixon guilty of impeachable offenses?" To date he has refused to answer that question. He has described Nixon as "irrelevant," etc. He has also ranted regularly and repeatedly about how the release of the Pentagon Papers and the overthrow of Nixon led to untold deaths in Southeast Asia. This is revisionist history at its most bizarre. There is no evidence that North Vietnam would have been satisifed with a divided nation. Ashton's statements, therefore, can only be taken as an indication that he thought Nixon would have WON the Vietnam War if it weren't for that darned conspiracy of peaceniks and the CIA. This is loooneytunes, IMO. My comments about Nixon were intended to demonstrate the silliness of Ashton's assertions that myself and Mr. Carroll are CIA-influenced. If one is to assume that anyone insisting Nixon brought Watergate upon himself is a CIA disinformationist, then that should extend to Mr. Stone as well. After all, he spent years tryinig to dramatize this very point to the world. But if one concludes that Stone is CIA, one has to grapple with the fact that Helms suggested that Garrison's investigation, and Stone's movie, were both KGB influenced. I was smart-assedly asking Ashton if Helms' statements were designed to provide a cover for Stone. I apologize if my post was more confusing than amusing.

I think Jack wins this round, Bill. He asked a relatively innocent question and you jumped all over him. While you may be anticipating Jack's saying the film came from Richard Helms' closet or something equally bizarre, he has not in fact made any such assertions. Do you know where this film came from? If my understanding is correct, the copies don't have images between the sprocket holes. So where did this one come from? Did someone somewhere figure out a way to copy the images between the sprocket holes along with the film? Or is this the original film before the MPI retouching? I don't pretend to be an expert on the film. Do you find anything odd about this image?

My understanding was that Jennings was the producer of the show and was personally responsible for its content. I believe he personally received the Edward R. Murrow award for its creation. As part of his deal with ABC, he was allowed to create and star in so many news specials per year. This was one of his specials. It's interesting, nevertheless, that the program has been repackaged and distributed world wide and on the history channel, without Jennings' presence. Since you've only seen a few minutes of it, and most here have only seen it on repeats or on DVD, I'll recount a humorous anecdote. My brother taped it for me on ABC when it premiered. Towards the end of the program there is a really biased section on Oliver Stone's JFK, and how it is a damned lie and complete fiction, etc. This goes on for like ten minutes! In the middle of this segment, however, there is a commercial for a popular movie now available on DVD in a tenth anniversary edition with bonus features...Oliver Stone's JFK! I'd love to find out if someone at ABC booked the ad on purpose, to make Jennings look silly--his company hawking the very product he's denouncing--or if someone booked the ad unaware of the content of Jennings program. In any event, it's positively surreal. I met Stone for a minute the other day. I wish I'd asked him his thoughts on the Jennings special.

Sturgis was probably just talking out of his rump, as usual. Did everyone forget that he himself was a disinformationist telling newspapers in the days after the assassination that Oswald was working for Castro? Anyone convinced that Sturgis is a reliable source should re-read Fonzi's "The Last Investgation." IMO. By the time Haig was Nixon's Chief of Staff, Helms was already in Iran. Most conspiracy theories hold that Haig was reporting to the Pentagon, if anything. Is there any evidence he was close to Bennett or Helms? Is there any evidence Butterfield was close to Bennett or Helms? If so, please post...

To quote myself from a long time ago, when I was a buyer for a wholesaler hard at work trying to get "volume discounts" from our suppliers, "the problem with economic competition is that no one believes in it, least of all capitalists." A successful capitalist, in most cases, is not someone who provides a good or service at a reasonable rate, and outworks his competition, but someone who outmaneuvers or crushes his competition, so that he can have the field to himself and charge an unreasonable rate. "Greed is good."

In the Old Crone and Midget Analysis section of the Single-Bullet Theory section of my online presentation, I use actual images from Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet to prove Mr. Myers' work is deliberately misleading. He moves the wounds from angle to angle to sell his fraudulent representation of what happened. On the overhead view, he shrinks Connally's body size so his right shoulder will be further from the side of the car and in line with a bullet from the sniper's nest going through Kennedy. If he'd only said "some adjustments were made to show what we believe happened" or something like that I might let him off the hook. But he represented his animation as being as accurate as humanly possible, and ABC presented his animation as being as accurate as humanly possible, to millions and millions of people. Most have no idea how much damage the disniformation in Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet has done. I meet people all the time who tell me they were skeptical about the single-bullet theory until they saw it PROVED on TV! And what kills me is that many of the same people who revile Oliver Stone over the inaccuracies in his admittedly semi-fictional movie, JFK, completely excuse Jennings and Myers for their deliberate distortions in a DOCUMENTARY. And to make matters worse, both Jennings and Myers received awards for their lies... All this would make me believe in Operation Mockingbird if I were prone to do so. Unfortunately, my estimation of the intelligence level of men like Jennings is not all that high. I think he was just STUPID enough to fall for Myers' nonsense, and just ARROGANT enough to think he was doing the world a service by exposing Myers' "truth" to an eagerly awaiting public...

Don't you think they were aware of the appearance of a conflict of interest? What did you want Cheney to do? He had already divested himself of all Halliburton stock. A friend of mine's father, a very patriotic Born-again Christian type, stopped supporting Bush and Cheney on this very issue. If I remember correctly it was the Wall Street Journal that looked into Cheney's ties to Haliburton, and found that he hadn't sold his stocks at all, but had put them in a blind trust. My friend's dad did some quick math and figured out that Cheney had in fact made something like 30 million off the war in Iraq. (Subsequent edit: Don't quote me on this. John posts the real story below.) This sickened him a bit, particularly when the GAO sued Haliburton for over-billing. Pigs at the trough, indeed. Yes, I'm sure the death-cult extremists who slammed airplanes into our buildings, or blew up resorts in Bali, or blew up innocent train passengers in London and Bombay had Halliburton uppermost in their minds. How great it must be to be a terrorist these days. The very Westerners you're trying to kill make excuse after excuse for your murderous behavior. It's the ultimate "get out of jail free" card. This is a war for civilization. WAKE UP. I see, so FDR and Churchill were just as bad as Hitler. Fighting real evil makes you evil. Gothca. I take it you don't have any West Coast Japanese ancestors. Or history books. I'm also pretty sure FDR ordered the execution of German saboteurs, sans trial. I don't understand your last comments. Nowhere did I say that Churchill and FDR were as evil as Hitler, although fire-bombing Dresden and Tokyo made them less than saints. As far as having any West Coast Japanese ancestors, I came about as close as a white boy can come. My ex-fiance's parents met at China Lake. The key word in my statement was NEED. Did FDR NEED to suspend civil liberties? Did he NEED to approve the camps? The answer is undoubtedly no.

When Kennedy stayed at Crosby's house, of course, it drove Sinatra up the wall. Sinatra had been remodeling his Palm Springs mansion in anticipation of Kennedy's visit. Another frequent visitor to Palm Springs was Mr. John Rosselli. Does anyone know if Rosselli was a member of the Thunderbird Country Club?

There was competition. They won the bid. If they overcharged, they will be rightly punished. What company doesn't dream of market advantages? Microsoft sure does. Who was bribed, John? Sounds like you're sitting on some bombshell info. Please share. No, I'm much more concerned about left-wing, America-hating British academics who have access to young, impressionable minds. I'm concerned about the wholesale slaughter of innocent Indian commuters that killed 200 and wounded 700. I'm concerned about home-grown Muslim extremists in the UK and North America. I'm concerned about the cowardly and craven European reaction to Muslim cartoons. I'm concerned about the pathology of hate in Iran, North Korea, and Palestine. I'm concerned about The New York Times's incomprehensible and indefensible publication of two classified anti-terrorist programs and the Times's haughty, imperious defense. Why is the Left making it easier for terrorists to kill Americans? Ostensibly, they are "protecting our freedoms." The one glaring - and unconscionable - exception? The freedom to live. Brendan, please cite any evidence you have that Haliburton ever had to submit a bid to the Bush Administration. My recollection is that they were handed no-bid cost plus (guaranteed profit) contracts for their work in Iraq. (This hardly encourages competition or competence.) It was later revealed that some of these contracts were routed through Cheney's office. Hmmm... When asked why the Bush Administration handed out these contracts without letting anyone else bid on them, the Adminstration responded that they hadn't had time because the war was so sudden. This was a damned lie, as exposed by the subsequent revelations of Paul O'Neil and Wesley Clark. I had personal reasons to disbelieve this lie. I have a friend in Special Forces who told me in December 2001 that he was training for the invasion of Iraq...not Afghanistan...Iraq. I naively thought he was joking. While I would agree with you that there are a lot of evil forces loose in the world today, I fail to see how supporting corrupt companies and lying politicians makes the world a better or safer place. Call me Pollyanna but I suspect if our government was less dishonest and hypocritical, the Islamic Fundamentalists would have a harder time selling their suicidal insanity to the impressionable young. Do you have any evidence supporting your contention that extremism can only be countered by extremism? Did Roosevelt need to suspend civil liberties in order to defeat Hitler?

I'm not so sure. The books by other CIA men have not been kind to Hunt. He may very well be trying to improve his own reputation, at the expense of others. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he dishes up some previously unexamined dirt on all the Presidential Administrations from Truman to Nixon. While I wouldn't expect any mea culpas on anything sinister, he may surprise us and discuss the assassination aspect of the Guatemalan Operation. In the official history of the Op, it is recorded that one agent screwed up and left secret material in a rented apartment. This agent was re-assigned just before the OP began. Hunt's memoirs reflect that he was shipped to Asia just before the Op he'd helped set up began. As a result, it seems likely that the "screw-up" was Hunt. What's intriguing though is that the agent who turned him in, identified as Vincent Pivall, was widely praised in an after-action report written by the para-military chief of the operation, William "Rip" Robertson. As a consequence it seems likely that Pivall was Morales. Hunt may very well discuss Morales and Robertson's role in Guatemala, and their relationship to the redacted assassination list found in the files in the nineties. (The name "Rip" was on the cover memo.) We'll see.

Thanks, Bill. You did a very good job of supporting your position. You misrepresent the history of this thread, however. I created this thread to demonstrate that the "shoe" in the Miller photo was in fact drawn-in, something I'd suspected for years. Whether it was drawn over a shape that really was a foot was not my original point. Only afterwards, after noticing what appeared to be a serrated edge like knuckles and what seemed to be lines like fingers in the "heel" part of the shoe in the Yarborough Exhibit, did Jack say he thought it was a hand and did I offer my support. I'm still confused about certain elements of the photo. Is that an antenna sticking out from the sock area? If so, where did that antenna come from? Would a black sock really show up white, not just on its edge, but over its entire visible surface? Could Clint Hill really contort his body to such an extent? Did Clint Hill really contort his body to such an extent, before they'd made the left turn from Stemmons and before he'd lost his balance? I don't know. While it makes sense that it is Hill's foot--it certainly looks more like a shoe on the better scans--it could be something else as well. What, I'm not sure. At this point, I would agree that it is most probably Hill's shoe. I think we can all learn from this thread. Some of us, including myself, should probably be less imaginative when it comes to interpreting photos. Others, however, should be more open-minded and be more controlling of their knee-jerk responses. Rather than look at the Yarborough Exhibit, or go back to the original Sat. Post article, some blindly defended the Miller photo as they knew it, with the drawn-in foot, and insisted it was printed from the original negative. A very prominent expert on the photo evidence responded to my questions by insisting that the Dallas Morning News version of the photo and the Saturday Evening Post version of the photo were the same image, and that if one of the two had been altered, it was the Post's version. I think we all now understand this isn't true. Keep up the good work. I'm still hoping for a day when you, Lamson, White, and Healy will agree on something.

Thanks, Bill, for the Croft information. I was wondering the same thing. After reading Pictures of the Pain last year, and coming across Croft's statement that he still had his original color slides, I was wondering when they'd show up. It only makes sense that it would be Trask himself to release the color Croft on the world. With the color Croft you can tell that the "bunched jacket" claims of SBT theorists are bs. The folds in the jacket are on Kennedy's right shoulder and would not lift the middle part of his jacket two inches.

I mistakenly posted this on the JFK Forum. I admit that my view of Nixon and Watergate has largely been influenced by Oliver Stone's film, Nixon. In the film, the "Watergate horrors" purported by Ashton to have been a CIA conspiracy are portrayed as inevitable events stemming from Nixon's character flaws. As some, including Richard Helms, theorized that Stone's JFK was KGB-influenced, I'm wondering if Ashton feels that Stone's subsequent film, Nixon, was CIA-influenced. If so, were Helms' statements about Stone designed to cover-up his own relationship with the film-maker?

Ashton, if we can't get the "properly constitued authorities" to take another look at the Kennedy assassination, then you don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting the "properly constituted authorities" to look at your so-called "evidence." When is the last time you heard of a criminal investigation being re-opened when most of the supposed perps have already served time, none of them have confessed to additional crimes, and the only evidence supporting their purported conspiracy is minor conflicts in their subsequent statements? Perhaps you should head over to the FBI tomorrow. I'd love to see the looks on the faces of the local agents when you tell them that the central thesis of your theory is that the former acting director of the FBI was in fact a CIA "water-carrier."

I admit that my view of Nixon and Watergate has largely been influenced by Oliver Stone's film, Nixon. Since Richard Helms, in his memoirs, suggested that the Garrison investigation and Stone's film JFK were KGB-influenced, I'm wondering what Ashton Gray's thoughts are on Stone's film, Nixon. After all, in Nixon, Stone makes no bones that the Watergate break-in and other "White House horrors" derived from Nixon's own character flaws. Was this CIA disinformation, Ashton? If so, was Stone's film JFK and Helms' subsequent comments part of a plot designed to cover-up their close working relationship?

What? Am I reading you correctly? Now you're accusing Daniel Ellsberg of complicity in the Kennedy Assassination? It just gets wilder and wilderer. And please explain why we should believe the CIA's "purpose is to deceive." Somewhere I read they were fighting a cold war, for the purpose of defeating what they believed to be a great evil, communism. The record indicates their perception of this evil was distorted, however, so that everything that was good for American interests became good and everyhing bad for American interests became a possible communist plot. Do you really mean to imply that deception was never a means to an end, but the actual end? Have you ever actually talked or met someone from the CIA? Or from the Rand Corporation? In your upside down world, you've twisted the Watergate story from Nixon's men discussing the firebombing of the Brookings Institute to the Rand Corporation's killing Kennedy and deliberately driving Nixon from office. You also villify Ellsberg for his M.A.D. theory, a concept that kept the United States and Russia at arms length, but seem completely comfortable with Nixon and Kissinger's Madman theory, in which he deliberately targeted North Vietnamese civilians in hopes it would drive the North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table. In short, the only pattern in your ramblings seems to be that Richard Nixon was a victim. You're probably the only person in history to feel more sorry for Nixon than Nixon himself. P.S. On a lighter note, what are your feelings on The Beatles? John Lennon protested the war. Was he CIA?

Your whole argument is based upon the theory that the North Vietnamese were willing to accept a divided nation, and that the peace movement in the U.S. led to the "loss" of Vietnam. This is reactionary thinking at its worst. Have you been channeling Barry Goldwater's ghost, Ashton? As far as your suggestion that the CIA somehow benefited from the release of the Pentagon Papers and/or Nixon's downfall: malarkey. Anyone with a brain cell knows the CIA was picked apart and partially dismantled after Watergate, only to return in all its glory after a certain incident in the Iranian desert. Now if you're looking for a possible CIA/right-wing conspiracy to undermine a President, THAT would be a good place to start. And yet you only seem interested in imaginary crimes committed against Richard Nixon. I wonder why that is.

The first rule of human behavior is self-preservation. When the burglars got caught, the rats scurried. If Baldwin, or McCord, or Hunt, or Dean, or Colson, or Gray, failed to adequately protect Nixon at all times, perhaps just perhaps, they were more concerned with saving their own necks. Baldwin, I believe, succeeded in his efforts. If he'd made the move to destroy evidence, he would have been indicted for something or other. While most people can appreciate the complexities of human behavior, others seem at a complete loss, and constantly fill in the blanks with "Because the CIA said so." Of course to someone with this affliction the only reason I would say such a thing is "Because the CIA said so." Scary.

Ashton, who was Robert Cushman? In your opinion, was he loyal to Nixon or Helms? Similarly, if Helms was so buddy-buddy with Hunt, and running Hunt as an operative, why did he give the Bay of Pigs documents to Ehrlichman only on the condition they NOT be shown to Hunt? I really dislike Helms, and even accept his possible involvement in the Kennedy assassination, but your assertions that he was the mastermind behind the release of the Pentagon Papers and the hiring of Hunt by the White House isn't convincing. Too much is missing. Motive, for one. As stated by Baker, Helms and Nixon had so much on each other they couldn't breathe. A reasonable man might take from this that Helms had concerns that Nixon would use the Bay of Pigs and Diem materials to his political advantage (He did.). One might even come to believe that Helms had a talk with Hunt and McCord and convinced them they should sabotage the Watergate break-in and stop Nixon before his abuse of power reached police-state levels. But to assert that Helms was feeding info to the anti-war movement, and that men such as Dean and Gray were under Helms' control even after Helms had been removed as DCI, is completely without foundation. If you could show us one FBI agent, let alone an acting director, found to be secretly working for the CIA it would be helpful. Since we know Mark Felt was confirming stories for Woodward, wouldn't it make more sense to hold that the FBI was COLLUDING with the CIA on Nixon's removal? How about it?

JL, the one other major change I noticed, besides the drawing in of the boot, was that a quarter circle was added over the shape of Connally, to give the shape an outline. The Dallas Morning News caption, by the way, called this shape Governor Connally, the AP subscribers got a caption saying it was Mrs. Connally. In Bill's post he claims that it was in fact Governor Connally, and I suspect he's right. I'm still trying to nail down exactly when the photo got changed. The Dallas Morning News, which had signed only a one-time deal with Miller, obviously changed it right away. I'm not sure if the AP photos circulated world-wide on this same day featured the "boot" or not. My beat-up 11-24 NY Times has two white arrows, revealing that they didn't simply copy the Dallas Morning News version. It's hard to distinguish which version of the photo was used, however. Still, the toe section of the boot, which is white on the Dallas Morning News "drawn-in shoe" version, appears very dark. As a consequence, I believe the NY Times version matched the Saturday Evening Post version. While this would seem to get the AP off the hook, by the publication of The Torch is Passed, they were selling the drawn-in shoe version. The shoe in this version is slightly different than the shoe in the 11-24 Dallas Morning News, indicating that it wasn't just a copy, but another retouching. If anyone has any 1963 versions of this photo, beyond the ones already posted and discussed, it might prove interesting to take a look. As per James Richards' suggestion, I gave in and purchased an 11-29-63 Time mag from e-bay. I'll let you know what it shows when it arrives. I don't pretend this is a maor breakthrough but am including a section on the media's misrepresentations of the assassination in my presentation/book.

Ashton, FYI, on 7-22 John W. Dean will be making a personal appearance at Dutton's Brentwood. If you really believe that everything we've been told about Watergate is a lie, then he must be your public enemy number 1. Maybe you'd like to stop slapping on your keyboard for a minute and confront him in person. P.S. Please explain how the CIA's purported release of the Pentagon Papers and its purported removal of Nixon from office led to the "continued murder of untold numbers in southeast Asia." Last I checked, the "Madman" theory that held that indiscriminantly bombing North Vietnamese civilians into the dirt would lead to a more lasting peace was Nixon's idea. Or are you blaming the late seventies genocide in Cambodia on Watergate? P.P.S. Am I correct to infer from this most recent post that Colson has now slipped in your estimation from unwitting dupe to knowing conspirator against his hero, Nixon?

The background to the release of the Pentagon Papers is interesting. They were first published by the New York Times. The editor, Abraham Michael Rosenthal, was the man who made this decision. This is itself very interesting as Rosenthal was at the time a strong advocate of the Vietnam War. It was later disclosed that Rosenthal used his position to keep out stories from the New York Times that were hostile to the CIA. For example, Raymond Bonner’s reports on CIA involvement in El Salvador in 1982. Bonner was recalled to the United States and placed on the New York business desk. The next person to publish extracts from the Pentagon Papers was Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post. Bradlee had links to the CIA since the early 1950s. He was another supporter of the Vietnam War. Were Rosenthal and Bradlee following CIA orders when they published the Pentagon Papers? As the release of the Pentagon Papers galvanized the anti-war movement, and helped move the anti-war movement from college campuses into the board rooms (and news rooms), the orchestrated release of these documents was almost certainly performed by forces fighting against the war. I've read nothing, ever, in the dozens of books I've read on this period of history, to indicate the CIA was secretly against the war. I find it hard to believe they'd have undertaken Operation Chaos and Operation Phoenix if they had been.

Now, this is not a reply to Mr. Carroll, because I would not tell him the directions to Hades if he had nowhere else to go, and a hot date waiting there. I've yet to see him contribute any single thing of substance; apparently he is far too busy authoring sideline carping criticisms of other people's hard-won contributions, while back-channel tag-teaming (I've got it on record in the Diem cables thread in the Watergate forum) with Pat Speer, who posted sworn testimony there that he had subtley fudged to suit his own purposes (I've got it on record in the Diem cables thread). Ashton Gray Anyone interested in seeing how something as exotic as an agent/provocateur, or something as banal as an internet xxxxx, behaves, should just sit back and read Mr. Gray's posts. He couldn't counter that Colson testified to having been aware of the creation of the cables, so he decided to attack me as having mis-typed something on purpose. Simply amazing. When a man commits a crime, and admits to it, and multiple witnesses acknowledge they either witnessed the crime or it's being covered up, and NO ONE who knows the admitted criminal or the witnesses has the least bit doubt the crime occurred, it is simply wacky to decide the crime never occurred. Since Ashton has theorized this non-crime was invented to damage Nixon, perhaps he can show us how this non-crime damaged Nixon, as none of the men involved in the commission of this crime ever testified to Nixon having any knowledge of the crime or its cover-up. Perhaps he also can explain why inventing a story about faked cables was so much easier than actually creating fake cables. ___________________________________________________________ So what don't you see here, Pat? It seems pretty cut and dry, to me. What's cut and dry? I honestly don't get it. From the moment of the arrests Hunt was trying to save his own skin. By putting the evidence in the White House safe, he forced the White House to either destroy the evidence, thereby incriminating themselves, or deny the evidence existed, thereby incriminating themselves. Either way, he had the ability to blackmail them. In the following days, he repeatedly called Colson, and Colson's secretary, trying to force Colson to come to his rescue. Colson, for his part, wrote a memo for the record distancing himself from Hunt's activities. As stated, the Watergate story only makes sense when you understand the characters and the dynamics between them. I don't pretend to understand every aspect or evey element of the story, but know enough to see through Ashton's nonsense. For example, Liddy hated Dean for his disloyalty to Nixon, as proven by Liddy's book and the most recent lawsuit between them, instigated after Liddy publicly theorized that Dean's wife had been a prostitute. In Ashton's world, these men were co-conspirators in bringing down the otherwise-innocent Richard Nixon. This is mind-numbing. P.S. I just looked up to see JOHN DEAN on the Daily Show, complaining about the fascist turn in this country, and criticizing the CIA for its acceptance of torture. Yeah, he's a CIA operative... Get real.

Mr. Healy, If the truth is to ever come out, we had better care about how the LN community, the government, and the general public reacts to us. If we are to be taken seriously in our charges and evidence, we need to have some credibility. I've learned in life that the messenger is just as important as the message. I don't care how true the information/warning/evidence is, if the person(s) presenting it is perceived to be a "nut" or an "idiot", that information will not be taken seriously. I know, it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is. We have to live with it. Yes, photos have been altered, but not every alteration was for sinister reasons. I truly believe that the foot in the Miller photo was enhanced for publication right after the assassination, when the foot was thought to be Kennedy's. Lots of misinformation was going around in the first 24 hours, and while a good percentage of it was intentional, a certain amount of it were just simple mistakes. It would be nice to tell if there was blood on the side of the car from Kennedy's hand (assuming the foot is actually a hand), proving a through shot in the neck. Even if the photograph could be improved to the point where we could tell for sure, whos to say the blood wasn't from the head wound? We'll never know because the photo isn't good enough for that. I just hate to see everyone bouncing off the walls for days, and when we get done, be right back where we started from. Why doesn't someone find a Lincoln convertible, or other convertible, and try to replicate Hill's position, then post pictures? You could probably do it in the back of a small-bed pickup truck. Maybe we're just running out of things to investigate, or paths to go down. As for me, I fail to see the signifigance of this particular photo (the Miller photo) in the grand scheme of things. Flame away. JWK I pretty much agree with you. Part of my fascination with this particular photo comes from Gary Mack's insistence that the Dallas Morning News Miller photo was printed directly from the negative and was identical to the photo in the Saturday Evening Post photo. As revealed by your comparison, and James' subsequent post of the Dallas Morning News version of the photo, this is untrue. I was wondering if Bill and Craig would ever admit the photos were different and that the differences were not just printing anomalies. As they've admitted that, the point, as unimportant as it is, has been made: the Dallas Morning News and the AP made the shape in the photo look more like a foot without knowing for sure it was a foot. Big deal, I know. They were far from alone in mis-representing the photographic record.