Pat Speer

John, this last statement is incredibly off-the-mark. I can't believe you believe this. On the Diem cables thread, it was demonstrated that the perpetrator of a forgery testified to committing his crime, and that the President's private counsel and the acting director of the FBI testified to seeing the forged documents. The President's top political adviser testified to his awareness of the forged documents, to his role in the decision leading to the passing of the documents to the acting director of the FBI, and to his witnessing a package he believed contained the forged documents being handed to the acting FBI director. The perpetrator's superior, while denying personal responsibility for the crime, nevertheless testified to his knowledge of the creation of the forged documents, and insisted he contacted Life magazine to make sure the forged documents were not used in a story. Additionally, the ex-Attorney General of the United States testified that he participated in a conspiracy to cover up various crimes committed by White House employees, including the creation of the forged documents. This alone should convince a reasonable person that the forgery occurred. But there are also the tapes of the President's conversations, in which the top political adviser told the President that the confessed perpetrator's boss had admitted to him that he'd ordered the creation of the forged documents. A subsequent tape has another close Presidential aide telling the President that he believed the perpetrator's boss had ordered the forgery and the President stating that the perpetrator's boss had told him the creation of the forged documents was due to a misunderstanding. From this, the only rational debate should be whether the perpetrator really was ordered to commit his forgery, or whether he did it on his own. Someone anxious to show that the CIA was behind the Watergate scandal might wish to conclude the perpetrator created the cables on his own in order to entrap his boss, a close adviser to the President. But instead Mr. Gray has concluded that the CRIME NEVER OCCURRED AND NO FORGED DOCUMENTS EVER EXISTED. This is beyond bizarre. When the insanity of his theory was exposed to the cold light of day, he kept trying to deflect the argument, accusing those who disagreed with him of CIA involvement. He accused me of spreading disinformation when I typed a period instead of a dash. He also failed to deal with the evidence presented, ignoring the taped conversations entirely. His floundering was pathetic, IMO. I honestly felt sorry for the man. I repeatedly asked him to modify his theory to try and have it make sense, and held out hope that he would harness his energy into doing research built upon a logical foundation. If you really believe that he whupped me intellectually then I'm at a complete loss of words.

Walters was never part of the inner circle of the CIA and spent most of his life as a diplomat and translator. In his book, he has nothing but nice things to say about Mossadegh, for example, and pulls no punches about the economic reasons for Mossadegh's removal.

In Bill's post #138, he shows the Newman photo. Is it my eyes or is there a black shape sticking out from the end of the seat? If there is a shape, maybe this is the same thing evident in the Miller photo.... Just a thought.

I recall making a post that pointed out that if that was JFK's hand, then his arm has to be bent at the elbow to get that steep angle. That would make his arm as long, if not longer, than his legs. I never heard you address that point, but if one wishes to believe it is JFK's hand, then I guess an arm can be as long as you wish it to be. Bill Miller I would agree that if it's JFK's hand then he was not laying on the seat on his left side as might otherwise be assumed. Perhaps Jackie was moving him around a bit to make room for Hill in the car. My goal in this thread was to discuss photo alteration in the media. There is no way the Yarborough Exhibit and the 11-24 Dallas Morning News photo depict the same shape or foot and you know it. The photo has undoubtedly been retouched. For some reason, rather than admit this simple fact, you and Lamson have decided to argue whether or not it was Hill's foot. The point, repeated now for the umpteenth time, is that the Dallas Morning News and the AP had NO WAY of knowing if it was Clint Hill's foot or any foot at all, but sold MILLIONS of photos in newspapers and books around the world with the blatantly false claim the photo depicted Kennedy's foot. I feel this is symbolic of the media's overall lack of concern for accuracy.

Does anyone have the 11-29-63 Time Magazine? I'm trying to determine when and how the photo with a foot over the side of the car (the Miller photo) was changed. The photo was reportedly published in the 11-29-63 issue of Time. If someone can scan it and post it on this thread, or e-mail it to me at PJSPEARE@AOL.com it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Ashton, since a lot of my problems with your assertions is that I think you're a fake, and since a lot of our time has been taken up with petty bickering as a result of these doubts, why don't we put our doubts aside and meet someplace? We're both Angelenos. Maybe we can meet somewhere in Hollywood. How about Hollywood and Highland? We can meet. I can check out your hat. You can show me an ID verifying that your name is really Ashton Gray, and we can be on our way. Or have lunch. Your pick. If you find this prospect threatening, bring along some friends. P.S. As witnessed below, some have perceived this as a threat. I assure you it is not meant to be so. Having been raised in the entertainment capital of the world, and having written a few screenplays and attended a few screenwriting conferences, I have met many colorful Hollywood types. Many of these have taken fake names. Having read dozens of screenplays, I am familiar with the kinds of names that Hollywood types like to pick. As a result, it has seemed obvious to me from day one of your arrival on this Forum that the man in the dramatic hat, with the flowing GRAY hair and the name ASHton GRAY (notice the doubles that you seem to like so much) is a fake. Call me paranoid, if you like. My offer above was completely sincere. If you would like to meet and show me that you're a real person, my offer still stands. My statement about "bring along some friends" was not meant to be an invitation to a "rumble" or anything like that, if that is your concern. I just meant that I would be by myself or with my girlfriend, and if you would like to have some friends around to assure that things didn't get weird, then that was perfectly acceptable. I apologize if this sincere gesture was interpreted as a threat. As stated in the various threads, your ability to look at slight conflicts in people's testimony and take from it that the events testified to never happened and were just invented in order to destroy Richard Nixon, is scary to me. It never occurred to me that you would be scared by me. Once again, Mr. Gray, I apologize if this post caused you any alarm. If you would like for me to remove it, please state so and I will.

Thanks, Floyd.

God only knows what Helms meant by "liquidated."

To be clear, Craig, I believe it is Kennedy's hand, but feel no need to argue that it is Kennedy's hand. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The issue, in my opinion is that the AP, and the media in general, have been incredibly irresponsible in regards to the assassination in general and this photo in particular. The Dallas Morning News published this picture telling everyone the white arrow pointed to Kennedy's LEFT foot and the black arrow to Connally. The AP sent out this same photo telling everyone the black arrow pointed to Mrs. Connally. A few weeks later a credible magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, acquired the rights to print the photo from the AP but chooses to do so without the arrows. They ended up printing a photo showing an entirely different shape than the "foot" shape seen in the AP photos. Amazingly, they still claimed it was a foot. Upon close comparison it is clear the Sat. Post version is the superior and possibly original version of the photo. TWENTY years later the AP changed the caption to say the photo was not Kennedy's foot but Hill's foot. As I said, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The point is that the foot, as we know it, and as depictted in the majority of the photos, was DRAWN IN, and drawn in at a time when the AP had no way of knowing if it was in fact Kennedy's foot, or even ANYONE's foot. They altered the photo to sell newspapers. Period. While they were far from the only news agency to engage in this behavior, that this deception lasted for such a long period without detection is undoubtedly disturbing.

Thanks, James. This is the photo as seen in the Dallas Morning News on 11-24-63. The foot had already been drawn in. As stated, I'm just trying to clear up the record. It seemed apparent to me that the Sat. Evening Post photo is the original photo and that the drawn-in foot photos came later. Now I'm thinking that the Sat. Post/Yarborough Exhibit was a mistake, and that someone at the AP innocently gave them access to the original negative, not realizing it exposed the many AP versions of the photo as fakes. P.S. Love that caption. Not only does it say Kennedy's left foot, but that the car was on Stemmons BEFORE the offramp where Hill testified he lost his balance and hooked his foot over the door. Maybe this is him climbing into this position. But it seems clear he's not in this position yet, as his hands aren't holding onto anything.

I ask again. Quit theorizing about it. Post a picture simulating Hill's position. I can't do it. When I turn my leg far enough to the left to get my foot over the side of the couch, my trunk turns to my left as well. As stated, it doesn't really matter to me if it was a foot or a hand or a towel, for that matter. The point is that the object in the photo was clearly re-drawn to look like Kennedy's foot BEFORE the AP could possibly have known or suspected it was ANYONE'S foot. They were wrong. It was not Kennedy's foot. If, by chance, it turned out to be Hill's foot then that's just their dumb luck. P.S. Craig, do you believe, as Bill, that Hill's black socks appear white in the picture? Does that make sense to you? I'm not arguing either way, but that just seems strange.

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.

Bill, please show us how Hill could have his right knee turned to the left but his waist and upper torso turned to his right as in the photo. I tried it and failed. Please post a picture demonstrating how it's done so I can be exposed as an uncoordinated clod.

It is indeed hypocritical to assert that anyone's calling Gray a Nixon defender or Nixon worshipper is off-target, but his calling anyone who disagrees with him a CIA-conspirator or CIA-apologist on target. We are discussing the historical record here. Some of us simply understand that the mountain of evidence supports that the Watergate break-in was performed by Nixon's people doing Nixon's bidding. Others are under the impression that when two people tell slightly different accounts of an historical event years later then that means the CIA is reponsible. This is the height of lunacy, IMO. My Mom thought I was born on a Friday when the calender shows I was born on a Thursday. Must be the CIA... Maybe I wasn't born at all... As far as my overall attitude to the CIA, I consider myself very critical of the CIA. I don't discount the CIA's involvement in Watergate. It is not unreasonable to assume that the CIA was involved in McCord's decision to come forward. It is not unreasonable to assume that the CIA fed people like Woodward information to make sure the truth got out on Nixon. One might even go so far as to theorize that McCord deliberately got caught. But to hold that every event from the release of the Pentagon Papers to Nixon's appointment of Ford as Vice-president was a CIA-orchestrated plot is completely without merit and evidence of someone with no real grasp of history. Such "wouldn't it be interesting" thoughts are best recorded in screenplays and fail to stand up under the heat of extensive examination. Who was "the CIA" and what were their motives? Were they against the war or for the war, and why would did they feel Ford would make a difference? And why did they do nothing to help Ford get re-elected? My concern is that, by focusing on these theoretical crimes, we can learn nothing about the real crimes and the real abuses of power under the Nixon regime. We can't apply what we learned from Watergate to today's headlines. We can't say that Bush is becoming another Nixon because, well, maybe Nixon wasn't even a Nixon... I asked Mr. Gray if he believed Nixon committed any impeachable offenses--he refused to answer. I asked Mr. Gray if he saw parallels between what he believes to have been an unlawful removal of a President during wartime to the Plame scandal currently plaguing Bush. Once again, no answer. Mr. Gray...is there anything to be learned from the Watergate scandal? Is there one morsel of information that can be useful to understanding what goes on today? Is the CIA still calling the shots? If not, when did it stop calling the shots, and why?

You are cracking me up Pat! Say, have you tried to see it YOU can get your foot into the same position as Hills yet or are you still waiting for someone to do it for you? I have tried, and failed miserably. To put one's foot in such a position one needs to turn one's right leg inwards to such an extent that it makes facing forwards impossible. Evidently, you believe one's knee can rotate as well as bend. I await your re-enactment.

John, if your statement that Gary has been getting his friends to demand his membership be reinstated was a reference to my post, I can assure you you're mistaken. I noticed recently that Gary's old PMs had been deleted from my inbox, and then saw Andy's post. While Gary and I have exchanged a few e-mails recently on the Miller photo--as discussed on the "photo alteration in the media" thread, I'knew nothing of his getting kicked off the Forum. As stated, if his messages were indeed foul-mouthed or offensive, I'm surprised. His messages to me have been respectful for the most part. One time he got upset and asked me "What's the matter with YOU people?" But compared to the abuse encountered recently online, I considered this minor. He has never used foul language that I can recall. As far as his refusal to defend his views on the forum, I doubt that is by design. When Gary has told me I'm wrong, sometimes I've turned around and told him he was wrong, and why. He's conceded a few of my points. As a result, I suspect his telling people they're wrong is done for two reasons--to help steer the debate away from what to him are already resoved issues and to further his own education. As far as Gary's removal from the Forum, I liked Tim Gratz yet supported his removal when he started making threats. If Gary's messages are truly offensive, and not just annoying because he projects that he knows more than the rest of us, then by-all-means threaten him with removal from the Forum. If he's already been warned, then adios, Gary. Forum membership is a privilege not a right.

I believe Gary felt his posting comments online was somehow in conflict with his job as curator of The Sixth Floor Museum. I've exchanged a number of comments and e-mails with him over the last few years, and, aside from the occasional sarcastic comment about something I posted, he was always pleasant. I'm truly surprised he would send offensive e-mails. Is it possible someone else was pretending to be him?

It seems Hill hooked his foot over the door in order to climb into the compartment ("as he moved forward"). There's nothing indicating he held this pose for more than a second. Does anyone have the 11-29 issue of Time? Someone tore the pages out of the one at my local library. I'm curious what the Miller photo in Time looked like. Please post it if you have it. By the way, the drawn-in foot version of the photo posted in comparison to the Yarborough Exhibit came from the Archives of the Miami Herald.

Just for those marking their scorecards at home: "the ensuing chaos," strangely enough, only swirls around four people: you and Alfred Baldwin (both Watergate figures), and two forum members who have uniformly attacked and attempted to smear me without provocation, while sabotaging threads related to you and Baldwin where I've been trying to get some straight answers to straight simple questions, both of those posters uniformly CIA apologists and naysayers for any CIA involvement in Watergate, when the evidence is clear that it was a CIA black domestic op from the "leak" of the Pentagon Papers straight through your representation of the "burglars." I just don't want anyone to get lulled into falsely believing there's been other "chaos." That's really a pretty small set where "chaos" has been concerned. Ashton Gray Ashton, I'm gaining some distance on your nonsense and finally beginning to enjoy it for what it is: a complete put-on. Are you related to Andy Kaufman? The actor you use in your photo bears a slight resemblance. So I'm a CIA apologist? What a laugh. I have no problem accepting that the CIA, once it realized Nixon planned on using them as a scapegoat for the Watergate break-in, decided to protect itself. I have no problem accepting that someone had a little talk with McCord and perhaps even asked him to come forward and talk to Sirica. I have no problem accepting that Nixon suspected as much and arranged for "The Family Jewels" to be created, and then orchestrated their release via Seymour Hersh once he was forced from office. None of these things particularly phase me. What does upset me is your insistence that the release of the Pentagon Papers, the creation of the Diem cables and the Watergate break-ins were all orchestrated by the CIA, and that Nixon and his closest advisers were somehow blameless in these events. This, to me, is a suspiciously bizarre assertion. Probably no period in history has been covered as extensively as the Watergate period, what with dozens of the participants testifiying and/or writing their memoirs. And yet no one on the inside, outside of perhaps Colson and perhaps Nixon, ever suspected the CIA was behind it. Haldeman knew it was Colson, Dean, Mitchell, Magruder, Hunt, and Liddy. Ehrlichman knew it was Colson, Dean, Mitchell, Magruder, Hunt, and Liddy. Dean knew it was the same guys. Mitchell pointedly called the events the "White House Horrors;" he never once called them "the CIA-orchestrated horrors," as far as I'm aware. Your contention that Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers as per instruction from the CIA is particularly bizarre. You cite this as a fact without presenting one bit of evidence, outside the fact that Ellsberg knew some people in the CIA. OF COURSE he did. Before you can be a whistle-blower you need to be close enough to smell the coffee. I was a whistle-blower in a criminal case involving the record industry. I'd witnessed and participated in numerous scams, which put me in the position of recognizing a really big scam on the employees of the company when it came along. Please cite one piece of evidence indicating that the CIA benefitted from Ellsberg's release of the papers, or helped him in any way. In sum, I find your whole approach to history anti-human. You talk about the CIA as if it is the BORG or some other science-fiction creation. You fail to tell us why someone like John Dean, the personal attorney to the most powerful man on Earth, would take orders from a distant underling to this man, knowing full well that this underling could be fired or removed at any second by the powerful man. What was his pay-off for such an act? Some time in jail and a lifetime in fear of Gordon Liddy? It appears you fail to understand or appreciate the human drama of the Watergate scandal. Why Colson would betray Hunt. Why Hunt would lie to the Cubans. Why Liddy would hate Dean. Why Haldeman would write a book mentioning the "Bay of Pigs thing." None of these men are the least bit real to you. To you, they were not church-going men with families who tried to live good lives but got side-tracked and/or seduced by power. No, to you they were robots taking commands from some distant radio-transmitter for station WCIA, who knowingly perpetuated some gigantic and unnecessarily convoluted lie covering up that Nixon, AFTER 5 YEARS of CIA plotting, was forced from office, and CIA-puppet Gerry Ford placed on the throne. As I said before, if the CIA was so intent on putting Ford in office, why didn't it do anything to help him stay in office? I mean, George H.W. Bush was DCI--where oh where are the 1976 CIA plots against Carter?

The Republican worship of Reagan, as demonstrated above, is indeed a mystery. What it comes down to for all too many is that Reagan made them feel good about themselves and their country. The President as cheerleader as opposed to de facto leader. The current President has attempted to emulate him, only he lacks Reagan's personal warmth and the ability to get his political enemies to respect or like him. Some of the Reagan faithful have started a movement to put him on the American dime, replacing Franklin Roosevelt, a man Reagan admired. They started printing up these dimes and are now selling them on late night TV for ten bucks apiece. This would seem to be the perfect symbol for the Reagan era: RIP-OFF. To Americans, there appeared to have been parallels between the Reagan and Thatcher eras. Was her Administration as scandal-ridden as Reagan's?

Does anyone have a copy of the 11-24-63 Dallas Morning News with the Miller photo? If so, could you please post the photo? I was trying to scan the 11-24 NY Times version of the photo but it's too ugly. Thanks, Pat.

While a lot of people think O'Neil broke the story of O'Donnell's and Powers' impression that the shots came from the front and assume that this differed from their statements to the Warren Commission, this was only true for O'Donnell. Both Powers and the Secret Service Agent on the outside of the car next to him, Paul Landis, initially felt the last shots came from the front, and said so from the get go. Powers' 5-18-64 affidavit, 7H472-474: “the first shot went off and it sounded to me as if it were a firecracker. I noticed then that the President moved quite far to his left after the shot from the extreme right hand side where he had been sitting. There was a second shot and Governor Connally disappeared from sight and then there was a third shot which took off the top of the President’s head and had the sickening sound of a grapefruit splattering against a wall…My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass.” (Tip O’Neill’s recollections in Man in the House, 1987) “Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s….during the writing of this book I checked with Powers…he stands by his story.” I've spent the last two months studying the statements of the eyewitnesses. If the Warren Commission had done as much they would have been unable to come to the conclusions they came to. But at least they paid some attention. Today's lone-nut theorists are both completely at odds with the eyewitness testimony and completely ignorant that their theory is completely at odds with the eywitnesses.

Thanks, guys, for the help.

Does anyone have a high-grade scan of the Bronson photo? It seems to me that if the photo can be blown up large enough to get a good look at Kennedy, and it's obvious he's already been hit, then the single-bullet theory can be disproven by this one photo alone. Does such a version exist? Or is the film just too blurry to get a good look at the passenger compartment?

Ashton, while I admit your early ravings made me angry, your acknowledgement that you had Colson's testimony all along makes me positively furious. You treat this thread, as others, as some sort of game. If you have information to share, then share it. In that spirit, I'll present another pertinent piece of evidence indicating that the cables existed: Nixon's May 8, 1973 conversation with his press secretary, Ron Ziegler. During the weeks leading up to this conversation, Nixon's Palace Guard has largely been forced to resign. Colson, Dean, Gray, Krogh, Magruder, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman have all been forced to abandon ship. He has no one to talk to besides Haig and Ziegler. Ziegler has just asked Nixon if his September 16, 1971 statements about Vietnam were based upon Hunt's forged cables. Nixon has explained to him that he based his statements upon a book he read. (This, apparently, is true. The cables were created afterwards.) Nixon: Did I use the term "the Kennedy complicity?" Ziegler: Kennedy complicity in the overthrow and murder. Nixon: That's right, yeah. Ziegler: But the murder was a result of the overthrow. Nixon: That's right. That's right. Well, nobody questions it. Ziegler: No, of course, not. WITHDRAWN ITEM. NATIONAL SECURITY. Nixon: Goddam. That Colson thing. Colson is--he said he just told him to improve the wires, or something. Oh Christ, he's looking like a Goddamn fool. ...What can he say? He'll make quite a witness, won't he? he says if Hunt misinterpreted--maybe. I think Hunt probably did--did whatever out of loyalty, but Colson may have said make it clear or--what do you think, probably did happen? What's your guess? You think that Colson told him to take over? Ziegler: YES, I DO. So here we have a second adviser, first Ehrlichman on April 18 and now Ziegler on May 5, telling Nixon that they believe Colson was behind the creation of the cables. We also have Nixon saying that Colson said he'd just told Hunt to improve the wires or something. Hello? No one around Nixon has any doubts the cables existed. No one around Nixon has any doubts that Colson, who'd told the press he'd run over his own grandmother to get Nixon re-elected was behind the creation of the cables. (I urge anyone still doubting this to read Haldeman's The Ends of Power. Haldeman and others close to Nixon were worried about Colson's bad influence on Nixon from day one.) Hunt testified he made the cables. Colson testified he was aware of the cables and that they'd been shown to Life magazine. Ehrlichman told Nixon that Colson had talked to him about the cables. Dean testified that he saw the cables. Ehrlichman testified he saw Dean hand something to Gray that he believed were the cables. Gray testified he read the cable or cables as he burned them. Whether Colson ordered the creation of the cables or Hunt made them up on his own there can really be no reasonable argument over the likelihood that the cables in fact existed. That the men who discussed the cables and testified to their existence were less than perfect does little to demonstrate that the cables did not exist. If five disreputable characters independently testify to dumping an unidentified body in the ocean, but can't remember the exact height of the victim, it doesn't mean there was no body. Perhaps, if Ashton or Dawn can cite one case in history where a number of people have admitted to a criminal conspiracy with the ultimate goal of damaging the reputation of someone not directly implicated in the criminal conspiracy, then there might be a reason to believe such a thing occurred. I asked Ashton to concede that the cables existed early on and focus on his other points. Instead he chose to waste everyone's time with his rants and insults. It's a shame.