Pat Speer

Jack, I make it a point to try to read every early article on the medical evidence. Cany you post the article itself? As to why the photo is so blurry, could the transfer from color to black and white have something to do with it?

Call me, Pollyanna, but when people say something, and it makes sense, I tend to believe them. Both Dean and Ehrlichman testified that they gave the stuff to Gray to keep it out of FBI hands and prevent its contents from being leaked, and that they considered the material political dynamite that had nothing to do with the Watergate break-in. As Ehrlichman testified, if they'd wanted it destroyed (and were willing to take the responsibility for its destruction) they could have put it in a burn bag. Gray, however, after moving it around for months, decided on his own, as pointed out by Ashton, that the stuff should disappear. He had no idea at the time he destroyed the documents that the Watergate investigation would rekindle shortly thereafter. Realizing his exposure on this issue, he later pressured Ehrlichman and Dean not to mention the envelopes. The Watergate story can only be understood by realizing that virtually everyone involved was anxious to save his own neck. Only Liddy and the Cubans went willingly to jail. Everyone else including the president connived, wheeled-and-dealed, taped their conversations and manufactured memos to protect their own behinds. That's how it's done in Washington. The rats scurried but nevertheless got caught. If Gray said too much in his confirmation hearings it was most logically because he felt he was clean as far as Watergate. Outside of his destruction of documents unrelated to the Watergate break-in, he was indeed relatively clean. The so-called smoking gun conversation between Nixon and Haldeman reflects that they were trying to get the CIA to turn off the FBI investigation. Subsequent conversations indicate that this failed to turn off the investigation. These conversations indicate that Gray himself was not at the beck-and-call of Nixon and his associates, and would not simply call off the investigation because they asked him to. He was only acting director, after all, and, unlike his predecessor Hoover, lacked the power within the Bureau to effectively pull off a cover-up. Felt, for one, would have undercut him. Which brings me to my little trip to the library. Amazing things, libraries. Sometimes you can find the most amazing things there. It turned out that my local library has a couple of dozen Government Printing Office-issued editions of of Watergate material, including the 7-15-73 testimony of Charles W. Colson. While he denied his ordering Hunt to make the cables, he also acknowledged they existed. The relevant testimony. p. 265-266 (When discussing the contents of Hunt's safe) Colson: "I think I asked Mr. Dean at that point what had happened to the contents of the safe, and he said to me, everything was turned over to the FBI....but everything was not in the FBI's possession... Jenner: Did you ask him to explain that? Colson: Yes. Jenner: What did he say? Colson: He said, ah, forget it. I didn't pursue it any further.... I never saw the contents of Hunt's safe and I have no idea what was in it." P. 280(When asked to read notes made by his secretary of a post Watergate break-in conversation she had with Hunt.) Colson: (reading the notes aloud) "Lambert came with instructions from CWC to to see what was in safe." Jenner: Who is Lambert? Colson: Lambert is a reporter from Life magazine who had been dealing with Hunt and had called Hunt and later called my office and wanted to give me a message from Hunt, and Joan Hall (Colson's secretary) told him I was not accepting any messages. NOTE: from this it seems likely that Hunt was trying to remind Colson that he knew where some bodies were buried, and that one of these bodies directly implicated Colson, and that Colson should do all he could to help Hunt with his legal troubles. Jenner: The "CWC." Whose initials are those? Colson: That is me. Jenner: Charles W. Colson. Colson: Yes. P. 287 Jenner: Would you direct yourself, turn to Colson exhibit No. 11, Mr. Colson? Colson: Yes, sir. Jenner: About that last line, which reads "Lambert came with instructions from CWC"--that is you-- Colson: Right. Jenner: "To see what was in safe." Now, having called that to your attention, Congressman Rangel wishes to know and I will ask you on behalf of the entire committee what your recollection is as to Mr. Lambert coming to you with--or came to somebody, Hunt, with instructions from you to see what was in the safe. Colson: Lambert was a reporter who had been dealing with Hunt and I don't know. I never gave him an y instructions to get in touch with Mr. Hunt, so I can't imagine what the message means, although I do know that Mr. Lambert tried to reach me with a message from Hunt after he had talked to Hunt: and my secretary, Mrs. Hall, told Lambert, forget about it, Colson won't talk to you because he does not want any information from Hunt through you or anyone else. She has testified to that in other places. Jenner: Is that sufficient, Mr. Rangel? Rangel: I guess it is the best we will get. P. 515 (During direct examination by the committee, Congressman Waldie returns to the issue of Colson's knowledge of Hunt's activities, and finally gets somewhere.) Waldie: All right. Next question. You knew that the cables that were manufactured by Hunt at your direction were in fact, fabricated involving the Diem, did you not? NO ANSWER IS NOTED. Waldie: Well, he showed them to you, whether they were at your direction, and let's assume they were not, you saw the cables and you knew that they were fabricated, did you not? Colson: I saw--I was aware of--I don't know that I actually physically saw one cable that was-- Waldie: Did you know it was fabricated? Colson: YES SIR, I DID. Waldie: Did you tell him not to publish that cable or not to use it or destroy it? Colson: Yes, sir. I certainly didn't tell him to destroy it-- Waldie: What did you tell him to do, go back and work on it some more, didn't you? Colson: No, Mr. Lambert--well, it's a very long chronology. Well, I have testified to it at some length and probably will again. But, I don't think we can do it in your 5 minutes. I can just say this to you, that once I knew he had shown that to Mr. Lambert, I did everything I knew how to get Mr. Lambert off of that story. Waldie: Did you tell Mr. Lambert that what he had been shown by Mr. Hunt was in fact a fabrication? Colson: Except for the fact that I didn't tell that to Mr. Lambert. Waldie: So you did everything except tell Mr. Lambert the truth? Colson: I was starting to say that; yes, sir. So, there you have it... despite his attempts at avoiding the topic, and despite his attempts at casting himself as an innocent, Charles Colson left the door open that he saw the cables, admitted he was aware of the cables, admitted that they had been fabricated, and expressed personal knowledge that they had been shown to Life magazine. NEED WE DISCUSS THIS ANY FURTHER? WHY OH WHY WOULD HUNT try to fool Colson into thinking he'd made fake cables and then pretend to show them to Life magazine, when he could have just faked the cables?

So, Bill, are you really stating that you think the white area of the shape purported to be a shoe is a black sock? Please look back at the Yarborough exhibit and see if this makes sense. I just took a look and it made no sense to me.

Ashton, you scare me. Your ability to ignore what you want to ignore and believe what you want to believe is without equal. You make this grand statement that you've proved the cables did not exist when nothing could be further from the truth. You've proved that you don't like the people who said the cables existed and from this you have concluded the cables did not exist. You offer no logical reason that the President's attorney, John Dean, who engaged in crimes trying to protect his client, the President, would invent this fiction, BEFORE he personally was ever in any trouble. AFTER the discovery of these cables, Dean coached Magruder in his perjury. While many have believed that Dean was a weasel, who tried to save his skinny neck by dragging others down, no one, until now, has been so bold to theorize that Dean set Nixon up from day one and deliberately sacrificed his career by participating in numerous crimes after he already had the goods on Nixon. I've said it before and I'll say it again: positively bizarre. While you spend much time excoriating Pat Gray for his original lies, since you hold the cables never existed, you necessitate that these lies were part of the plot. In other words, since your whole theory revolves around this incredibly addled idea that Gray and Dean were collaborators, and Gray initially failed to support Dean's story, then you must believe Gray deliberately lied about reading the cables, only to admit he saw them later. As this would do little to help his personal or professional credibility, once again you've got me thinking: this would be positively bizarre. I mean, not only do you hold that the acting director of the FBI was a secret CIA operative, you hold that he unnecessarily destroyed his own career for...for...the heck of it... I guess. Would not your fantasy plan to incriminate the Nixon Administration have worked a lot better if Hunt actually did make the cables, and Gray not destroy the cables but testify that he was ordered to destroy them, by Nixon himself? You seem to think your supposed colloborators were incredibly adept at lying and making convoluted plots, but lacking the common sense to create plots that directly reflected on the President. I mean, Gray saying that he destroyed cables that were given to him by Dean does not reflect directly on Nixon, does it? Dean didn't say the President asked me to give this to you, did he? Neither man directly implicated Nixon. So who does implicate Nixon in the creation of these cables? Nixon's top political advisor, John Ehrlichman, in the taped conversation quoted at the beginning of this thread. Ehrlichman says his recollection is that Colson told him they'd created fake cables. Nixon recalls the cables being shown to Life Magazine but swears into the microphone that he didn't know they were fake. Ehrlichman later testifed on 7-25-73 that he discussed with Dean how best to open Hunt's safe, and that later he discussed the contents of the safe with Dean and concurred with Dean that the incriminating materials be handed over to Gray. He also witnessed the transfer of these documents to Gray: "We were there. He (Dean) said Pat I would like to give you these. The sense of it was that these were contents of Hunt's safe that were politically sensitive and that we just could not stand to have them leaked. I do not know whether he had talled to Gray before or not, because Gray seemed to understand the setting and the premise, so to speak. And he turned the documents over to him and John Dean then left." Ehrlichman could have at any time in his dealings with Dean and the documents, asked to look at them. Evidently, he did not. As revealed by his conversation with Nixon, he had no doubt they were fake documents ordered up by Colson. Colson had told him as much. Ehrlichman never doubted that the cables existed, nor who was responsible. Why should we? Watergate, by Fred Emery, p. 71. "At a September 16 news conference in answer to a question sabout whether the United States ought not to use its leverage in Vietnam, Nixon answer that if what was suggested was "that the United States should use its leverage now to overthrow (President) Thieu, I would remind all concerned that the way we got into Vietnam was through overthrowing Diem, and the complications in the murder of Diem ." There was no great public outcry to this though specialists in and out of goverment wondered where the information had come from. There was nothing to support it in the files. Not yet, that is. Two days later, on September 18, 1971, the president, meeting with Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, worked on a follow-up to Nixon's initial accusation. Ehrlichman's notes have Nixon saying that the Diem assassination was the best way to get at Teddy Kennedy and Edmund Muskie through the Democratic elder statesman Averiall Harriman, who held office in 1963. The president wanted friendly Republican senators to pick up his news conference statement and demand in particular that Lucien Conein--Hunt's recent contact--be released from his silence as a former CIA man. Krogh should be told that Nixon wanted the entire Diem file by the following Friday. The president must be kept out of it, it was noted, but Ehrlichman was to use Liddy and Hunt among others. And white they were at it, NIxon wanted the CIA to hand over the full secret Bay of Pigs file for his inspection, "or else." "Let CIA take a whipping on this," Ehrlichman's notes of the meeting read. But ten days later, there was a key change of plan. Even as Nixon prepared to meet CIA chief Helms to insist that the reluctant director turn over the full Bay of Pigs file, Ehrlichman made a note about the other subject: "CIA--wait on Diem---Life Mag release." What had happened was that Hunt was fabricating State Department cables to "prove" U.S. involvement in the Diem assassination, intending to plant them in Life magazine. Hunt asserts it was Colson's idea to invent the "missing cables" (though Colson later denied knowing about them). Using White House and State Department typewriters, plus an old 1963 date stamp--Kathy Chenow, the plumbers' secretary, remembers being asked to find one--and a razor blade to slice up photocopies, Hunt's talent as a writer produced plausible versions." Ashton, there is a footnote on the second paragraph. It says "Ehrlichman note, September 18, 1971, HJC, SI Appendix III, p. 197. Evidently, Ehrlichman's notes are available to the public. Do you have them? Can you post them online? Or are you willing to concede that Nixon was the instigator of a plot to discredit the Kennedys via the release and exposure of information on the Diem assassination, and that it was with his knowledge and blessing that Hunt was part of this plot? If you're willing to concede that much, then how much of a leap is it to suggest the cables actually existed? We have Hunt saying he created the cables, Dean saying he saw them, Fielding saying he saw them, Gray saying he read them as he destroyed them. We also have Ehrlichman saying he discussed them with Colson and Dean, and witnessing Dean's passing a package purpotedly containg the cables to Gray. We even have Mitchell testifying he participated in the cover-up in part because of his concern about these cables. And then we have Lambert and Conein, who are reported to have seen them. I'm still looking for confirmation from them that they saw the cables--I know I've read Lambert's account of his meeting with Hunt somewhere. (If either of them had denied seeing the cables I'm sure you would have posted that by now.) And then there is Emery's assertion that the plumber's secretary remembered fetching Hunt a 1963 date stamp. Not sure where he got this. Did she testify? Or is this news to you as well? I fail to see why you're so stuck on this idea that the cables didn't exist. I've said it before and I'll say it again--your theories only elevate the reputation of one man: Richard Nixon. Nixon himself never suspected that these cables did not exist. Is it your contention that Nixon, perhaps the most paranoid man ever to hold high office in the history of the United States, wasn't paranoid enough?

Thanks, Robin. I thought that's what people were talking about. But if the pants cuff is visible, shouldn't Hill's sock also be visible? The other photo of Hill on the trunk by Justin Newman shows he was wearing black socks. Part of my confusion or inability to convince myself that it's Hill's foot comes from the fact that the area between the cuff and the sole of the shoe seems to be white.

The second I read of his death, my first thought was "how convenient." My second thought was "did he fake his death? I wonder if they'll show his body on TV like Zarqawi's?" My third thought was "maybe he was murdered." The next couple days should be interesting.

Robert, your input, as always, is welcome. My take on Conein, at least in this instance, is less sinister. I read an excellent book on the Diem assassination entitled A Death in November. As I remember Conein was a prime source. Conein's impression, as I remember, was that the Kennedy Administration was unsure how to handle the situation, but that Lodge basically made the call and signed Diem's death warrant through his actions. McNamara came to the same conclusion in his book In Retrospect, if memory serves. If that was Conein's impression, and if Hunt showed him cables from the Kennedy Adminstration telling Lodge NOT to offer Diem asylum or assist in his escape, then Conein's comment that "the things you don't know when you're working in the field," makes perfect sense. Those skeptical that Nixon or Colson would order the creation of these cables should reflect that they were multi-purpose: not only did they place the responsibility for Diem's death squarely on Kennedy's shoulders, they also got Nixon's running mate against Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, off the hook.

Craig, to explain myself a bit more clearly, I didn't just jump on some bandwagon about the hand. I first saw this photo years ago, probably in Groden's The Killing of a President, and it never occurred to me it was a hand. But I could not then, and still can not, understand how it can be a foot, Kennedy's or Hill's. My asking someone to re-create the photo is entirely sincere. I just can not fathom how someone faced forward in a car can have his foot upside down hanging over the side from within the passenger's compartment, without his contorting himself to a ridiculous degree. I first mentioned this on the Lancer Forum, and expressed that I'd always suspected this photo had been faked. I thought maybe the photographer or the Dallas Morning News had faked the photo in order to sell it worldwide. This brought down the wrath of Mack who assured me that all the early versions of the photo were the same. I then stumbled across the Yarborough exhibit and compared that to the version of the photo in the 11-24 NY Times, and compared both of these to the photo in AP photo book The Torch is Passed. This confirmed in part what Mack had said--that the early photos were the same. But what he left out is that these early photos, and one assumes the original, show a shape that may not even be a foot, and that the AP shortly thereafter changed the photo to make it look more like a foot. The photo in Pictures of the Pain, in fact, is not an original but one of these altered prints. Ditto for the photo in Robert McNeil's book 1963, which identifies the foot as Kennedy's years after the AP started saying it was Hill's. In short, it appears the "official" version of the photo now licensed by the AP is an altered version of the photo, with the foot drawn in over a shape that quite possibly isn't even a foot. As far as Hill's testimony, people are prone to suggestion. Sam Holland, after seeing the photo in the paper, started telling researchers that he'd seen Kennedy's leg fly up and his foot land on the edge of the car. If Hill saw the photo, and believed the papers when they said the object in the photo was a foot, it would not be at all strange for him to assume it was his foot, as he knew he'd had his foot over the side and knew the foot wasn't Kennedy's foot. I see nothing "intellectually dishonest" with accepting that such mistakes occur. To me what is intellectually dishonest is to say the object must be a foot because it could not be anything else. Excuse me? Could it be a towel? A blanket? Does anyone have a full listing of every object in the back seat? I don't think so. As stated, the one thing that's clear is that the AP changed the photo before they could ever have known how Hill was gonna testify. When they re-drew the foot, they re-drew it thinking it was Kennedy's foot. It took them twenty years to change their mind and say it was Hill's foot. They are guilty of shoddy journalism at best.

Ashton, you're trying to pull the same malarkey on me that you pulled on Caddy. Anytime I say something that disagrees with your world view I'm a piece of work, a xxxx, whatever. I called the envelope purportedly holding the cables "the cables" and that makes me some evil person? Are you really this daft? I call you Ashton even though I don't believe for one second that's your real name. Does that make me a xxxx as well? So you're saying that Dean, Nixon's personal attorney with no known connections to the CIA, orchestrated the transfer of empty envelopes to fool Ehrlichman? How big a hole are you willing to dig? As far as my conspiracy vs. your conspiracy, blah blah blah, your conspiracy drags in Dean, Ehrlichman, Hunt, Liddy, Fielding, Gray, etc all conspiring against their mentor Nixon. You have not one bit of proof of this. You made it up and now you're sticking to it, all the way to lala land.

I really don't understand this post at all, Craig. Because I noticed that two versions of the same photo fail to match, my intellectual honesty is in question? Did you look at King's comparison of the two versions of the photo? Does the "foot" in the Yarborough exhibit photo REALLY look like a foot to you? If so, please re-post the photo with an explanation as to why we should think it is a foot, similar to Jack's posting showing why he suspects it's a hand. I'm not 100% convinced it's a hand. Maybe you can convince me it's a foot. Or are you disputing that the photo was even changed? I think you're so used to shooting down everything Jack says that you're failing to see that we're onto something here. Whether or not, it REALLY was a foot, the object in the photo was changed to look more like a foot, before the AP could possibly have ascertained it really was a foot. Can we at least agree on that? Or is it impossible for you to agree with Jack on anything?

So everyone who testified is a treasonous xxxx conspiring to bring down their commander-in-chief in a time of wartime? So the head of the FBI is a CIA-minion? I guess this means that the whole FBI-being-concerned-about-CIA-involvement part of the story was simply part of the set-up, as Gray and Helms were hoping Nixon would send Haldeman or Ehrlichman over to Helms and tell him to shut off the investigation? Is that right? So everything bad that was done by Nixon was either-set up or brought into action by a HUGE conspiracy, including Dean, Nixon's personal attorney, Liddy, a man who spent years in prison rather than testify against his "Fuehrer," William Lambert of Life Magazine, and Pat Gray, the acting director of the FBI, who was by all accounts a Nixon pet? Man these guys were really treacherous! And WHY was it exactly that they all conspired against poor Richard Nixon in such a self-sacrificial manner? One can only assume that Ashton feels Nixon was so squeaky clean that there was no other way to get to him! Ashton, if the cables never existed, why did Ehrlichman testify he discussed them with Dean and saw Dean give them to Gray? If this was simply staged, then why didn't they go to the trouble of actually making the props? After all, Ehrlichman might have wanted to take a look... Or was Ehrlichman part of this GIGANTIC plot as well? Which reminds me... if the whole thing was made up, then why did NIXON TELL EHRLICHMAN he remembered them showing the cables to Life Magazine? Or are the Watergate tapes all fake and part of the conspiracy against Nixon as well? I've given up hope on Ashton, but hope others reading this will learn from his errors. It's best to get as many facts and constantly change your interpretation of the facts as you learn more facts. Ashton has latched onto this idea that the cables never existed and in order to defend this illogical conclusion has systematically increased the ring of conspirators till it now amounts to virtually everyone in Washington, most of them Republicans, making up and sticking to a story that damaged Nixon and made Kennedy look like a victim. His PROOF for this seems to be that sometimes people remember things differently, something ANYONE who has actually studied memory and eyewitness testimony knows is to be expected. In Ashton's world, any two people who have slightly different recollections of an event are obvious conspirators working for the CIA. Postively bizarre. Ashton, besides the fact that you wish it to be, please cite one piece of evidence that any of the following people would risk their careers to protect Richard Helms and the CIA. 1. William Lambert. 2. Charles Colson (who has never stated that the cables DID NOT exist, as far as I can tell.) 3. John Ehrlichman. 4. John Dean. 5. Fred Fielding. 6. L. Patrick Gray. 7. Gerald Ford. One of the best books on Watergate is J. Anthony Lukas' Nightmare. On page 117, he deals with the issue of the cables and asserts that the cables were used to deceive the American public, not via Life Magazine as originally intended, but through a television interview with Hunt's friend Lucien Conein. Conein was shown the cables in the context of the other cables but not told they were fake. Here is the pertinent passage: "Ultimately, Hunt did manage to foist the cables on someone--his friend Lucien Conein, who had been invited to appear on an NBC News White Paper: Vietnam Hindsight. When Hunt showed him the cables, Conein said, "Funny, the things you don't know when you're working in the field." By that time, he had already been interviewed for the show, but the White House persuaded the network that Conein had vital new information to provide and the interview was filmed over again. The documentary was shown in two parts on December 22 and 23, 1971. Reviewing the second part, "The Death of Diem," for the New York Times, Neil Sheehan remarked particularly on Conein's interview, saying that Conein "leaves the viewer with little doubt about the United States' implication in Diem's death." Now I'm not sure how Lukas came to believe that the White House arranged for Conein's second interview, but assuming there was a second interview, would that not imply that Conein had been shown something? If not, why didn't Conein just tell the story to begin with? If there were no cables, then what was Conein's new information? Or was this another unnecessary part of the story? Or was Lukas, who never questions that the cables existed, part of Operation Mockingbird? Also, since Hunt had been successful in using these cables to influence Conein, does it not make sense that he would hold onto the cables, in hopes of influencing others? Anyone who's studied politics or the CIA knows that their standard MO is deny, deny, deny, plausible deniability, obfuscate. In the case of the cables, we have a number of seemingly unconnected men admitting they were created, even though it makes them look very bad. Instead of embracing this event as one of the few moments of clarity, however, Ashton has sought to murk the waters and make us doubt the cables ever existed. The only one who benefits from such a theory is Richard Nixon. Ashton has now expounded about how the men suggesting these cables existed were part of a treasonous plot to remove a president from office during wartime. (Do we need to remind him that the Vietnam conflict was never technically a war?) This raises a number of questions about Ashton's attitudes towards our current regime. Ashton, do you feel Joseph Wilson is a traitor? Do you feel the "outing" of his wife was actually orchestrated by the CIA itself? Since you're so all-fired-up to believe that a vast conspiracy between Nixon's own employees and the CIA brought down Nixon, I'm just wondering if you see any similarities between this event and Iran/Contra and/or the Plame incident? In what other cases have you uncovered evidence of CIA wrongdoing?

Slattery, recreate the photo. Prove us wrong. Saying but it's GOTTA be blank because it couldn't be blank is what created the single-bullet theory. Let's not make that mistake again. Do you dispute that the photo was changed, or just that the object in the photo could be anything but a foot? Because if it was a foot all along, you should ask yourself why it was necessary to change the object to look like a foot. Lee, feel free to post any photos used by the media that you suspect have been altered.

For the record, Craig, are you saying it's a foot by default or because it actually looks like a foot? Do you share the majority opinion that the Yarborough exhibit was the original photo and that the latter photos with the clearly defined foot have been altered, beyond merely being dodged in the area of the foot ? To me it doesn't really matter that much if it's a hand or a foot (although I'd still like to see someone re-create the photo). What is important, history-wise, is that there was an object in the photo incorrectly identified by a high-school kid as Kennedy's foot, and that the AP ran this photo worldwide with a caption telling everyone it was Kennedy's foot, and then changed the photo to look more like a foot come time to publish the photo in a book. They changed this photo BEFORE Hill ever testified. There is NO WAY by looking at the object in the original photo you could say "Oh yes, that's Kennedy's foot, or Clint Hill's foot." The AP had NO IDEA if there had been towels in the back seat, or a blanket ot whatever. They simply DECIDED that it was a foot and then made the picture look more like a foot. IMO, they are guilty of extremely shoddy journalism, at the very least. To me, the AP's treatment of this photo is symbolic of the media's overall treatment of the assassination: dishonest and deceptive.

Terry, Ashton asserted that there never were any Diem cables. As he has claimed that pretty much everything that ever made Nixon look bad--from the Pentagon Papers to the Watergate break-in--was some sort of conspiracy against Nixon, I took from this that he felt the existence of these cables was invented as part of some master plot against poor Richard. Evidently, he'll explain it all to us shortly. As far as loyalty to Nixon, Nixon's closest aides pretty much fell away like ancient wallpaper under the heat of the investigation. Only Liddy remained loyal. As a matter of pride, he refused to cut a deal and testify against his co-conspirators. As a result he endured a far harsher prison sentence than anyone else involved in the Watergate scandal. His loyalty was more due to his obsession with loyalty and duty than to Nixon himself, however. If you ever see his book Will, you might want to check it out. It makes for pretty interesting reading. Liddy was so obsessed with discipline and duty etc. that he actually screened Hitler propaganda in the White House to study their techniques. He also held his hand out over a fire and deliberately burned himself in order to demonstrate his loyalty. Both Magruder and Dean were reportedly frightened of him. Some of these stories made their way to Nixon. On one of the tapes where Nixon and Haldeman discuss the cover-up Nixon refers to Liddy as "that fruticake" if I remember correctly. Ashton's assertion that Liddy worked with men like Magruder, Dean, and Ellsberg, men he has openly despised and publicly insulted his entire public career, to bring down Nixon, is completely bizarre and without merit. To put it in a modern context, it's like saying Karl Rove and Joseph Wilson teamed up to discredit Bush.

Dawn, if you don't believe that one man's sworn testimony that he created something, another man's sworn testimony that he destroyed this same thing, and a tape-recorded conversation between two other men that indicates they were aware of this item's existence, is strong evidence this item existed, I feel sorry for you. When the defense of your pet theory has pushed you to such extremes that you are ready to believe willy-nilly that a bunch of men, including the President of the United States, his top advisers, and his Attorney General, would all colloborate on a story created out of whole cloth THAT MAKES THEM ALL LOOK VERY VERY BAD, then it's time to take that pet for a walk. Politicians and their closest aides, as a rule, make up stories that make them look very very good. The Diem cables are the proof that Nixon was obsessed with discrediting John Kennedy, and making John Kennedy's assassination look more like the divine retribution mentioned by Johnson. I think the creation of these cables can be used to support the Yankee and Cowboy War view of history. I'm completely baffled as to how you can possibly conclude these cables didn't exist, and why you suddenly are so protective of Nixon. To make an analogy, let's say that the creation of these cables was a war crime. We have a young lieutenant, Dean, accused of war crimes, who decides to moderate his sentence by ratting out an over-zealous sergeant, Hunt, for killing civilians at the height of the Vietnam war. This second lieutenant Dean says furthermore that he found the head of a murdered civilian in Hunt's locker and gave this head to a General Gray to hold onto. General Gray ends up leaving his command upon admission that he dumped the head in the middle of the ocean. He swears before congress he opened the box containing the head and saw that it was a head before dumping it in the ocean. Hunt confesses to killing the civilian and taking the head but swears it was upon orders of a Colonel, a top military advisor to the President. The top military advisor, Colson, says if any heads were chopped off by Hunt it was based upon Hunt's misunderstanding of one of his orders. There is, however, a tape recording of the President discussing this case with another one of his top military advisors, Ehrlichman. On this tape, the military advisor says he had a conversation with the other advisor, in which the other advisor admitted ordering the collection of civilian heads. The President responds by saying that he knew that people died, but didn't realize that his advisor had ordered their heads to be collected. There is also a Life Magazine journalist who saw Hunt with the head and the testimony of another disgraced General that he participated in the cover-up of the head-collecting. DAWN'S considered verdict: there were no severed heads. It's all a big hoax to make the President look bad.

Lets start with the right side image of the pillar. The rounded corner at the top goes dark ...because dark is being reflected in the chrome. In this case the dark is the darker blue of the sky at the zenith. This is not uncommon to see the sky gradate from lighter at the horizon ( due to seeing through more of the atmosphere and pollutants) and darker at the zenith. This is simply REFLECTED in the chrome. Now for the small chrome strip beside the window on the far side of the car...it is not dark because it is in shadow, but rather that it is angled in such a manner that what is reflected in it is the dark interior of the car. Lets move the the left hand image. Nothing that darkens the chrome is a shadow but rather SOMETHING DARK, like the seat or the coat sleeve that is being REFLECTED in the chrome. Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. Of course that has been my point all along, that a shadow from the seat CANNOT cause the chrome to be dark...it HAS to be a reflection or an object blocking the chrome from the camera. As to the foot/ hand I'm not 100% certain its a foot but based on other images its appears to be the most likely option. One thing is for certain...the dark area is NOT a shadow. Some object HAS to be in place over the chrome or something DARK has to be reflected into the chrome. Since there is nothing dark to reflect into the chrome it has to be an object OVER the chrome. If this is JFK's hand then what is HANGING OVER THE SIDE OF THE CAR? His Elbow? That would be a neat trick. Bill has a very valid point...you need good images to study or you are just spinning your wheels. And You also need to understand the light and how photography works if you want to make any meaningful studies. At least you seem willing to learn. Jack on the other hand..... Mr. SPECTER. And where were the President's legs at that time? Mr. HILL. Inside the car. Mr. HILL. It is a little bit hard for me to judge, since I was lying across the rear portion of the automobile. I had no trouble staying in that particular position--until we approached the hospital, I recall, I believe it was a left-hand turn and I started slipping off to the right-hand portion of the car. So I would say that we went 60, maybe 65 at the most. Mr. SPECTER. Were you able to secure a handhold or a leghold or any sort of a hold on the automobile as you moved forward? Mr. HILL. Yes, sir. I had my legs--I had my body above the rear seat, and my legs hooked down into the rear seat, one foot outside the car. WCH V. II 140/141 Dave By the time Hill testified, the Miller photo had been circulated around the world. Hill KNEW the foot in the photo was not Kennedy's. Recalling that he'd hooked his foot on the side of the car (by the back tire)when he first climbed on, he may have assumed the foot in the photo was his own. On the other hand, despite all appearances, it may be his foot. I await a recreation of this photo showing how a man facing forward could have his right foot upside down at his right.

Ashton, if that's your name, who are you to demand answers from me when you have placed yourself above answering any of my questions from day one? If you have anything to rebut the evidence presented, then rebut it. I reserve the right to counter with other evidence if I so choose. That's the way the world works.

*********************************************************** "I distinctly recall that I burned them during Christmas week with the Christmas and household paper trash that had accumulated immediately following Christmas. To this point I had not read or examined the files. But immediately before putting them in the fire I opened one of the files. It contained what appeared to be copies of "Top Secret" state department cablegrams. I read the first cable. I do not recall the exact language but the text of the cable implicated officials of the Kennedy Administration in the assassination of President Diem of South Vietnam." Well then, isn't that considered to be tampering with State's evidence? In that respect, Ashton is right in contending there are no cables. Therefore, one is left with what is known as "circumstantial evidence." "Q: And what intepretation, if any, did you give him concerning the cables? EHH: I told him that the construction I placed upon the absence of certain cables was that they had been abstracted from the files maintained in the Department of State in chronological fashion. And that while there was every reason to believe, on the basis of the accumulated evidence and the cable documentation, that the Kennedy Administration was implicitly if not explicitly responsible for the assassination of Diem and his brother-in-law, that there was no hard evidence such as a cable emanating from the White House or a reply coming from Saigon, the Saigon Embassy." Aka, "circumstantial evidence." "Q: Did you in fact fabricate cables for the purpose of indicating the relationship of the Kennedy Administration and the assassination of Diem? EHH: I did. Q: And did you show these fabricated cables to Mr. Colson? EHH: I did. Q: What was his response to the fabricated cables? EHH: He indicated to me that he would probably be getting in touch with a member of the media, of the press, to whom he would show the cables." A pre-meditated, egregious, and deceitful obstruction of justice, employing malice aforethought. This all leads back to a murder case, mind you. Actually, to two subsequent "bloody" coup d'etats, as opposed to those of the "bloodless" kind, if you will. But, alas that's just my humble opinion and take on this whole sordid mess. Terry, the discussion isn't IF the cables exist, it's IF they ever existed. I say "Yes." For some strange reason, Ashon says "NO." I do not understand how he could assert such a thing, when we have Nixon and Ehrlichman discussing the cables in private, have Hunt testifying he created them, and Gray testifying he looked at them before he destroyed them. There are numerous other references to the cables. For example, we have the disgraced former Attorney General John Mitchell discussing them in his July 10, 1973 testimony before the Watergate Committee. He cites the creation of these cables as one of the prime reasons he (Mitchell) participated in the cover-up, encouraging Mr. Magruder to perjure hmself, and giving hush money to Hunt and the "burglars." Here he is being questioned by minority counsel Fred Thompson, who went onto play senators in movies and eventually become a Senator himself. "Q: Let me refer to June 19 and 20 (NOTE: this was 2 days after the break-in), I am not quite sure when it was, Mr. Mitchell. As I understand it, Mr. Mardian and LaRue debriefed Liddy and found out what he knew about the break-in, his involvement, and the involvement of others. And at that time, he related to them some of the White House horror stories, I believe you characterized them as, the plumbers activity and so forth. I will go back to that in a minute, but as I understand your testimony this morning, this is really the reason, the knowledge you got from that debriefing was really the reason why you, in effect, stood by while Mr. Magruder was preparing a story which, according to what you knew from Liddy, was going to be a false story to present to a jury. JM: Along, Mr. Thompson, with some of the other stories that Mr. Dean brought forward to him, the Diem papers and the suspected extra-curricular wiretapping, and a few of the others." So here we have John Mitchell, one of Nixon's best friends and closest political allies, testifyng that he was aware of the cables within days of the break-in, before Hunt was ever arrested. He states, furthermore, that his awareness of these cables was instrumental in his decision to participate in the cover-up. He obviously considered them real and very damaging. It's of interest as well, that it was he who brought up the cables, not his questioner. Thompson was minority counsel...in other words, he represented the Republicans on the committee. As such, Thompson's job was, in fact, to get enough of the truth out to satisfy the public, but not so much it would hurt his party's chances in upcoming elections. Thompson, not coincidentally, wrote a long section of the Watergate Report on possible CIA involvement. This was obviously done to murk the waters a bit and make the blatant head-to-toe corruption of the Nixon Administration less clear-cut. The Republicans were fighting for their life and knew it. In sum, there is simply no reason to believe the cables did not exist, outside of a burning desire to believe that everything we've ever learned or been told about Watergate is some gigantic CIA lie. None of the men whose careers were upset or destroyed by their existence ever doubted their existence. They even testified to creating the cables and looking at the cables. If they didn't doubt their existence, why should we? I believe you should really ask yourself who benefits from Ashton's illogical assertion that these cables did not exist. And the answer is... Richard Nixon. If the cables did not exist, it means that everything we were told by Dean, Hunt, and Gray about the cables was some sort of set-up, by either the Democrats, the CIA, or both. Although Ashton denies being a Nixon apologist, when I have asked him if he felt that Nixon was guilty of impeachable offenses he has repeatedly refused to answer. Once again, Ashton, was Nixon guilty of impeachable offenses? If so, why is it LOGICAL to believe the cables did not exist? The CIA could still have played a role in the Watergate story. The agency could have encouraged McCord and Hunt, and leaked information to Woodward, in order to help bring Nixon down. Why is it so much more LOGICAL to you to believe the agency set Nixon up from the beginning, and that men such as Dean, Liddy and Hunt, by all appearances loyal to Nixon before they were threatened with imprisonment, and even afterwards in Liddy's case, were part of a plan to destroy Nixon? Please explain to us why Nixon recalled the cables being shown to Life Magazine if they in fact did not exist. Please explain to us why L. Patrick Gray would resign in disgrace after admitting he destroyed the cables if they in fact did not exist.

On August 3, 1973, former acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray testified before the Watergate Committee. He'd been forced to resign after John Dean came forward admitting the existence of the cables, and that he'd given the cables to Gray. Upon resignation, Gray admitted he'd destroyed the cables. Here is the relevant part of his testimony: "I distinctly recall that I burned them during Christmas week with the Christmas and household paper trash that had accumulated immediately following Christmas. To this point I had not read or examined the files. But immediately before putting them in the fire I opened one of the files. It contained what appeared to be copies of "Top Secret" state department cablegrams. I read the first cable. I do not recall the exact language but the text of the cable implicated officials of the Kennedy Administration in the assassination of President Diem of South Vietnam." On September 24, 1973, Howard Hunt testified. Here is the relevant part of his testimony. He was questioned by Sam Dash. At this point, they have already started discussing Hunt's review of the legitimate cables in the state department's files. SOURCE: The Watergate Hearings by The New York Times Q: Now in the review of these cables did you notice any irregularity in the sequence? EHH: I did. Q: And at what period did the gap in sequence occur? EHH: The period immediately leading up to the assassination of the premier of South Vietnam. Q: Did you show the cables to Mr. Colson and offer an interpretation of them? EHH: I showed him copies of those chronological cables, yes, sir. Q: And what intepretation, if any, did you give him concerning the cables? EHH: I told him that the construction I placed upon the absence of certain cables was that they had been abstracted from the files maintained in the Department of State in chronological fashion. And that while there was every reason to believe, on the basis of the accumulated evidence and the cable documentation, that the Kennedy Administration was implicitly if not explicitly responsible for the assassination of Diem and his brother-in-law, that there was no hard evidence such as a cable emanating from the White House or a reply coming from Saigon, the Saigon Embassy. Q: What was Mr. Colson's reaction to your statement and the showing of the cables to him? Did he agree that the cables were sufficient evidence to show any relationship with the Kennedy Administration and the assassination? EHH: He did. Q: Did he ask you to do anything? EHH: He suggested I might be able to improve on the record. Q: And what did you understand him to mean when he said to improve upon the record? EHH: To create, to fabricate cables that could substitute for the missing chronological cables. Q: Did you in fact fabricate cables for the purpose of indicating the relationship of the Kennedy Administration and the assassination of Diem? EHH: I did. Q: And did you show these fabricated cables to Mr. Colson? EHH: I did. Q: What was his response to the fabricated cables? EHH: He indicated to me that he would probably be getting in touch with a member of the media, of the press, to whom he would show the cables. Q: Now are you aware from your conversations with Mr. Colson and the use of these cables any strategy that Mr. Colson had with regard to Catholic voters? EHH: Yes, sir. Q: Could you describe that more fully? EHH: I believe it was desired by Mr. Colson, or at least some of his colleagues, to demonstrate that a Catholic United States Administration had, in fact, conspired in the assassination of a Catholic chief of state in another country." Here is a more complete version of the transcript available online. It's interesting to note that the NY Times book edited out the specific references by Hunt to Life Magazine and William Lambert. Professional courtesy, I suppose. "Senator Baker, and that is what I have been triying to do. At this early time of your employment at the White House, Mr. Hunt, did you have access to State Department cables covering the period of the Diem assassination? Mr. HUNT. I did. Mr. DASH. Why did you have access to them? Mr. HUNT. Because I had requested such access and it had been granted me. Mr. DASH. Now, in the review of these cables, did you notice any irregularity of sequence? Mr. HUNT. I did. Mr. DASH. In what period did the gap in sequence occur? Mr. HUNT. The period immediately leading up to the assassination of the Premier of South Vietnam. Mr. DASH. Did you show the cables to Mr. Colson and offer an interpretation of them? Mr. HUNT. I showed him copies of those chronological cables, yes, sir. Mr. Dash. And what interpretation, if any, did give him concerning the cables? Mr. HUNT. I told him that the construction I placed upon the absence of certain cables was that they had been abstacted from the files maintained by the Department of State in chronological fashion and that while there was every reason to believe, on the basis of an accumulated evidence of the cable documentation, that the Kennedy administration was implicitly, if not explicitly, responsible for the assassination of Diem and his brother-in-law, that there was no hard evidence such as a cable emanating from the White House or a reply comming from Saigon, the Saigon Embassy. Mr. DASH. What was Mr. Colson's reaction to your statement and the showing of the cable to him? Did he agree that the cables were sufficient evidence to show any relationship between the kennedy administration and the assassination of Diem? Mr. HUNT. He did. Mr. DASH. Did he ask you to do anything? Mr. HUNT. He suggested that I might be able to improve upon the record. To create, to fabricate cables that could substitute for the missing chronological cables. Mr. DASH. Did you in fact fabricate cables for the purpose of indicating the relationship of the Kennedy administration and the assassination of Diem? Mr. HUNT. I did. Mr. DASH. Did you show these fabricated cables to Mr. Colson? Mr. HUNT. I did. Mr. DASH. What was his response to the fabricated cables? Mr. HUNT. He indicated to me that he would be probably getting in touch with a memeber of the media, of the press, to whom he would show the cables. Mr. DASH. And were you in fact put in touch with a memeber of the media? Mr. HUNT. I was. Mr. DASH, Who was that? Mr. HUNT. Mr. William Lambert of Life magazine. Mr. DASH. What was your instruction concernign the relationship you were to have with Mr. Lambert? Mr. HUNT. To show Mr. Lambert the contex of the other legtimate cables that I acquired from the Department of State, to permit Mr. Lambert to hand-copy the texts of the fabricated cables, but I having warned Mr. Colson previously that the cables were not technically capable of withstanding professional scrutiny, that Mr. Lambert was not to be allowed to remove the cables for photocopying purposes. Mr. DASH. Did Mr. Lambert use the information? Mr. HUNT. Not to my knowledge, no. Mr. DASH. Now, are you aware from your conversation with Mr. Colson and the use of these cables of any strategy that Mr. Colson had with regard to Catholic voters? Mr. HUNT. Yes, sir. Mr. DASH. Could you describe that more fully? Mr. HUNT. I believe it was desired by Mr. Colson, or at least some of his colleagues, to demonstrate that a Catholic U.S. administration had in fact conspired in the assassination of a Catholic chief of state of another country. Mr. DASH. Did you show the fabricated cables to Colonel Conein? Mr. HUNT. I did. Mr. DASH. Under what circunstances? Mr. HUNT. Prior to Colonel Conein's appearance on a--I believe NBC-TV network special concerning Vietnam. Mr. DASH. And did Colonel Conein use any of this infromation from the fabricated cables in his program? Mr. HUNT. I would have to answer in these terms, Mr. DASH, that I had shown him the fabricated cables in the broader context of the overall cables, that he was then interrogated by a camera and interview crew and that I believe he made, if not specific reference to the cables I showed him, at least they reinforced his own belief that there had been direct complicity by the Kennedy administration in the events leading up to the assassination of the South Vietnamese Premier."

I'm sorry Dawn was subjected to Daniel's temper. He's no disinformationist. He's actually hard at work researching the RFK killing for the November Lancer conference. I don't approve of his insulting any Forum member. P.S. for the record, Dawn, a xxxxx is someone who joins a forum, usually using a fake name, only writes on one issue, insults other members, and posts many links to articles supporting their "research," quite often written by themselves under a different name. P.P.S. Who's Huntley Troth again?

Sorry, Mr. Gray, you guessed wrong. AGAIN. You avoided answering my questions. I wanted to see if you actually wanted to debate this point. You dragged your feet on it. Now you're trying to say I'm afraid of you and your incredibly detailed understanding of history. So here goes. For those just joining the fray...Mr. Gray has asserted that most of what we know about the Watergate affair, after numerous government hearings and dozens of books written by participants and journalists, is a cover story designed to hide some bigger and scarier story which only he seems to understand. Central to his theory is that the CIA framed Richard Nixon by orchestrating the botching of the Watergate break-in. Central to his theory is also that there was no first break-in, and that ALL the so-called Watergate burglars, men whose lives were side-tracked and nearly ruined by their involvement in the affair, willingly screwed up their lives in order to bring down Nixon, a man to whom a number of them, including G. Gordon Liddy, were by ALL indications, fiercely loyal. In order to sell this theory--that these men were willing to ruin their lives to bring down Nixon-- and account for the fact that these men said NOTHING before the election, whereby Nixon could have been VOTED out of office--Mr. Gray has stated further that this was part of the plan, that the men remain silent till after the election, whereby they could ensure Nixon's re-election and the subsequent appointment of Gerry Ford to the vice-presidency. He asserts that this was one of the overall objectives of the plan--to make Gerry Ford-- a man who, despite many years in Washington, had never run for President, the new President. While this plan is already ludicrous on the face of it--why oh why would these men deliberately get caught in JUNE if they weren't gonna spill the beans till the next year--there is another pertinent question. Wasn't there an EASIER way to remove Nixon from office? These are the kinds of questions I've tried to ask Mr. Gray, who has tried to avoid them as best he can. (His attitude seems to be that since he's convinced the "official" story is a lie he is perfectly within his rights to harrass men such as Caddy and Baldwin wiith meaningless or nearly meaningless questions, but that he is under no obligation whatsoever to have his theory make the least bit of sense.) One of my questions centered on a series of fake state department cables whose creation was admitted by Howard Hunt in both his testimony before the Watergate Committee and in his memoirs. These cables were designed to make Nixon's long-time rival John F. Kennedy look personally responsible for the murder of the leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. The revelation that Hunt had created these cables and tried to get them published in Life Magazine, under the guidance of Nixon and his special projects (read dirty tricks) advisor Charles Colson, would have been a huge bombshell, far bigger than Nixon's involvement in a break-in. If these cables existed and if Hunt did not reveal them when he had the opportunity to use them to bring down Nixon, then Gray's entire theory that Hunt deliberately arranged for Nixon's downfall should be called into question. As I lack the capability to scan printed testimony into my computer, and convert it into text, and as I am a slow typist, I will limit this initial post to two parts: the testimony of L.Patrick Gray and the April 28, 1973 transcript of a meeting between Nixon's Chief Political Advisor John Ehrlichman. First: the April 28th transcript. This transcript came one day after L. Patrick Gray admitted that he was given Hunt's cables by John Dean and that he had subsequenttly destroyed the cables. Along with this admission Gray resigned from his job as acting FBI Director. The next day Ehrlichman, who had advised Dean to get rid of the cables, came to Nixon's office to discuss the situation. This is one week after John Dean had told Nixon that his top aides Ehrlichman and Haldeman would have to go for Nixon to save his presidency. Dean was later to tell the Watergate investigators that Nixon had played dumb in this conversation, and that Dean had had the feeling that Nixon was saying things designed to make himself look innocent, as if the conversation was being taped. Ehrlichman, like Dean, had never been informed of the White House taping system. This is obvious in the transcript. SOURCE: ABUSE OF POWER: THE NEW NIXON TAPES by Stanley Kutler. "RN:...(In) the plumbers operation, the papers said it was something regarding some letter that Hunt prepared from, alledgedly, a fake letter from Kennedy on the Diem thing or something. JE: Yeah. RN: But that of ocurse is totally, totally out of our ken. Have you ever heard of such a Goddamn... JE: Yes, sir. (Sarcastically) That leads directly to your friend Colson... RN: Goddamn it. I never heard of it, John. What, that a fake letter was-- JE: No, it's a cable. RN: But a fake one? JE: Yeah. RN: From John F. Kennedy? JE: Well, that is what it is alleged to be. RN: Oh, my God. I just can't believe that. I just can't believe that. The whole--you remember, you were conducting for me--you and Young were conducting a study of the whole Diem thing and the Bay of Pigs thing. JE: That's correct. That's correct. RN: But, John, you will--of my recollection is correct, I just said get the facts. JE: Well, I don;t know where Colson got this inspiration, but he was very busy at it. RN: And he had told that there was a fake letter or a fake cable? JE: YES! RN: I should have been told about that, shouldn't I? (NOTE: IT SEEMS OBVIOUS AT THIS POINT THAT NIXON WAS TRYING TO GET ON THE RECORD THAT HE DIDN"T KNOW ABOUT THE FAKE CABLES. BUT LOOK HOW EHRLICHMAN, WHO DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT THE TAPING SYSTEM, RESPONDS.) JE: Well, I'm not so sure but what you weren't. RN: By whom? JE: I don't know. I don't know. RN: No, I wasn't told about anything, a mistake. I mean, the only thing I was ever told about, you remember I said that the thing that you did for Life magazine?...That's the only thing I ever heard about the Diem thing. (NOTE: WILLIAM LAMBERT OF LIFE MAGAZINE HAD A MEETING WITH HUNT IN WHICH HUNT SHOWED HIM THE FAKE CABLES. WHEN LAMBERT SAID HE WOULDN"T PUBLISH THEM WITHOUT HAVING THEM AUTHENTICATED, HUNT REFUSED TO GIVE THEM TO HIM. THESE WERE THE ONLY DIEM CABLES DISCUSSED WITH LIFE MAGAZINE. NIXON IS HEREBY ADMITTING HE KNEW OF THE CABLES AND THAT THEY EXISTED. THE ONLY QUESTION IS IF HE SPECIFICALLY KNEW THEY WERE FAKE.) JE: Well, that's a part of the transaction. RN: But was the fake thing in that? JE: Right, that's what I believe. I could be wrong on this. RN: You didn't know there was anything fake in that, though, did you? You didn't tell me anything about that, John. (NOTE: NIXON HAS NOW PUT EHRLICHMAN IN A CORNER BY INSISTING THAT HE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE CABLES. HE IS OFFERING EHRLICHMAN A WAY OUT, HOWEVER, IF EHRLICHMAN WILL ONLY STATE, FOR THE TAPED RECORD, THAT HE DIDN"T KNOW ABOUT THE CABLES. EHRLICHMAN, HOWEVER, IS UNWITTING OF NIXON"S GAME AND FAILS TO PLAY ALONG.) JE: Well, I'd have to go back and check my notes. But my recollection is that this was discussed with you. RN: Well, I'd be amazed at that. I mean, I must say that I knew that a lot was done. I mean, I knew that we were making a study, but I didn't know we were putting together something that was totally fake to send to Life magazine or something like that on Kennedy and Diem. JE: Well, I could be wrong on this. I'll try and get the time to check my notes tomorrow before I come up. RN: Well, yeah. Well, I've got to know about this. If I'm in, I mean, if I'm in that kind of position, I'm in a position I just didn't know about, believe me. I have--throughout this this thing, I must say, I have not known (unintelligible)--I didn't know about the Watergate and I didn't know about the other thing. But I knew we were checking all this. But my God, I didn't know they were faking stuff involving that on Kennedy. JE: Well, as I say, I got this second-hand. RN: From Young and Krogh? JE: No, no, no. I think Chuck (COLSON) told me one time. RN: Well, he sure didn't tell me. You didn't tell me, did you? JE: I don't know whether I did or not. As I say, I'd have to go back and check... RN: Another one of those things. Well, thank God. Thank God it wasn't used. JE: Yeah, that whole thing, that Hunt--and it was mostly a Hunt-Colson thing--ran off in a lot of strange directions that I really don't have a lot of information on." My fingers are tired. I'll have to come back to Pat Gray's testimony later. But the point is made. Neither Ehrlichman nor Nixon had the slightest doubt the cables existed. The only question, at least according to Nixon, was whether or not he knew the cables were fakes. Ehrlichman certainly seemed to think Nixon knew they were fakes. Why shouldn't we?

************************************************************************ "Your contention that Mr. Caddy was, and remains, a CIA asset of some sort is ridiculous on its face. The FBI, under the deeply-closeted Hoover, LIVED to find dirt on homosexuals, and expose them as security risks. Even if the CIA loved Mr. Caddy, it's highly unlikely they would consider using him for fear J. Edgar would use him to embarrass them." Come on, Pat. Since when has the CIA, let alone the FBI, allowed gender preferences to interfere with whom they employed as "assets," or Directors? What the hell was David Ferrie, or Clay Shaw, for that matter? Or, Gay Edgar's paramour, and right-hand man, whose name escapes me, at the moment. The whole sordid mess is beginning to resemble nothing less than a Monty Python epic. Since always, Terry. Why do you think Hoover and Tolson's love affair, assuming there was one, was hidden, deeply, in the closet? As far as Shaw and Ferrie, it was strictly a one-way street. There is no evidence they did anything beyond provide information and perhaps provide transportation. Neither one provided the cover for an ongoing CIA operation, as far as we know.

I don't believe I said these documents were the WHOLE truth. We know they were not. I was trying to assert that they were at least partially true. Mr Gray is asserting, as near as I can tell, that everything from the Pentagon Papers to the Church Committee was a CIA script put into play to deceive the American people and cover up that the Government and L. Ron Hubbard were experimenting in extra-sensory perception. In order to push this agenda, he has asserted that NEARLY EVERYONE involved in this period of history, from Daniel Ellsberg to John Dean to Gerry Ford, was working for the CIA, in a combined effort to destroy Poor Richard Nixon, among other things. In his view, Nixon was an unimportant figure in this period. I have been fascinated by Nixon since a child. I have studied his words and the words of those who knew him, and have come to view him much the same as Oliver Stone portrays him in his film Nixon, that is, as a deeply troubled and disturbed man, who wilted under the pressure of high office, and who sought to use his office to destroy his personal "enemies" in the name of "national security". Now Mr. Gray, if that's really his name, comes along and attacks Baldwin and Caddy as evil conspirators in an actual not-in-Nixon's mind plot to destroy Nixon and give the Presidency to the CIA and Gerry Ford. His theory is as wacky as a religion based upon the precept that the souls of long-dead aliens travel the world looking to attach themselves to peoples' psyches in times of pain. I am mortified that his ridiculous ideas have gained a foothold on this forum. While there are many unanswered questions surrounding the period of Watergate, Mr. Gray is asking the wrong questions, IMO. It should not even be debated that Daniel Ellsberg had an attack of conscience and tried to do something about Vietnam. For years, the debate has been whether he was truly heroic or just a jerk out for attention. Now Gray comes along and says that Ellsberg was under Richard Helms' remote control the whole time, and that Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, right-wing wackos if there ever were a pair, were working WITH Ellsberg and Helms to try to overthrow Nixon. If it meant damaging the war effort they fervently believed in and supporting those hippies they SO LOVED TO HATE, oh well, no big deal, whatever makes Helms happy. Is this truly wirth discussing? I suppose this then is the basis is of my absolute contempt for Mr. Gray and his views: his absolute lack of understanding of humanity and history. In his mind, men like Caddy, Baldwin, Dean, Hunt, and Ellsberg are all CIA robots controlled by an evil CIA computer run by...who was it exactly? Helms? The man so vastly powerful that he spent half the Ford years testifying before congress and admitting to his involvement in crimes? The man so powerful he was convicted of perjury? The man so powerful that the supposed beneficiary of his largesse, Ford, turned around and told the media that he'd been involved in assassination attempts, which led to congress' discussion of why Helms had never mentioned this to the Warren Commission, which led to creation of the HSCA? In Mr. Gray's world, NOT ONE man involved in this period of time EVER tried to do the right thing or tell the truth. They were all deliberate liars, playing out a script. This is incredibly self-serving, IMO. Why should we believe that only he, and perhaps his alter-ego Huntley Troth, like the GREAT KARNAK before them, using their mystical and borderline divine ways, can ascertain the answer without first having been asked the question. All the man needs is some box to stand on and some tonic to sell. While I welcome a closer inspection of Watergate, an inspection that starts off with the notion that Nixon was an unwitting dupe and not a dangerously out of control megalomaniac, and then seeks to re-interpret all the evidence of his crimes as part of a CIA frame-up, is akin to a re-inspection of WWII that starts with the premise that Hitler knew nothing of the holocaust, and that he was framed by some of his closest associates, who were in fact western spies. Bunkum. As far as the Caddy/Mullen situation, there is no evidence that ordinary employees at Mullen in Washington were screened or cleared as CIA assets. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that Robert Bennett was not involved with the CIA UNTIL COLSON helped hook him up with Mullen, in order to bring the Howard Hughes account into the grasp of his loyal Republicans. Nixon went ballistic when he found out about Hughes and Maheu having hired O'Brien, as he was fearful Maheu would tell O'Brien about the cash given to Rebozo. Nixon then ordered Colson to help Hughes find Washington representation. Colson had heard through Hunt that Mullen was for sale, and arranged for Bennett to buy it and get the account. I don't believe there is any evidence tying Bennett to the CIA before this point. Later, when Colson found out about Bennett's ties to the CIA during the Watergate hearings, after the CIA VOLUNTEERED that both Martinez and Bennett were active assets, he flipped out, and started the whole CIA-did-it campaign, as detailed in Haldeman's book.

Bill, I agree with John. If you can show how merely shifting values will change one photo into another, I'd be truly surprised and impressed. Look at the area between Hill and the person in the back ground in the two photos. The photo with the clearly defined foot has been tremendously lightened in this area compared to the area behind the person. I think if someone enlarges the "feet" one will see that not only has the area been lightened, but that there have been lines added into the photo with the clearly defined "foot.' I don't see how this would happen merely by someone's highlighting that part of the photo. As for your assertion that Gary has the original, etc. do you know if this was the photo used in Trask? The photo in Trask appears to be identical to the one I found on the internet with the clearly defined foot, the one not published until weeks after the assassination, the one with the "enhanced" area between Hill and the pedestrian. As far as the copyright issue, that's a smoke screen. The photo was printed in the Warren Report.

Mr. Gray, if there is a Mr. Gray, who is Huntley Troth????