Pat Speer

Ashton, since you find something so mysterious about Mr. Caddy's role at Mullen, can you tell us what procedures would have had to have taken place before Mr. Caddy could ever take over Mullen? Would there not have been a security check on Mr. Caddy before he would EVER be told the company was a CIA cover company overseas? Would this security check not have disclosed Mr. Caddy was gay? Would the CIA not have told Mr. Mullen that Mr. Caddy was gay and was therefore ineligible to run a CIA cover company? 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. I URGE you and anyone swayed by your nonsense to read any and everything you can about the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration, the FBI and the CIA. Read the Pentagon Papers. Read the Watergate Report. Read the Rockefeller Report. Read the Church Report. Read the Pike Report. These documents hold together for the most part and are HEAVILY critical of the executive branch and intelligence agencies. Anyone thinking these documents are nothing but whitewashes created and engineered by the CIA is dangerously out of touch with reality, IMO.

I don't know if it's the hat or what, Dawn, but Ashton's really got you spinning. You're a lawyer. You've read Loftus's research into the reliability of human memory and eyewitness testimony, correct? So WHY should we possibly believe there's anything suspicious about some men remembering an event differently? Everything we KNOW about human cognition and memory indicates this is to be EXPECTED. If all these men remembered everything exactly the same, THEN it might be logical to conclude they'd studied a script, and were part of an ongoing conspiracy. Ashton's theory makes no sense, and you're completely misguided in stating that he has tried to answer my questions. He has never answered any of the relevant questions. And when I got a little too close to exposing him for the total fraud he undoubtedly is, he started suggesting I was working with the CIA. The relevant questions? When he DROVE Baldwin to the Forum by telling him he was done with him and his evil lying soul-less conspirators, he said that Baldwin and his co-conspirators had destroyed the lives of numerous people. (If anything is GUARANTEED to drive an INVITED GUEST to a Forum away, it is for them to be insulted in such a manner and have the moderator do nothing.) I have REPEATEDLY asked Gray of whom was he speaking, as, by his account, just about everyone to serve time and have their lives destoyed was a KNOWING CONSPIRATOR out to destroy Richard Nixon. (Yes, Virginia, there were dozens of men willing to go to prison in order to destroy Nixon, the man they'd been working for for years, in order to help the CIA, for which none of them was currently employed, and only a handful had had any contact, and Gerry Ford, who failed to reward ANY of the Watergate conspirators, outside Nixon, in any way. Included in Mr. Gray's list of conspirators, by the way is the head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, whose career was ruined by Watergate. Mr. Ashton Gray would have us believe L. Pat sacrificed his career to help the CIA. Anyone who knows anything about the FBI and CIA knows that the director of one would NEVER sacrifice his career to help the other.) Another question never answered by Mr. Gray, which oughta be fair game, is if he is related at all to L. Patrick Gray. Still another is is he really stands by his assertion there were no Diem cables. I won't waste my time posting the information indicating they existed if he is just going to say "never mind, they're not all that important."

Bill, I'm afraid you're letting your personal feelings about Jack's work blind you on this issue. Look again. The Yarborough exhibit is clearer than the photo online or as viewed in Pictures of the Pain. It appears the woman in the background has been lightened as part of the process through which the foot was drawn-in. (Perhaps John can compare the shading of the woman versus the shading of other parts in the photo.) Anyhow, it seems obvious to me that it is the fake foot photo that is the inferior print. As far as Gary, you needn't be such a groupie. Gary has a vast amount of knowledge and I respect him a lot but even he should be allowed to be wrong sometimes. He is CLEARLY wrong on this issue, IMO. He said ALL the published versions of the photo were the same. Are you saying that both you and Gary see NO DIFFERENCE in the "shape" as published in the Saturday Evening Post and the supposed foot in The Torch is Passed? (Once again, perhaps Jack or John can do a side by side comparison between the two to show that it wasn't simply a matter of one being clearer than the other, and that the "shoes" in the two versions of the same photo are neither the same size nor the same shape.) Although I remain convinced the Zapruder film was not altered, I suddenly feel very sympathetic to Jack and other alterationsists. If you and Gary are really willing to throw your credibility behind your contention that the AP did not alter the Miller photo, when it is so obvious the prints used by the AP ever since the first few days after the assassination fail to match the earliest versions of the photo, then you do nothing but weaken your argument that the Zapruder film, and other items actually used as evidence, were unaltered, IMO. If you really believe it's a foot in the photo, will you please take a picture replicating the contortions necessary for Hill to face forward whilst simultaneously having his foot upside down at his right hanging over the side of a car? And if there is a clearer print of this photo available, please let it be posted. Saying that Gary's got one and that we should all take his word for it, when he's already demonstrated he has no credibilty in regards to this photo by stating that all the published versions were the same, is just blowing smoke.

Maybe Pat's off trying to find Hunt and get him to forge some cables now so Pat can actually have something to talk about. Ashton Gray Ashton, you are the king of obfuscation. Do you or do you not believe the Diem cables existed? Are you really willing to say that Hunt, Colson, Lambert, Ehrlichman, Dean, Nixon, and Gray, all lied about the existence of these cables? Are you really that far gone? If Hunt was part of the conspiracy, and willing to lie about the cables, why wouldn't he have just made the cables? Do you think it was beyond his ability, or the ability of his purported co-conspirators at the CIA, to fake cables? Do I really need to print the excepts of Hunt's and Gray's testimony, and the Watergate transcript of April 28 1973 to demonstrate you wrong? Are you so over the edge that you can't concede you were just bluffing about the cables, and that they actually existed?

Jack, I have attempted to explain why the Watergate story really begins in 1968 here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7253 In fact, in some ways, the Watergate story began in November, 1963. This is what many of us have been saying since 1974 or so. For those memebers who did not live through Watergate, or the assassination, they missed a crucial part of history. Because even with the press being controlled there is always a few gems dropped, so that a discerning person can piece the real story together. Just connect all the dots. As Terry posted a few days back: "all roads lead to Rome". Dawn There's a heckuva lot of difference, IMO, between saying that anti-Nixon forces were able to influence the CIA to help expose the Watergate break-in, and that the CIA faked the break-ins to begin with. The first theory reflects an adversarial relationship between different forces; we know this relationship existed; the second theory entails a convoluted plot that completely absolves Nixon of most of the wrong-doing done in his name; we have no reason to believe this is true and the only reason to believe it is true is because one wishes it was true. In order to insist that Nixon was a dupe, it becomes necessary to insist that men such as Caddy,Baldwin, Dean, McCord, Hunt, Liddy, Magruder, Ehrlichman, Colson, Gray, etc. were all part of an ongoing conspiracy to remove Nixon from office. Their motive? Who was it again among these men who benefitted from Nixon's removal from office? I'm deeply offended that my trying to make sense of Ashton's nonsense has forced Ashton to call my intentions into question, and that some seem ready to believe him. I believe this is what Caddy was trying to warn us about. Whether or not Ashton is a deliberate provocateur, his influence on this forum could not possibly be any worse.

Whathe heck are you talking about, Dawn? How is it that Ashton is a hero for driving Caddy and Baldwin from the Forum through his incessant and rude questions, but I'm a disrupter or CIA lackey, simply because I ask Ashton to make sense of his theory? He throws out ideas like "there was no first break-in" and "there were no Diem cables" and fails to back them up beyond his demonstration that different people told different stories over the years, which you, as a lawyer MUST know is to be expected, and then refuses to acknowledge my questions once I start pinning him down on the FACTS. If he offered you Kool-aid, would you drink it? I wouldn't.

Those aren't answers, Ashton. Your theory is full of malarkey and you know it. You've uncovered that people experiencing the same event remember the event differently. Big whoop. Didn't we learn that in seventh grade? When we told a story and whispered it around the class room, and then had the last person tell the story out loud so that everyone could see how it had changed? I'm still waiting for you to offer one reason to believe the first break-in never happened, or that the Diem cables never existed, etc. You cite that a group of people remember things differently and then draw from this that the event they're remembering NEVER happened. This is absolutely bone-headed, IMO. What's worse, you harrassed Baldwin and Caddy from the Forum and cited their refusal to answer questions as proof of their complicity, and yet you refuse to answer questions yourself. So what does that say about you?

You guys are a hoot, Pat! It must be very reassuring to have Jack agree with you when he couldn't understand how a foot tilted at an angle could look smaller than a hand being see head on. Furthermore, you guys are assessing a copy print rather than dealing with what is on the actual photograqph. Who cares why a newpaper retouched a copied photograph? Below is a crop of Altgens 6 out of "4 Dark Days" and the area around JFK and Connally's head has been obviously retouched, while the original photograph shows no retouching. (note JFK in the back seat has the corner of the sunvisor passing behind his head) Bill Miller Interesting, Bill, about the Altgens. The point of this thread isn't to expose some vast conspiracy, but to clear up part of the photographic record. I find it interesting that the Associated Press misrepresented Kennedy's hand as, first his foot, and then Clint Hill's foot. This has confused and/or deceived millions of people over the years. If you find this uninteresting, I apologize. But trying to pass it off as the work of one over-zealous newspaper misses the point. When I first decided to confront this issue, I wrongly accused David Miller and/or Tom Dillard of drawing-in the foot for the original release of the photo. After looking at the Yarborough exhibit, and the 11-24 NY Times, however, I realized that the earliest versions of the photo showed something where the foot was drawn-in, and claimed this shape was a foot. By the publication of the Torch is Passed, an AP rush release book that came out weeks later, however, this shape had been deliberately drawn-over to look like a foot. Whether or not the AP really thought it was a foot is immaterial. They "enhanced" a photo and changed history. Sam Holland would later tell Mark Lane he saw Kennedy's foot stick out of the side of the car, but it never happened. The AP had created an urban legend. For some reason this obvious fact is threatening to some people. I've received two or three e-mails from Gary telling me I'm wrong wrong wrong and that every published version of the photo is identical and the same as the original. The version of the Miller photo most widely used these days, and as shown in Pictures of the Pain, is NOT the same as the photo in the Yarborough Exhibit or the early papers. Why is this so hard to grasp? As far as Jack's observations about the size of Clint Hill's foot versus the size of his hand...I initially made this observation about the doctored photo. In the doctored photo, the supposed shoe is also smaller than the back of Roy Kellerman's head. This seems highly unlikely. Clint Hill's shoes in other photos appear to be normal-sized. A normal-sized man's shoe would have to be turned at roughly a forty five degree angle before it would be as small as the back of his head, and the shoe in that photo does not appear to be angled to such a degree.

Good clarification, John. Yes, what Jack and I have called a palm is not actually the palm but the underside of Kennedy's curled fingers, possibly bloodied but most certainly in shadow.

Do us all a favor and retire already, Jack. You’ve been an embarrassment to serious and legitimate JFK research for far too long as it is. Thanks in advance. John Hunt Ouch. While I also suspect there's nothing in this photo but leaves, I defend Jack's right to notice things in photos and ask questions about them. His take on the photo alteration of the Miller photo (see the current thread) has helped pinpoint and clarify a point of interest of the case, much to the embarrassment of those who "know better." The photo long sold as a photo of Kennedy's foot and then re-captioned as a photo of Clint Hill's foot was most likely a photo of Kennedy's hand.

I agree with Jack on this issue. (Which only makes sense since Im the one who brought it up.) There is no way the thing is Hill's foot. The dark shadow along the heal, which I suspect is the palm of Kennedy's hand, is far too wide to be the shadow of the heel of Hill's shoe. He wasn't wearing high heels. P.S. If it was his foot, why was it necessary to change it to look like a foot?

It's a whole chapter of "How to Spin for the CIA": "Ally yourself with the opposition. Be 'one of them.' Express similar doubts and concerns you might have shared with them at one time. Then say that you gave the CIA operative a fair hearing, a just consideration, and realized that, as with all CIA operatives, he really was always and only of pure motive and purpose, doing his best at every step for truth, justice, and the American way. He was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, and of the failings and foibles of others around him who lacked the discipline and unblemished chaste virtue that at every moment was his own guiding light." The advanced lessons say it's even all right to trash another CIA op (like Hunt) if you have to in order temporarily to sell the "Come to Jesus" sermon for one you're trying to peddle (like McCord)—you know, like saying that the other one blackmailed somebody while your choir boy was only trying to "do the right thing." You can always come back in a separate argument, and say the one who you admitted was a blackmailer in one breath (Hunt) was always 100% virtuous and truthful and honest-to-a-fault in everything else he ever said or did. You know, like everything he ever said about private, closed-door meetings he had with other CIA operatives. "That? Oh, that, well, that you can just take to the bank." Don'tcha' know. (Watch for this exact flip-flop claim to be coming soon to a thread near you!) Ashton Gray Mr. Gray, I have been on this Forum for years, discussing many aspects of our recent history. I have been quite critical of the CIA throughout, and have even assisted Larry Hancock in research for his book Someone Would Have Talked. My research concluded that Tracy Barnes, in his role as Director of the Domestic Operations Division of the CIA, with his background as Assistant Director of Plans, and his close working relationship with Rip Robertson, David Morales, David Phillips, and Howard Hunt, would have been in pefect position to fund and organize an assassination attempt on the President of the United States and any other leader, without the knowledge of higher-ups, and without leaving a paper trail. I hardly see this as a position sympathetic to the CIA. Your post accusing me of being some sort of CIA apologist is both incredibly off-the-mark and insulting. It is also indicative of your own lack of scholarship, as you are prone to seeing conspiracies when there is none. This is a forum for intellectual discussion and is designed to help students think critically about our history, and you do nothing but fill it full of PROPAGANDA proposing what appears to be a bizarre theory. When challenged, rather than discuss the logical basis for your theory, you announce that you are through with the challengers and will no longer respond to them. You then try to make them seem disingenuous by suggesting that their posts are somehow being orchestrated by the CIA. As a result, you bring down the level of discourse on this forum. If, as you claim, the CIA was trying to bring down Nixon in order to put Gerald Ford in power, why would it concoct such an arcane and overly complicated scenario as the Watergate break-in, when there were more damaging items at its disposal, such as the Huston plan, the Diem cables, the ITT memo, and the Ellsberg break-in? If, as you seem to believe, this plan was put in place by Helms, why did none of these things come to light until Helms was long gone? Why didn't Helms speak up about Haldeman's attempts to get him to cut off the FBI investigation of Watergate before he was shipped off? Why did Helms subsequently perjure himself in order to conceal the Nixon Administration's involvement in the overthrow of Allende? Did the CIA continue as the orchestrator of the plot against Nixon after Helms was removed? Did Schlesinger, Nixon's hatchet man, creator of the "family jewels," continue with the CIA's plot against Nixon? If so, why? As for Ford, just how did the CIA know he would be put in place to replace Agnew? And how did the CIA know Agnew was going to resign? According to Agnew, Nixon himself was behind his ouster. Did the CIA cut a deal with Nixon to dump Agnew? If so, why didn't they put this plan in place before the 72 election, so that Ford could actually have been elected, and have more credibility once President? Similarly, if the CIA was so all fired-up to support Ford, what kinds of plots were hatched against Carter in 76 to preserve Ford's reign? Geoge H.W. Bush was DCI during this period. Are you telling me he was a willing part of the move to overthrow Nixon, his mentor, but did nothing as DCI to help Ford defeat Carter, and continue his own reign as DCI? Your whole theory is as full of holes as a whiffle ball. Please stop, regroup,and at least try to have it make sense before you accuse those of us with functioning critical faculties of being CIA lackeys.

Dawn, I urge you to read McCord's testimony as well as his book. He's quite credible. And I'm not naive. What is incredibly naive is to assume that there was a vast conspiracy, including men such as Caddy and Baldwin, to pretend there was a first break-in, in order to cover up what these men were really up to. You are a lawyer. Does it make sense to you that an accused perpetrator of a crime would admit to a previous crime in order to hide their involvement in another crime, when they have never been accused of this other crime, and when this CRIME HAS NEVER BEEN IDENTIFIED? That's a looney theory if ever there was one. As far as the break-in at the Meridian PA FBI office, which led to the exposure of COINTELPRO, let me clarify. As Nixon had been praying for Hoover's removal from office, due to his resistance to the the Huston plan, and as ithe exposure of COINTELPRO led to cries for Hoover's ouster, by Hale Boggs, among others, I had suspected that the break-in had been orchestrated by Nixon, using Hunt and the Cubans. The fact that no one was ever arrested for this break-in, one of the most embarrassing chapters in the history of the FBI, seemed too much a coincidence. Certainly, I thought, a bunch of hippies embarking on such a break-in would get arrested shortly thereafter. When someone on this forum wrote about COINTELPRO, I shared my "Pet" theory, only to get shot down. I was assured that the real "Committee to Investigate the FBI" was a small group of leftist intellectuals, who remain silent to this day. Although the statute of limitations on the break-in has long passed, there is a separate law regarding conspiracy to hide a criminal act, which evidently still applies. Thus, the continued silence.

A couple of points. 1) Who is Huntley Troth? Sure sounds like a nom de plume for Ashton Gray... 2) The article posted above is not remotely convincing of anything. Anyone who's done a study of eyewitness statements and compared them over a period of years will see that people experiencing the same event will have different impressions, and that these impressions will degrade and change over time. The writer's supposition that one can take from two conflicting eyewitness accounts that the event discussed NEVER happened, is bizarre. To apply this logic to the Kennedy assassination, my area of expertise, one can say that because Mrs. Connally remembered her husband yelling "Oh, no, no, no" before he was shot and he remembered yelling "Oh, no, no, no" after he was shot, that he was never shot. Crazy. 3) The article cites Magruder's testimony and compares it with the statements of others, in an attempt tp show that all the stories conflict. The writer fails to cite that Magruder's testimony was an admitted rehearsed perjury, for which Magruder eventually served time. 4) The writer cites the conflicting statements regarding the motive for the break-in, and takes from this that these men were mis-remembering a rehearsed lie. This is silly, IMO. When one reads the Cubans' statements, it is clear that Hunt misled them about the purpose of the break-in, using Democratic complicity with Castro as the lure to receive their free services. Martinez was later to write about Hunt's deception. Hunt himself I believe admitted to this deception (although right now I can't remember where). 5) The writer's representation of Sally Harmony's testimony is misleading. Ms. Harmony testified that she wrote up transcripts of the conversations that were dictated by Liddy. Liddy of course refused to testify. McCord testified to witnessing Ms. Harmony's retyping of some of the transcripts for the purposes of their presentaion to Mitchell. She says she wrote these logs up as a script, with questions and answers. Her presentation was thus different than Baldwin's notes, which Liddy, as stated in the article above, found unusable. 5) Gray's representation of "the worms" on Wikipedia, who sabotaged this article, is a bit strange. It is my understanding that Wikipedia is a reader-written history, and that the articles presented on Wikipedia are subject to change when they are too exotic or controversial. Gray's inability to acknowledge that his (and his pal Troth's) ideas are on the fringe and are subject to review and alteration is indicative of his over-whelming self-absorption. I ask you again, Mr. Gray, did the Diem cables exist or not?

Ashton, are you ready to concede the Diem cables existed? I'd rather not spend my time proving you wrong on this point, but if you insist, I will. Believe me, you should just concede this point and focus on your other poiints.

Ashton, I read the post above, and have one comment: SFW. READ original source material whenever possible. This time-line links things like so and so knew so and so and so and so was a former CIA guy so we know they must have been up to some BAD things, and that these bad things must have been designed to overthrow Nixon. Where's the beef? For example, it cites that Hunt met with Conein and Lansdale as if--wink wink--they must have been hatching a scheme against Nixon. What was Hunt's initial job, as confirmed by NIxon loyalists like Colson and Ehrlichman? His job was to look through the Bay of Pigs and Diem records, and SEE if they could be USED AGAINST KENNEDY. Helms knew what Nixon was like and dragged his feet on this issue. Eventually, when they couldn't find a smoking gun PROVING that JFK was behind Diem's murder, Hunt created some fake cables--he testified it was at Colson's request--implicating Kennedy in Diem's death. Hunt admitted faking these cables. William Lambert of Life Magazine was shown these cables by Hunt. Dean saw these cables when he removed them from Hunt's safe. The April 28, 1973 Watergate conversation between Nixon and Ehrlichman reflects that COLSON HAD TOLD EHRLICHMAN ABOUT THE FAKE CABLES when they were created. Pat Gray even TESTIFIED that he looked through the cables before he destroyed them. And yet you insist they never existed. Why? Could it be because then you'd have to admit there were other ways to overthrow Nixon besides an incredibly convoluted plan involving multiple break-ins mutliple lies and multiple players? A reasonable man would say, sure, they existed, Hunt created them, and was going to use them to help destroy Nixon. But you can't accept that because that would mean that Nixon was a xxxx, or that at least his hatchet man Colson was a xxxx, and that at least part of the "official" story is true. Please take this nonsense elsewhere, or at least gussy it up a little so that it makes a wee bit of sense. But before you go, please explain to us what the term "psychological warfare" means. Your time-line seems to imply that Nixon's demand for better Psycholgical Warfare is somehow mysterious, and involves mind control or remote viewing or some such thing. Anyone who'd actually researched the term would have found that "Psychological Warfare" was an early term for black ops involving propaganda. A typical Psy-War op (and one actually proposed by the CIA during Operation Success) would be to deface Catholic shrines with Communist slogans, in order to turn the faithful against communism. Tricky Dick was therefore angry at the CIA because they weren't DIRTY enough! And yet you seem to think he was an innocent duped by forces far more dirty than he could ever perceive. Dream on. Please cite one person close to Nixon who thought Nixon was a Poillyanna battling dark forces beyond his control, who didn't also feel those dark forces arose from Nixon's own soul.

David Miller took the photo in question. In Trask book, POTP, Richard tells about this photo. Justin Newman also took a photo from the other side of the street as the limo raced past him and in that photo we can see Hill's outstretched leg getting into the posture seen in Miller's photo. By hooking the leg over the door panel and his hand on the other door panel ... it offers Hill some stability in the event the limo makes any sudden sharp turns. It was not uncommon for press agencies/newspapers to attempt to better an area on a photograph by 'dodging' the image. I believe that Bob Jackson's photo of Ruby shooting Oswald was also dodged in order to make Ruby's gun easier to see. Bill Miller Bill, it's doubtful it's Hill's foot in the Miller photo. Hill's right leg is angled down into the car. The other photos show Hill's leg draped across the back of the car, with his foot behind the tire. The "foot" in the Miller photo, on the other hand, is coming out of the passenger compartment. If you or someone can re-create this photo, with your foot upside down directly to your right while you're faced forward in a car, I'll say "fine, that's his foot." Meanwhile, I'm with Jack and suspect it's Kennedy's hand. By the way, I looked at an 11-24 New York Times. The photo was pretty blurry but I believe it was the original photo as seen in the Yarborough exhibit. They clearly thought it was a foot. They had an arrow pointing at it and everything. In The Torch is Passed, an AP rush release book detailing the assassination, the funeral and LBJ's taking over, which came out a few weeks later, however, the altered photo appears. I believe the AP, after getting a good look at the photo on the large pages of the Torch is Passed, realized the object they'd been touting as a foot, really didn't look that much like a foot, and "enhanced" the image to make it look like a foot. So you can tell Gary that his friends Miller (any relation?) and Dillard are in the clear. The record indicates that the AP changed the photo AFTER its initial release and syndication.

Sayeth Mr. Gray: "As for Nixon, let me suggest an interesting exercise that I've done myself several times now: with this knowledge of a vast CIA cover-up, go back and read the full transcript of the so-called "smoking gun" tape. I've never been any fan of Nixon, and I have no doubt that he had his own sins that made him as blind as he was and vulnerable to exactly what happened to him, but the man was just being turned around and around like the blindfolded dupe in a vicious "pin the tail on the donkey" game. The only reason his so-called "cover up" fumbling instructions were issued was because he was being told that the FBI had concluded that they were up against a CIA op, and so was playing the little bit of hardball he could to get the heat off the White House and onto CIA where he felt it belonged. On that count, he was dead right." If there's any PROOF needed that Mr. Gray is a Nixon apologist, this is it. There is NO evidence Nixon suspected the CIA was behind the break-in at this point. His suspicions came later. At this point, as admitted by Haldeman (and probably Nixon--I'll have to re-read his Frost interviews), he was simply looking for an angle to prevent the investigation of a crime he suspected led back to his dirty-tricks specialist, Colson. Hmm. Nixon hired Hunt to fake cables...Ashton Gray concludes there were no cables. Hmmm. Nixon asks Haldeman to convince the CIA to cover-up for him, thereby obstrucing justice...Ashton Gray concludes that Nixon only did this because he felt the CIA were responsible for the break-in, and deserving of the heat... IS THERE A PATTERN HERE OR WHAT? I ask you again, Mr. Gray, 1) did Richard Nixon engage in impeachable offenses? 2) was he set up for those offenses? 3) would he have not been able to survive his minimal involvement in the break-in itself if not for his own actions? 4) did Jim McCord, Howard Hunt, Douglas Caddy, or Alfred Baldwin cause Nixon to lie to the American public on TV? You have NO BUSINESS hounding Caddy for answers if you refuse to answer them yourself.

Good point, Jack. That's not the seat.

Gary Mack has sent me an email insisting the photo was not altered. He's basing this upon his inspection of the early versions of the photo, which match the Saturday Evening Post version. I found this online. This also has the original version of the photo. My quest for the day then is to determine where the other photo, the one with the clearly-drawn-in foot, came from.

Jack, I think you might be onto something. I think 3 could be the seat itself which photos reveal rose over the level of the side of the car. I think 2 is not the back of his hand, but the palm of his hand, with his fingers cupped above, creating a shadow. On your blow-up I think I see the ridges of his fingers. If you look just below the wrist you'll see a thin white line which I think is the cuff of Kennedy's shirt almost covered by his jacket. In sum, it looks like his right arm was stretched out to his right, while he lay on his back. Perhaps Jackie was re-postioning JFK in the car or perhaps Kennedy did have some convulsions, after all.

Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E? Mr. Gray asks Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Caddy a bunch of questions. He puts them on the defensive. Mr. Baldwin stops responding. Mr. Caddy stops responding. At Mr. Gray's request I try to intervene and get Mr. Caddy to answer a few questions. Mr. Caddy answers a question in a roundabout way, but this fails to appease Mr. Gray, who feels he's entitled to direct responses to his direct questions. Mr. Caddy gets suspicious that Mr. Gray's real desire is to harrass people like himself and drive people from the Forum, and speaks up about it. Mr. Caddy gets attacked as being an enemy of free speech and free enquiry, etc. Mr. Gray then announces that I'M THE ONE who's trying to interfere with the free exchange of ideas and announces that he'll no longer respond to my posts? WHAT? Mr. Gray is allowed to ask pointed questions to Baldwin and Caddy ALL DAY LONG, but he himself is never to be questioned? Where's the outrage? Why aren't those cheerleaders of Gray's, those telling him that Caddy's refusal to answer his questions is proof he's onto something, concluding that Mr. Gray's refusal to answer my questions is proof I'm onto something? In one of his posts Mr. Gray expounded upon the numerous people whose lives have been ruined by Watergate. I asked him who he was talking about as he clearly had someone in mind. I knew he didn't mean Hunt, Liddy, McCord, etc. because these men were, according to Mr. Gray, willing parts of the official fiction. So who was he talking about? Before we take Mr. Gray seriously we should know who he's defending. Was he just being dramatic? I later asked Mr. Gray if he was related to L. Patrick Gray, the FBI director disgraced and ruined by Watergate. He so far has refused to answer this question. If we are to believe that Mr. Caddy is hiding something because he won;t answer Mr. Gray's questions, should we not believe Mr. Gray is hiding something because he won't answer my questions? If his goal is the truth, why is Mr. Gray so determined to make sure the supposedly sincere exchanges on this forum are conducted on his terms, and his terms only? Could it be because his whole theory about Watergate is a bit lunar on its surface, and that he is thoroughly convinced that Watergate was a CIA-led conspiracy to replace Richard Nixon with Gerry Ford, for the furtherance of evil mind-control experiments? Wake up people, the emperor has no clothes.

Intriguingly, the Saturday Evening Post article refers to it as Kennedy's foot. Evidently, someone at the AP decided to "improve" or "enhance" this foot for future publications. I'll be home later today and will check with Trask's book about the history of the photo. I think it was published originally in a paper with the supposed foot, then shortly thereafter by the Saturday Evening Post, who used the "unenhanced" photo but still decided to call it a foot. It could be a towel or something. Hill's leg is angled into the back seat. His leg would have to be awfully contorted to have his foot in that position. As far as his foot being over the side in other photos...the photos showing Hill's foot over the right side show his right leg draped across the trunk of the limo and his right foot back by the rear tire, not his right leg disappearing into the back seat and his right foot poking out of the passenger's compartment. I think his slacks were a little too tight to pull off such a contortion. As far as Holland and others saying they saw the foot...they saw the photo...and it sunk into their memories. There is not one piece of credible eyewitness evidence describing any contortions by Kennedy in the car. He said nothing. He fell to his left...pretty much dead. By the time the limo reached Parkland, his legs had slipped under the jump seat. Who knows how many magazines and papers were sold because people just had to have the photo of Kennedy's foot sticking out of the car? Who knows how many people bought the JFK: Beyond Conspiracy DVD because they just had to have that animation PROVING the shots came from the sniper's nest? Same bullcrap, different decade.

While the alteration of photos by the government is still open to debate, I have recently become aware of the alteration of one famous photo by the media. Maybe this has been discussed before, I don't know. I've been running this around on the Lancer site and thought some of you might have an interest. Here is the photo of the limousine and Clint Hill taken by David Miller as bandied around on the internet. I believe this is how it was initially shown in the papers, only with an arrow pointing to Kennedy's foot. Over the years this photo was reprinted repeatedly with the public being told it was Kennedy's foot. Sam Holland ended up telling Mark Lane he saw Kennedy's foot stick out of the car as the car approached the underpass. Only it never happened. Eventually, the AP, who bought the photo from the 17 year old student Miller, admitted it was Clint Hill's foot, and not Kennedy's. Only this made no sense to me, as Hill's leg is headed straight down in the car in the picture, and as Hill's foot appears smaller than Kellerman's head, which seems unlikely. Then earlier today I stumbled on the Yarborough Exhibit of the Warren Report, which includes a few photos from the December 14, 1963 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Guess what, the "foot" in this version of the Miller photo is radically different in appearance, and is probably not a foot at all! To get a better look. http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...Vol21_0403a.htm We know the backyard photos were doctored by the magazines and newspapers. There were evidently some versions of the Moorman photo which were tampered with as well. Are there any other examples of this kind of mischief by the media we should know about? Maybe we can use this thread to show photos that have been printed in more than one version...Photos that we KNOW have been altered as opposed to photos which we simply believe were altered..

Thanks for putting up the Braden depos, Bill. Fascinating, as expected. I just read them straight through. Braden wants us to buy it was all just a coincidence. And that everybody was out to ruin him. Poor guy. You'd think that someone with dozens of arrests on his record would be a little more understanding of other people's distrust. His outrage feels like an act. I liked the way Purdy worked Braden's relationship with Routt into the record. If Braden was innocent, the only reason he wouldn't have called his companions when he was pulled in by the police OR told them what happened afterwards, is that he was trying to hide his background. I suspect he and Bauman were scamming Routt. Braden getting pulled in for questioning regarding the murder of the Pres might have screwed up their sting. I also found it fascinating that Braden finally hit paydirt, oil-wise, in Louisiana, within a few years of the assassination. Now ain't that a coinky-dink? I look forward to reading your summaries. Was Noyes working on another book on Braden? If so, does anyone know what happened to his notes? Once again, thanks.