Pat Speer

William, over the last few days I discussed the likelihood that the Davidson sent by LBJ to Puerto Rico to cut some deals regarding the 1965 Dominican crisis was actually C.G. Davidson, and not Irving Davidson, as I'd previously suspected. Do you know anything of him? He was the son-in-law of J.M. Kaplan, of the Welch's Grape jelly fortune. In the sixties, Ramparts exposed the J.M. Kaplan fund as a CIA conduit to the left. Among my many questions about this man, do you know if he was related to Irving Davidson? Anyone? I. Irving Davidson was an attorney/lobbyist with an office adjacent to Jack Anderson's. He had direct access to J. Edgar Hoover by dint of representing Hoover's close buddy, Clint Murchison. He also represented Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, Trujillo of the Dom Rep, among other shady characters. He would have been a natural for the intelligence agencies to approach, as Wheaton indicates.

Lee, the young woman screaming about the bushes was probably Gloria Calvery, who ran up to Billy Shelley and Billy Lovelady after the shooting and said much the same thing. She was talking about the plants down by the stockade fence (at least that's where everybody she spoke to ended up running). As far as the unidentifieds in the Plaza, if you look at the Croft photo etc you'll notice that few, if any, of the black women in the photos, ever came forward or were ever identified. It seems likely they wouldn't talk to the cops, and the cops wouldn't go looking for them. You said that Mudd has been identied. Can you point him out to me?

Ashton, I'm in the process of re-reading every bit of eyewitness testimony to the Kennedy assassination, and I assure you the inconsistencies that make you want to vomit so regularly are to be expected. If they DIDN'T occur with regularity, we would be justified in assuming the stories had been rehearsed. I urge you to watch the film Rashomon at your earliest convenience. That said, I believe you've raised a few points which hopefully Mr. Baldwin will try to answer (That is, if your hostile tone hasn't forced him to leave the Forum). In particular, you've got me curious about who at CREEP received the logs. It would most logically have been Magruder, who was technically Liddy's boss at the time. The public record regarding Magruder is a bit messy due to his having perjured himself, per Dean's coaching. Does Magruder discuss the logs in his book?

Lee, Ms. Walther worked in the Dal-Tex, as stated in the report. While my online presentation focuses on the autopsy evidence, there is a section on the Warren Commission investigation as well. Below is the page in which I discuss the 11-29 memo: "On 11 -29, Johnson called Hoover to check on the status of the investigation. Four days after closing ranks to convince the American people not only that Oswald did it, but that he acted alone, and the very day of his creation of the Warren Commission, Johnson finally got around to asking Hoover if Ruby knew Oswald, and Hoover admitted they’re still investigating. Johnson then inquired how many shots were fired and if any of them were fired at him personally. For his part, Hoover told him they’ll wrap up the case by the following Monday, and continued to proclaim such incredible details (incredible because they are so out-of-line with the eventual conclusions of the Warren Commission) as: Oswald fired three shots in three seconds (the commission decided it took almost 6), Oswald raced down from the fifth floor (the sniper’s nest was on the sixth floor), there were three bullets fired and all were in possession of the FBI (they only recovered one and a half bullets, plus some fragments which may or may not have come from a third bullet), the first shot hit Kennedy, the second Connally, and the third Kennedy (this was the accepted theory before the development of the single-bullet theory months later), the intact bullet found on a hospital stretcher in Dallas rolled out of the President’s head after being loosened by heart massage (the temporary theory on the night of the autopsy was that the bullet fell from Kennedy’s back after heart massage; no one ever indicated it was the bullet from the head, outside Hoover), and that Connally wouldn’t have been wounded if he hadn’t turned after the first shot and got in the way of the bullet. This last statement indicates that Hoover was under the impression that the school book depository was somewhere in front of the President when the shots were fired. Strangely, Johnson, who was but two cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade and would have to have known there were no buildings in front of Kennedy, failed to correct him. In any case, it’s clear by the tape of their conversation that the two men have no grasp of what happened the week before. And yet they were determined to tell everyone that whatever it was that happened Oswald was somehow solely responsible. Even more surprising than the President and the Director’s lack of knowledge, however, is their use of the word “they” when describing the assassin. Johnson asks “Was they aimin’ at the President?”to which Hoover responds “They were aiming directly at the President.” Then, after Hoover explains that the rifle tests indicate that one man could have gotten off all the shots, Johnson lets his views on this be known, responding “ How’d it happen they hit Connally…?” While the “they” in this particular statement might be a reference to the bullets, the taped recordings of Johnson’s conversations available at his Presidential library, the memoirs of his closest associates, and a number of interviews conducted during his lifetime all confirm that Johnson never believed the single-bullet theory, and suspected a Cuban involvement in the assassination. That Governor Connally shared Johnson’s conviction there was a “they” has been confirmed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who in a 1998 interview quoted Connally as swearing “They were trying to hit me. Don’t tell me they weren’t trying to hit me.” And yet publicly these men always stood by the conclusions of the Warren Report. Why? Less than three hours after talking to Hoover, President Johnson called Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren into his office and ordered him to chair the committee that would investigate the assassination. Beyond manipulating Warren with his assertions that a war could result from the “wrong sort” of investigation, Johnson also told Warren that the other men on the commission had all agreed to serve if Warren chaired the Commission. This was a lie. Later that evening, Senator Richard Russell, who had not agreed to serve, told Johnson he refused to serve with Warren; in fact, he only agreed after receiving a direct order from his President (which was the same tactic Johnson employed on Warren). Earlier, Johnson called House majority leader Carl Albert and told him of the commission. When Albert voiced Speaker of the House John McCormack’s concern that it would be unwise to have anyone from the Supreme Court on the panel, as the Justice would then have to pass should any aspect of the case wind up in his court, Johnson shot him down, declaring “He’s not gonna pass on Oswald; he’s dead as hell.” That the Warren Commission was expected to find no international conspiracy and that LBJ discounted the possibility of uncovering a domestic conspiracy are made clear by his conversations on this date, only a week after the assassination."

Brendan, the term "expert' shouldn't hold much sway over a JFK researcher. Why? Because one set of experts said a bullet hole was at the base of Kennedy's skull, and one set of experts said it was at the top of the skull. Another expert from NASA testified that Kennedy was leaning forward in the car until he was first hit, then sat up, only to get hit in the head by a subsequent shot. EVERYONE who's seen the Zapruder film knows this did not happen. Yet another expert testified before congress with the autopsy photo of Kennedy's head wound upside down. In short, the cult of expertise is like any other religion--it can make you feel better about yourself whilst simultaneously blinding you to what's really goin' on.

Might have answered an even bigger question. According to a 1967 Ramparts article, the J.M. Kaplan fund was a CIA conduit. Davidson's father-in-law was J.M. Kaplan. http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa.html Here's the summary of a book on namebase that mentions the Kaplan fund in connection to the Dominican crisis. "U.S. Policy / Dominican Republic Gutierrez, Carlos Maria. The Dominican Republic: Rebellion and Repression. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. 172 pages. Carlos Maria Gutierrez is an author and activist who interviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra in 1958, and was imprisoned in Uruguay after the publication he edited was suppressed by the government in 1969. This book covers the Dominican Republic from 1961-1971, and mentions the assassination of Trujillo in 1961, police training by AID's Office of Public Safety, CIA conduits (the J.M. Kaplan Fund and the Institute of International Labor Research, which involved U.S. socialist Norman Thomas), the populist movements of 1965 which prompted the U.S. invasion, and the repression that followed under Joaquin Balaguer. Other chapters deal with the Catholic Church, the trade unions, and various political parties. Juan Bosch, the constitutional president overthrown in 1963 with U.S. encouragement, is interviewed on pages 82-114. After the U.S. invasion, Bosch was defeated by Balaguer in an election marked by anomalies." Here's another passage regarding the Kaplan fund found on a webapage for the papers of socialist Norman Thomas: "Subseries H. Institute of International Labor Research, 1957-1967 The Institute of International Labor Research (IILR) was founded by Thomas and his colleagues in 1957 to oppose dictatorship and to promote democratic institutions in third world nations. Eventually its activities were focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. The papers document four of the Institute's initiatives in particular: support for the left-wing Costa Rican newspaper Combate; the establishment of the Interamerican Institute for Political Education (CIDAP), also in Costa Rica; the development of the Interamerican Institute for Economic and Social Studies, which supported the government of Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic; and the operation of the Center for Social Documentation and Research in Mexico City, which acted as the IILR's publishing house. File 1I:H:l contains correspondence sent to Thomas (the chairman) by the IILR staff, much of it from the organization's secretary and manager of operations, Sacha volman. Enclosed with much of the correspondence are minutes of board meetings, reports, press clippings, and lists of courses, faculty and students at CIDAP. Enclosures that have become separated from cover letters are filed at the end of the correspondence for each year. The file also includes correspondence between the IILR and such financial backers and advisors as the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Free Europe Committee, and Theodore 0. Prounis Associates. Also, there are copies of Thomas' letters to Volman and others on Institute policy and Latin American affairs, and those that he wrote soliciting support for the IILR from important figures such as Richard Nixon, William 0. Douglas, and J. William Fulbright. Of particular interest, in the light of charges that the J.M. Kaplan Fund acted as a conduit for CIA money, is Thomas' 1963 correspondence with Kaplan, as well as copies of Kaplan's letters to Juan Bosch, the U.S. Department of State, and Special Assistant to the President Ralph Dungan." Here's a history of the Kaplan fund from its own website: "Jacob Merrill Kaplan (1891-1987) established The J. M. Kaplan Fund in 1945 and was its president until 1977, his eighty-fifth year. The Fund was established with proceeds from the sale of the Welch Grape Juice Company -- wholly owned by Mr. Kaplan -- to the National Grape Co-operative Association in Westfield, New York. This growers' organization, which Mr. Kaplan had sponsored and encouraged, became and remains one of the nation's most successful agricultural cooperatives. The newly established Fund won recognition for major commitments to the New School (where Mr. Kaplan served as board chairman for twenty years), Carnegie Hall (which he helped save), and the movement for union democracy. The Fund also became known for small grants given quickly for emergencies or as seed money to attract other funding. Joan K. Davidson, a daughter of the founder, was named president of the Fund in 1977 and served in that capacity until 1993, when she was appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo as Commissioner of New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. She rejoined the Fund in 1995 as Trustee and President Emeritus and now heads its Furthermore program of grants for publications. In the years of Ms. Davidson's leadership, the Fund was known for its support of both established institutions and fledgling projects, mostly concerning civil liberties and human rights, the arts, and enhancement of the built and natural environments. The major focus was on New York City and New York State. Among major undertakings that came into being or took long strides forward with Fund assistance were: Human Rights Watch and the Natural Resources Defense Council; Westbeth Artists and the South Street Seaport Museum; the Rural New York program and the New York Greenmarket; and the New York Preservation League, the Sacred Sites program of the Landmarks Conservancy, and the renovation of Gracie Mansion. The Fund also sponsored efforts to protect the city's water supply, supply winter coats to the homeless, and bring public toilets to New York streets. From 1993 through 2000, the Fund established a governance system that involved both the children and grandchildren of Jacob Kaplan. Under the co-chairmanship of Richard D. Kaplan and Betsy Davidson, the Fund maintained and expanded its support for the arts, the environment, human rights, and a robust civil society. New interests emerged in programs to support New York City neighborhood parks and libraries as well as historic preservation and municipal design work in Lower Manhattan. The most recent chapter in Fund history opened in mid-2000. Day-to-day management of the Fund and responsibility for the non-discretionary portions of the annual grants budget were entrusted to an Operating Board consisting of the seven Kaplan grandchildren (now in their forties). A new Chairman, Peter Davidson, was elected and a new Executive Director, Conn Nugent, was hired. By March 2001, the Operating Board approved a new slate of programs. Those initiatives were reviewed in late 2002, and formally evaluated in 2004. A modified set of those was approved for 2005 - 2006." So here we have confirmation that the Kaplan of the fund was indeed Davidson's father-in-law, and that the Davidson family continues to run the fund. We know that C.G. Davidson was the name used for the man who traveled with Fortas. We know that Davidson's father-in-law ran a fund that was a CIA conduit used to influence policy in the Dominican Republic. So why the heck have historians like Murphy and Beschloss missed this? The pieces more than fit. So why bend over backwards to say Davidson was Fortas when it makes a heck of a lot more sense that it was actually Davidson (although not the Davidson I originally suspected)? It certainly appears that Davidson was in the Dominican to channel CIA (read taxpayer) moola to whoever would play ball and swear off communism. It appears that he did this on LBJ's behalf but while pretending to be a private citizen. While the possibility exists that he made a few side-deals for himself along the way--if anyone knows about the Dominican lumber industry I remain curious--it certainly seems Davidson was really there working for Uncle Lyndon. When Uncle Lyndon asks you to bribe foreign leaders by gosh you do it. I hope this makes sense. Perhaps knowing about C.G. and the Kaplan fund will allow us to tie together a few other loose threads.

C.G. Davidson's papers are listed online along with this biographical sketch. I'm wondering if he hadn't helped Lyndon out back in the early days. Davidson was apparently an expert on dams and water projects. If I remember correctly it was Lyndon's ability to get such projects for his district that ensured his early rise to power. I'm also wondering if Davidson's meetings in the Dominican weren't designed to fatten his (and LBJ's) pocketbooks. Does anyone know if the Dominican government built any dams shortly after the crisis? Or if they gave out contracts to the logging industry? I saw a picture once of the Dominican/Haitian border. One side had been stripped of trees, although I can't remember which side... http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/documents/r...orucoll_162.xml Biographical Sketch Attorney, politician, and businessman, Crow Girard “Jebby” Davidson was born July 28, 1910 in Lafayette, Louisiana. He received his B.A. from Southwestern Louisiana Institute (1930), LL.B. from Tulane University (1933), and D.J.S. from Yale University Law School (1936). Davidson was a member of the bar in five states: Louisiana, Tennessee, Oregon, District of Columbia, and Alaska. He was married to Mercedes Hester (1939-1952), Joan Kaplan (1953-1967), and Sylvia Nemer (1967-until his death in 1996), and was the father of six children and two step-children. After the completion of his law degree, Davidson served as attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1934-1937. Following his resignation, he went into private practice with his brother in Lafayette, Louisiana where he organized all of the REA Electric Cooperatives in that state. His job as consultant to the Bonneville Power Administration, 1940-1946, took him to Portland, Oregon. While there, Davidson shuttled to Washington, D.C. to serve as Assistant General Counsel of the War Production Board, 1944-1945. He remained in government service in the position of Assistant Secretary of the Interior under President Truman, 1946-1950. Subsequent to his resignation as Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Davidson returned to private law practice in Portland, Oregon as a partner in the law firm of Davidson, Hart and Veasie, and became involved in several major legal cases. The first was a fight against the powerful aluminum companies, in which Davidson represented Leo Harvey of Harvey Machine Company who was seeking a $46 million loan from the government to build an aluminum plant in Montana. He also took on the Idaho Power Company as counsel for the National Hell’s Canyon Association in its battle for a high dam rather than a series of low dams. In 1967, Davidson confronted Consolidated Edison of New York when he was hired as consultant by that city to investigate high rates and poor service. Another major case was the Sierra Club legal action against U.S. Plywood- Champion Papers, a company that wanted to construct a pulp plant in southeast Alaska. Davidson represented the latter in the court case which, after numerous delays, was rendered moot. In the 1950s, Davidson became active in the Democratic Party. He served as National Democratic Elector in 1952, and was twice elected, in 1956 and 1960, as Democratic National Committeeman of Oregon by popular vote in state-wide elections. Between 1960 and 1963 Davidson was Chairman of the Advisory Council on National Resources of the Democratic National Committee as well as a member of the Executive Committee. Concurrently, he served as Chairman of the Western States Democratic Conference. Davidson’s wife, Sylvia Nemer Davidson, was also active in Oregon’s civic and political affairs. She was Co-Chairman of the Adlai Stevenson’s Oregon Presidential Campaign and played a prominent part in John F. Kennedy’s primary campaign in that state. In 1972, the Davidsons ran as a husband/wife team for delegates pledged to Edmund Muskie to the Democratic National Convention. Their campaign was unsuccessful, but they did attend the convention as members of the ’72 Sponsors Club. Between 1972 and 1977, Davidson was once again active in civic affairs 4 Page 5 Coll. 162 when he was appointed to the Oregon Educational Coordinating Council, later Commission, by the Governor. Davidson resigned as Democratic National Committeeman in 1963 so that he could attend to his business interests in Alaska. Davidson was primarily involved in lumber and construction companies. Many of his business endeavors were financed by the Jemkap Company, headed by J.M. Kaplan, Davidson’s father-in-law. A partnership between Davidson and Jemkap, Frontiers-Oregon, Ltd., invested in several other firms in which Davidson had a controlling interest. C. Girard Davidson died on Friday, September 20, 1996, at his home in Portland, Oregon. He was 86. He was survived by his wife and six children." 5 Here's a summary of Davidson's business dealings from the University of Oregon website.. "Davidson was highly active in the political arena that included Oregon and the nation. Correspondence files in the Political Activities series include Frank Church, Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Wayne Morse, Richard L. Neuberger, Charles O. Porter, and Adlai Stevenson. His activities include his work with the Western States Democratic Conference, Democratic National Committee, and the Advisory Council on Natural Resources of the Democratic National Committee. The Business Interests series includes folders on the Alaska Pacific Lumber Company that was founded by Davidson in 1957. This was the first modern sawmill and chipping plant in the state, located in Wrangell, Alaska. He sold the company to the Puget Sound Plywood Company in 1967. That company, in turn, sold the operation to the Wrangell Lumber Company, a Japanese firm. Other timber business interests include: Pacific Northern Lumber Company for the construction of the sawmill in Wrangell, Alaska, 1959; Seversky-Electronatom, a company that developed basic patents, designs, and concepts for the creation of a commercially feasible device to eliminate particulate and gaseous emissions caused by incineration and other forms of combustion or Hydro-Precipitrol; Western Forest Products, Inc.; and The Pacific Northern Timber Company. Construction and development interests include: Frontiers Construction Company, Idaho Falls, Idaho, Frontiers – Oregon, Ltd., Georgia-Pacific Alaska, Schenk Construction Company, Townhouse, Inc., Western Land Development Company, and Wrangell Development Company. Other business interests also includes Portland Television, Inc. and J.M. Kaplan. Kaplan, owner and President of Welch Grape Juice Company was Davidson’s father-in-law. The Jemkap Company provided loans to Davidson in his numerous business endeavors. "

Excellent, John. I find Davidson's little side trip to Switzerland interesting. Was he doing some "banking" on behalf of his clients? While reading this report, I suddenly flashed on the HSCA testimony of John Whitten (using the name John Scelso). Scelso, if I remember correctly, said that there was in rumor in the agency that James Angleton had ties to gambling interests and had bank accounts in Central America. If this is so, it would make sense that these accounts were in Nicaragua. Howard Hughes hid some of his money there, as well. Since Davidson was connected with Israel, and orchestrating arms sales on their behalf, and Angleton was the CIA/Mossad contact, it makes sense that Davidson and Angleton would be well aware of one another. If Angleton was indeed dirty, and tied to gambling interests--read Lansky, Trafficante and Marcello, then it follows that Davidson was a possible conduit for this corruption. Is anyone aware of any Angleton/Davidson ties? On a (possibly) related note, I was looking through Bruce Allen Murphy's 1988 biography of Abe Fortas a few weeks back. He makes the same claim as Michael Beschloss--that the "Davidson" mentioned by Johnson and Fortas re the Dominican Republic was Fortas himself. He says the name used was "C.J. Davidson," and was an obscure reference to a mutual friend, C. Girard "Jebby" Davidson. He informs that the Davidson story--that LBJ sent Fortas on a secret mission to the Dominican--was first exposed in a 7/5/68 article in Time. On page 150, Murphy notes that "The first two times Fortas phoned back to the President from Puerto Rico he was simply listed in the White House diary as Fortas. Then realizing the error, the secretarial listings of phone calls started to alternate between Fortas and "Mr. Davidson." By the time Fortas had returned to Washington five days later, the secretaries no longer knew how to list the calls, recording that "Mr. Davidson" was now placing local calls to the President....Fortas. as superspy, was confused about the initials oi his own code name...C.J. made no sense at all, unless Fortas fancied himself the Chief Justice. McGeorge Bundy was even more baffled. In his explanatory memos to the president, he kept alternating between talking about the Fortas mission and the C.G. Davidson mission. The conversations in White House meetings on the secret diplomatic effort routinely fudged the distinction as well, referring first to Fortas then to Davidson...Then Fortas himself began forgetting his cover. One handwritten note sent back to the White House by him carefully explained that some of the language of an accompanying statement was in "AF" handwriting. Realizing his egregious error, Fortas simply crossed out the "AF" and wrote "Davidson" above it. This baffled the secretaries, who had only just figured out how to handle the phone call listings. So they did their best to preserve the ruse by typing up what they labeled as the "Davidson" message, but then carefully attached it to the corrected handwritten document from Fortas, showing where it had really come from." Does this make sense? Or does it not make more sense that the Davidson in the messages was in fact C.G. Davidson, whom Murphy admits was a mutual friend of both Fortas and Johnson, "and for whom Fortas had been fruitlessly trying to land a job in the Administration." Why is Murphy so positive that Fortas was "Davidson?" In the footnotes to this section, Murphy states "Special thanks go to Dave Humphreys of the Johnson Library staff for helping me locate these materials. After the initial clues to this operation by Fortas from his oral history and the Time magazine hint, all efforts to locate written materials on the operation in the various "country files" and "crisis files" failed. Interestingly, as Humphreys discovered, it was the White House staff's decision to file the materials in a special folder under the code name of the operation that threw us off. Much of the material in this thick folder still remains classified by the government." So...if I'm getting this straight, there is no real evidence saying that Fortas was Davidson. Murphy and others DECIDED Fortas was Davidson; when they came across documents written by Fortas referring to Davidson, they DECIDED further that Fortas was confused on how he was supposed to disguise his involvement. There's no discussion of the possibility that there was an actual Davidson and that he traveled with Fortas to Puerto Rico and back. Why not? Was C.G. Davidson, who worked with Fortas and Johnson "from their Interior Department" days, dirty?

Ahh...Jack Nelson, the L.A. Times' long-time Washington bureau chief. He knew a thing or two.

Pat - never spoke with anyone named Robert Jackson. He was not the reporter from the Los Angeles Times. Thanks. I knew that Jackson broke a lot of the McCord-related stories and incorrectly assumed he broke your story as well. How did your story get out, if you don't mind my asking?

Hi Pat, Forgot about Pepsi and Chile. Sort of like United Fruit and Guatemala. Braden's testimony is not on line as far as I can tell, so I retrieved my copy of his two days of executive sessions and will send them to Rex Bradford to scan and post. Have nothing on Hall, except what Harry Dean says. I will post a summary if you want. BK That's a great idea about sending it to Rex. My research into Braden is more a curiousity than an area of intense focus. That could change after reading his explanations, however. I know you've looked into Braden. Do you feel he was involved? Have you looked into the tenants of the Dal-Tex to see if any of them had ties with Braden? Is there any connection between Morty Freedman, who had an office in the Dal-Tex, and Mort Freeman, who was a Trafficante associate? Or are the similarities in their names just a coincidence? I guess what I'm saying is a summary would be lovely. Thank you And doubt worry about forgetting all about Pepsi and Chile. In California, we eat our hamburgers with Pepsi and chili, and have chiles on the brain.

Dawn, I was pretty sure they were not the same Robert Jackson, but I kept thinking I'd read somewhere that they were. When I tried to look it up online, I found an interview with the Watergate Jackson from 2005, when he was 70. I also found an interview with the Dallas Jackson from 2004. This article said he was 69. This got me thinking again that they were the same guy. As I said, even if it is the same guy, I doubt he was anything but a good journalist. He reported the last two shots in Dallas as coming right after each other. A knowing or willing part of a conspiracy would have said the shots were evenly paced, thus making it sound more like the handi-work of a bolt-action rifle.

Kendall was instrumental in gaining Nixon's support for the overthrow of Allende as well. Kendall is believed to have put pressure on Nixon to do something about Allende. Allende may have won the hearts of his people, but Pepsi and ITT had different ideas. P.S. Bill, is the Braden testimony avaiable online anywhere? I've been dying to read Braden's and Hall's testimony for years now?

Mr. Baldwin, as long as we're in a setting-the-record-straight mode, might I ask you a few questions about Robert Jackson? Jackson was, I believe, the Los Angeles Times reporter to whom you and McCord first talked. Amazingly, for those of us who search for coincidences involving Watergate and the Kennedy assassination, the one reporter who saw a rifle in the sniper's nest during the shooting, and who was quoted on this issue in Kennedy's autopsy report, was also a Robert Jackson. Even more amazingly, this Robert Jackson just so happened to have been in the exact right place at the exact right time to capture the famous image of Ruby shooting Oswald two days later. A conspiracy-minded person might think there was a connection, that Jackson was saying what he was supposed to say regarding the sniper's nest, and was told where to stand for the Ruby image, and was given access to McCord and yourself through his CIA connections. While I believe this is nonsense, I am nevertheless curious about how you came to talk to Robert Jackson, and whether this was the same Robert Jackson. Your recollections of Jackson appreciated. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...e-sources_x.htm

Excellent work as always, John. Thanks. In discussing Sturdivan's testimony and its inconsistencies, you left off a point which I believe is pertinent. You may want to add it to this article if you ever do an update. It' s made in the last lines of this passage from my presentation: "The Warren Commission hired Dr. Alfred Olivier of Edgewood Arsenal to see if this could be. He had Mannlicher-Carcano bullets fired through simulated necks, simulated chests, and cadavers’ wrists, and concluded the single-bullet theory was viable. He failed to simulate the wounds all at once, however. In 1967, CBS hired him to conduct a more thorough test. On the CBS program The Warren Report a bullet was shown passing through a simulated neck, a simulated chest, and a simulated wrist only to bounce off a simulated thigh. CBS declared the test a success anyhow, however, insisting that the bullet would only have needed a little more velocity to penetrate the thigh, while overlooking that Olivier had failed to simulate the damage to Connally’s rib. In 2003, the Discovery Channel created a similar simulation, with similar results. Once again the bullet bounced off the thigh and the program declared the simulation a success. Which was far from surprising. Another one of Olivier’s tests ran into similar trouble. In order to “simulate” Connally’s chest wounds and the proposed glancing blow off his rib, Olivier arranged for thirteen sedated goats to be shot. In only one of these attempts did the bullet glance off the bone as proposed. The recovered bullet from this attempt, furthermore, was far more damaged than the magic bullet, even though it had struck a smaller bone. After Dr. Cyril Wecht brought this up before the HSCA, HSCA special counsel I. Charles Mathews asked their ballistics expert Larry Sturdivan for an explanation. Sturdivan testified: “Exhibit 853 was a bullet that has ricocheted from the rib of a goat carcass, as Dr. Wecht indicated. However, let’s remember that the goat, which is roughly 100 pounds, is much, much smaller than Governor Connally and, therefore, the bullet passed through a relatively small amount of tissue before it hit the bone, and therefore, lost correspondingly less velocity. So we would have to say that the striking velocity on that bullet, CE 853, was much in excess of the striking velocity on Governor Connally, even if the bullet had passed through nothing before it hit Governor Connally.” That Sturdivan was spinning in order to shut down speculation was made clear by his statements moments later. After being asked for the difference in velocity between a bullet striking Kennedy and then Connally versus one directly striking Connally, he replied: “this bullet if only encountering a few inches of soft tissue would go through losing almost no velocity, 100 feet per second or thereabouts.” Thus, in Sturdivan’s expert opinion, the inch or less of flesh in Connally’s armpit overlying his rib would do more to slow a bullet’s velocity than the 5 ½ inches of muscle and tissue in Kennedy’s back and throat! The wounds are seemingly from different worlds. And at war with one another."

Ashton, in your zeal to prove some BIG LIE occurred, you're being quite misleading yourself. Were not two bugs found in the DNC ofice? If I remember correctly, one was found (the Oliver tap?) right away but the other wasn't found till months later. McCord writes about this in his book;(as a security expert himself) he was quite appalled that it took the Feds so long to find the bug. Other Watergate-hasn't-been-solved proponents have written abut this and concluded that there was a conspiracy to keep the bug in place, now you say there was a conspiracy to pretend the bug even existed. Based upon my research into the Kennedy assassination, I've found that the single-most under-rated aspect of the case is INCOMPETENCE. What role did incompetence play in the break-in, and its aftermath? Or were Hunt, Liddy, and McCord all super-smart, super-clever guys willing to spend months in jail and in court in order to possibly bring down Nixon, who could have been brought down after all by one phone call from the CIA-connected Robert Maheu, and one or two phone calls from Hunt? If Hunt had let the Ellsberg break-in out of the bag it would have been extremely damaging to Nixon...if Hunt had told Jack Anderson that he'd been creating fake cables re the Diem assassination, in order to pin Diem's murder directly on JFK, and that this was under Colson's and Nixon's instructions, it would have meant bye-bye Tricky Dick. You seem to be under the impression that Hunt and Liddy were more loyal to the CIA than to Nixon. While this was true for McCord, the evidence regarding Hunt and Liddy's loyalties indicates otherwise. If Hunt's role was to damage Nixon and save the CIA, why would he have continually sought, and mostly received, CIA assistance? He could have bought a disguise at a costume shop. Why drag the CIA into the mix, and make them a party to the actions designed to damage Nixon? And what about Vernon Walters and McCord? Both men were outspoken about their desire to protect the CIA from White House shenanigans. What kind of clever CIA plan to bring down Nixon and hide the CIA's involvement in bringing down Nixon includes two of the prinicpals admitting that they helped bring down Nixon in order to protect the CIA? Was the CIA so naive that they thought the public would rally behind them? Weren't these "Night Watchmen" smart enough to know that their slightest involvement in the plan would make many suspect there was a secret plan to get Nixon? Or was this part of their plan as well--that they WANTED us to suspect their involvement, in order to make us fear them all the more? And who was this "they?" Helms, who was shipped off to Iran? Walters, who was basically a diplomat? Colby, who was so fortncoming about CIA shenanigans that he would later be forced to resign? Phillips? Well, what did Phillips have against Nixon, outside of Nixon's pressuring him to help bring down Allende? Are you of the belief that Nixon was brought down due to his right-wing actions, or his moderate actions? If the CIA brought Nixon down because they were appalled by his mis-use of the agency and by his forcing them to assist in the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, I'm not so sure it was a bad thing. As far as the room monitor versus phone tap argument...the state-of-the-art room monitors of the time were in fact placed inside phones. By hooking them up to the phone the monitors had an ongoing source of power, and could be used for months if not longer. Thus, confusion over which bugs were phone taps and which were room monitors is understandable and not at all mysterious.

The jet effect theory was disproved by no less an authority than the U.S. Army (testimony and films presented by Larry Sturdivan, HSCA Volume 1), so you are correct. There is no other explanation but that the head shot came from the front. My research has indicated that the head shot was fired from behind. A bullet impacting between Kennedy's right ear and the top of his head from behind and creating a tangential wound aka gutter wound aka slap wound would cause the exact reaction of Kennedy seen in the film, AND cause bullet fragments to hit the front windshield AND leave human skin on the bullet nose AND create the beveling apparent on the Harper fragment. This is discussed in more detail in The New Views on the Same Scene section of my presentation.

Don't be so modest, Mr. Caddy. No, it is not trivial. It's not even a little bit trivial. In fact, truth be told, there is not any date in 1971 where you can put Barker's shiny butt in a chair with you and Hunt that would be "trivial" in the least. And thanks for the talking-points recitation, but I already know how expert you are at "reiterating" your scripted talking points ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I know how adept you are at sending people off around the mulberry bush looking for one of your other non-responsive talking-points issuances that you cite circularly, hoping they'll just go away and stay away and shut up. I already know your whole aria by heart about how the FBI and the "appropriate Watergate law enforcement authorities" dubbed you squeaky clean and lily white and smelling like Elizabeth Taylor after a tour of her perfume factory. But frankly, Mr. Caddy, I wouldn't care if the Archangel Michael himself had personally crossed your forehead with olive oil on the Rotunda steps and a color photo of it made the cover of TIME naming you man of the year. Too many things directly involving your participation don't add up, and I'm about to stroll down memory lane and explore a few of them. You're welcome to come along and address some of the sights along the path, or you can just stand right here under the tree droning your monotonous talking points over and over and over and over, asserting and reasserting your innocent and uninformed "wrong place at the wrong time" victimization, never wavering from the script's key points, and see if you can draw a crowd and distract them from the sightseeing tour—which is pulling away right now. First stop is that same Washington Post article you mentioned and that I quoted from above. In it you not only spill the beans about having been in a private meeting with Hunt and Barker a year earlier, you also tell the world how you got tapped to represent Mr. Barker. Remember this? "Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, he received a call from Barker's wife. 'She said that her husband told her to call me if he hadn't called her by 3 a.m.: that it might mean he was in trouble.'" —The Washington Post, Sunday, June 18, 1972, "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here," by Alfred E. Lewis So here we have you on contemporaneous record, Mr. Caddy, avowing that Bernard Barker had told his wife in Miami, at some undetermined point in time but certainly prior to the "break-in," to call you in Washington, D.C. if Barker "hadn't called her by 3 a.m." So Barker himself had given his wife your name and phone number prior to the 16-17 June 1972 break-in, after purportedly having met and spoken to you only once in his life, that one brief meeting having been a year earlier. Bear with me a moment, Mr. Caddy (if you're still with me on the Memory Lane tour), while I attempt to cipher this mystery. Let me first assume, to your credit, that Bernard Barker had been so beguiled and impressed by you at the Army-Navy Club back in June 1971 that he had asked for your business card, and had kept it until it was creased and dirty and dog-earred just in case he ever got into criminal trouble in Washington, D.C., and therefore gave it to his wife before kissing her on the cheek and flying off to D.C. to commit criminal acts—even though he had to know that you were not a criminal lawyer. Pardon me. I'm just going to lean against something and catch my breath. My credulity is already being stretched like pregnancy pants, and this is starting to sound more like a Teletubbies episode than a documentary tour. For surcease from this spinning sensation, I'm going to flip in my Tour Guide Book to the one other "authoritative source" on this call from Bernard Baker's wife, your good friend and long-time client, E. Howard Hunt. Below is what he tells us, in excruciating, exacting detail about Mr. and Mrs. Barker and you on that fateful night. I am aware that you lionize Mr. Hunt's writing skills, but with apologies to you and his editors at Berkley/Putnam, I'm going to prune his prose with hedge clippers to get at what's relevant. Here's Hunt on his germane activities right after the arrest. He's just gone to his White House office with some disputed number of "attaché cases" brim full with evidence that will incriminate the White House and deposited it there—naturally. Having planted the evidence, he does the following, according to his account in his autobiographical book, "Undercover": "I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational notebook, found a telephone number and dialed it. After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. 'Yes?' "'Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I've got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?" "'Sure. I'll tell the desk clerk you're expected.' So while you're heating up water for instant coffee, and with the evidence conveniently planted in his White House safe, Hunt makes sure his "operational notebook" that he'd gotten your number from gets put back into the White House safe (naturally), then trots across the street to his convenient Mullen office—for no other apparent reason than to call Barker's wife: "From my [Mullen] office I dialed Barker's home in Miami and spoke with his wife, Clara. "'Clarita,' I said, 'things have gone wrong and Macho's [bernard Barker] been arrested.' "I heard a muffled shriek. Then, 'Oh, my God!' "'He's got bail money with him,' I told her, 'so maybe he'll be able to get out before dawn. I don't know how these things work, but I think you ought to have an attorney. I've already called one and I want you to call him too.' "I gave her Caddy's name and telephone number and asked that she phone Doug and retain him for her husband." Now, just for the tour participants, Doug, so they don't get too disoriented in this maze, I think I should mention that the "burglars" had been arrested at 2:30 a.m. Hunt and Liddy purportedly already had watched part of the arrest, then collected up a lot of incriminating evidence to plant in the White House, then Hunt had driven Liddy to Liddy's jeep, then Hunt had driven to the Howard Johnson's and gone up to the seventh floor and told Baldwin—who he claims never to have met before, although Baldwin claims otherwise—to "get rid of" all the electronic equipment—which Baldwin drives straight over to McCord's house, naturally—then Hunt had driven to the White House and called you while planting the evidence there, then had gone over to his Mullen office across the street (are you worn out yet?) and called Mrs. Barker and only then made it over to your apartment. (Whew!) And let's remind people that you told the Post Barker's wife had called you "shortly after 3 a.m." But we're not done: Hunt finally gets to your apartment, and it could not possibly have been before 3:30 a.m., and you welcome him, having boiled some water for instant coffee—but no milk for his ulcer. And he briefs you on what's happened. And having briefed you—to your dismay of course—he hands you $8,500 and asks you if you "can bail them out." And only after all that, with it now having to be pushing at least 4:00 a.m., Hunt claims that he said the following to you, and describes your response: "'Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men.' "Caddy looked at his wristwatch, then went to another room to phone [Caddy's law firm's partners]." I'll tell you, Mr. Caddy, for the sake of my sanity and that of the tour attendees, for now I'm going to have to just gloss right over the fact that Hunt's first mention to you of a man you purportedly had only met and spoken to once a whole year earlier was using the chummy "Bernie Barker," and get directly to what you had to have seen when you looked at your wristwatch. It sure as hell wasn't "shortly after 3 a.m." It had to be considerably later. And there still is no call from Bernard Barker's wife to you. And E. Howard Hunt stays at your apartment all the way through the phone calls from two of your law firm's partners, and all the way through them scaring up Rafferty (an actual criminal lawyer), and all the way through two phone calls from Rafferty, and all the way through you telling Hunt that Rafferty is coming to your apartment so you can tag along like a fifth wheel for reasons nobody in the world knows to this very day—since by your own endless protestations, you were not a criminal lawyer—and when Hunt finally leaves to go home, it's already nearly dawn. And still there is not one single word about a call having come to you from Bernard Barker's wife while he was there. Yet just hours later, you told a Washington Post reporter that Clara Barker had called you from Miami "shortly after 3 a.m.," not at the behest of E. Howard Hunt, but because Barker himself had told his wife to call you if Barker hadn't called her by 3:00 a.m. Well, if what you told the Washington Post that same day is true, Mr. Caddy, Mrs. Barker's call to you had to have come before Hunt ever even got to your apartment. And if that's the case, then Hunt's whole little anecdote about leaving one phone at his White House office to go to another phone at his Mullen office just to call to Mrs. Barker, and her dramatic little shriek, is just complete fiction. Just really, really bad, hack-writer spy fiction. It's just embarrassing! It's one of his trashy little spy novels passed off as "fact." So since we're just chatting candidly and casually here, tete-a-tete, Mr. Caddy, I have to tell you that I can see only three possibilities: 1) Hunt lied. 2) You lied. 3) You both lied. Before the tour continues, I sure would like to have that one deadly booby trap cleared off the path. I'll be perfectly happy to find out that your client, Hunt, lied like a dog, and that you, in accordance with your Chatty-Cathy talking-points, are the One True Boy Scout who merely wandered like Pollyanna into a den of lying thieves, and simply, kindly prepared a cup of instant coffee for the Chief Lying Thief—your client—on that momentous morning. So is it 1), 2), or 3) above? Ashton Gray Ashton, might I request you tone down your questions? While you have done a good job of demonstrating that Mr. Caddy, in order to keep Hunt's involvement secret, probably lied to a newspaper about a phone call from Barker's wife--(geez, isn't that what lawyers do, protect their clients?)--the relevance is not immediately apparent to some of us on the outside, who value Mr. Caddy's contributions to this forum. Your desire to play "gotcha" with Caddy is understandable, but not altogether appropriate, as he has repeatedly tried to answer any and all questions on his role in history. Ask the questions in a nice manner and I suspect he'll provide you with a response. Point out an inconsistency and he'll offer an explanantion if he has one. Ditto with Mr. Baldwin, who has been nothing but a gentleman. I do sympathize with your desire to play "gotcha" however...However long the list you have for Caddy about what appears to be inconsistencies in his statements, I guarantee you it positively PALES in comparison to the mental list of questions I have for Robert Maheu, should I ever be able to ask him a question. Please play nice.

Ouch. I hate to interrupt you, but can we stop right there for just a moment? I had asked you about "the circumstances under which you had met Bernard Barker about a year before you ended up representing him." You've responded about an incident you characterize as being "some months prior to June 17, 1972." Sung: "You say 'to-may-to' and I say 'to-mah-to'..." (Wait; that's the wrong song. Gimme a sec. I'm getting it... I know!) Sung: "What a difference a day makes... ." Dinah Washington just tore that up, didn't she? And what a fitting name. And if a day can make such a big difference, just imagine what "some months" can mean. I realize that a year is made up of "some months," but I'm trying to verify what I understand to be your own testimony. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The cite I'm using for the "year" time period, in this exchange, is your own article: "Gay Bashing and Watergate." In it, you quote U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert in his closing argument, to wit: "Mr. Caddy told you, oh yes, he was going to be in the case. He was going to be in the case of those five. He never met them before except for Barker a year before. He was going to represent those five." I realize that lawyers feel and exercise a certain sense of latitude in their practice, but closing arguments, after all, are crafted with considerable care—I'm sure you'll agree—and are not a very strategic place to be attempting to make material alterations to the trial evidence. Mr. Silbert, in authoring his closing arguments in this world-watched case, represented that you had met Bernard Barker "a year before" you announced that you were going to represent him (Barker) and the others—which, as you point out, was on June 17, 1972. That would put the date of your Army-Navy Club lunchtime rendezvous with Mr. Hunt and Mr. Barker sometime in June 1971. Did Mr. Silbert misrepresent the facts in evidence during his closing argument? I ask that with the full understanding that you, at the time—as you characterized in your article—felt that your hands were "tied" by your attorney-client relationships. But surely no significant distortion of material fact regarding your attorney-client relationship with Mr. Barker, or the time and conditions of your first having met him in the company of Mr. Hunt, would have been allowed into the record without objection—especially with Hunt's own attorney, William O. Bittman, there during your role as a witness for the prosecution. And your hands certainly were not "tied" at the time you authored your article—electing, in doing so, to quote Mr. Silbert's representation that you had met Bernard Barker "a year before" your taking Barker on as a client. Therefore, I'm relying entirely on your own record to conclude and state that you in fact met Bernard Barker, in the company of E. Howard Hunt, at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. in or about the month of June, 1971. If that's not the case, if your own record is wrong, if Mr. Silbert misrepresented an important material fact without objection during his closing argument—which you repeated in your own article without objection or correction—right now would be a very timely time to emphatically and specifically correct the record as to date. And I don't mean with a vague, airy "some months before." Trust me on this one. Now I'm going to go find my Dinah Washington collection; my singing is scaring the cat. Ashton Gray When I testified before the Watergate grand jury and was asked if I had ever met Bernard Barker, I answered that I had and described the circumstances as outlined in my immediate prior reply. I previously answered this question Feb. 6, 2006 when it was posed to me by Chris Newton. His question and my answer can be found in the Forum section “Douglas Caddy: Questions and Answers.” My prior reply of June 15, 2006 and that of Feb. 6, 2006 are consistent. It is my recollection that the Washington Post, as part of its contemporary stories about my grand jury appearance, quoted me about this meeting with Barker. I was not asked by Prosecutor Silbert to provide the exact date of the meeting. I am not certain that even my personal and professional records, now in the Library Archives of the University of Oregon, provide the exact date. Prosecutor Silbert himself used the general phrase, “...a year before” and did not denote a specific date. I certainly shall not vouch for the veracity of all the statements Silbert made in closing argument. I attended his closing argument in court and found myself is sharp disagreement with some of his remarks. Closing argument in court is generally reserved for sweeping statements, designed to sway the jury with emotion. Clearly this was the purpose of Silbert’s closing argument, which highlighted my role and carefully and purposely omitted any mention that there was a larger conspiracy involving higher-ups. I stand by my prior reply as to the circumstances under which I met Barnard Barker. This was the only occasion prior to June 17, 1972 that I met him. I testified before the Watergate grand jury under oath, with the penalty of perjury. My bank records were subpoenaed and thoroughly examined. The FBI conducted an investigation of me. I testified under oath at the first Watergate trial. I was interviewed by the Office of the Watergate Special Prosecutor on a number of occasions. The law enforcement authorities who investigated Watergate never disputed or contradicted the veracity of any statement that I made to them under oath or made to them otherwise in their official capacity. It is extremely likely that Barker was also questioned by the law enforcement authorities about the circumstances of our one and only meeting before June 17, 1972. Since the issue has never been raised as being significantly relevant, one can safely assume that what he told the law enforcement authorities did not conflict with my sworn testimony. Until a few years ago, I was far more intrigued by Watergate than the Kennedy assassination. I barely remembered the Kennedy assassination, but I'd watched every bit of Watergate testimony I could as a precocious pre-teen. The CIA-did-it theory, in relation to Watergate, was an obvious smokescreen put up by Nixon's defenders at the time. The original CIA did it theories were propounded by Colson and spread throughtout certain circles by Colson's contacts. This was to hide his own involvement, IMO. Ultimately, of course, only the LORD JESUS CHRIST could save Chuck from his own guilty conscience. Fred Thompson, another key proponent of the CIA-did-it theory, was, not surprisingly, minority counsel, trying to save the elephants some embarrassment by blaming it on the spooks. Howard Baker, who worked closely with Thompson in spreading this theory, was another loyal Party Man. Years later, he would be brought in at the last minute to save Reagan's sinking ship. His putting the CIA-did-it theory on the record, IMO, was an attempt to muddy the waters and help his party retain power. The big fish got caught. While some want to believe there was a bigger fish behind the big fish, I'm at a loss understanding just who this fish was. Outside of Mao and maybe Stalin, Nixon was the dominant political figure from 1945-1980. He was exposed as dishonest and corrupt and manipulative. The man was justifiably disgraced. If, by some miracle, George Bush and Dick Cheney get exposed as the lying crooks most of us believe them to be, will we become consumed by suspicions that Joe Wilson and George Tenet were behind their downfall, or accept that sometimes truth does out?

Thanks, Al, for your valuable input. I think, in general, a lot of the suspicion surrounding the motorcade route and SS behaior is based upon the desire that these men be superhuman and super-competent. They, as police officers everywhere, are hard-working guys doing their best. My main problem with the SS has to do with the clean-up at Parkland. Having been exposed to SS culture, do you believe--if in his zeal to hide the President's spattered brain and blood from the press, Sam Kinney cleaned up some of mess on the back-seat, and thereby tampered with the evidence--he would later admit to this action? Do you think the SS would pretend it didn't happen, rather than admit to this screw-up? I'm trying to decide if there was anything malevolent about this clean-up. As you probably know, there was no mention of a clean-up at Parkland in any of the reports. Kinney made a point of telling the HSCA, in fact, that he prevented a clean-up from occurring. And yet an orderly reported bringing them a bucket of water. And Hugh Sidey of Time wrote of them wiping up the bloody seat. And Charles Roberts of Newsweek wrote of them wiping up the seat. And Tom Wicker of the Ney York Times later wrote of them wiping up the seat. And White House photographer Cecil Stoughon took pictures of them putting the roof back on the limousine, with a bucket of water at their feet. In recent years, ambulance driver Aubrey Rike has also confirmed that this clean-up took place. (While some have ventured that the SS merely wiped-up the area where the roof was re-attached, the witnesses all said they wiped up the seat. Roberts made a particular point of saying this occurred before they began to re-attach the roof.) Anyhow, part of me suspects that Kinney screwed-up and covered his ass and that the SS went along with it, as they were reluctant to admit to any more mistakes. What do you think? Would police officers cover for one another in a sililar manner?

Right, Jack ... your time seems better spent asking people to post pictures of themselves with beards or questioning why they should be viewing the forum at the same wee hour of the morning you were using it. Maybe you might feel more comfortable going back to the looney forum for there you can say two opposite things and no one will point out your mistake. Bill Miller So defensive... Must be tough not being the center of attention... of course that doesn't mean you won't try however Not defensive, David ... just pointing out when someone is talking out of both sides of their mouth. BTW, what I said about the looney forum catering to Jack with a separate set of rules from what others are told to abide by is only strengthened by your remarks. Bill Miller Bill, just a question. Why do you constantly provoke White and encourage Healey? Why not just let White's doubts about your identity speak for itself, and let Healey's caustic comments sit?

C'mon Jack, that seems a bit of an over-reaction. There are two sides to every story. It seems likely that Rich was not too pleased with Simkin's behavior to begin with, and then Vernor got into a tiff with John and convinced Rich to take his side. That doesn't mean Rich is a bad person. I do not know the man. In truth, I understand completely what Vernon was talking about. It's not exactly clear that giving a forum to controversial figures, people potentially after nothing but money and/or self-aggrandizement, helps the public understand the case. Which is why a good forum needs people who are willing to do their homework and confront these people, not just groupies and fans. This forum benefits both from those like yourself, who bring in new ideas, as well as others who analyze these new ideas to see if they really make sense. You are correct, obviously, in that all too often this degenerates into insults. This is unfortunate, and can usually be circumvented through humility and humor. Ron Ecker is particularly adept at this, IMO. When someone disagrees with him and things start to turn ugly, he makes a joke of it and the tension quickly dissipates.

Thanks, John. What I'm specifically trying to ascertain is whether or not they were attached to the floor in any way. It seems as if they just fold up and are not attached. But I'd like to know for sure.

The reason I brought this up is because I recently read Jack Bell's eyewitness account of the chaos at Parkland. He says that when he came back after phoning in his story, the jump seats had been removed. I'm trying to figure out whether this is evidence for the clean-up we all suspect took place.

Peter, Cyril Wecht wrote about Wilson in his book Cause of Death. The feeling I got was that Wilson presented himself as having this breakthrough technology that could look into the shadows of photographs and tell us what was really there. While quite a few were taken in, my undertstanding is that his work was eventually discredited.