Pat Speer

The Parallax View is yet another reminder of that short period after Watergate when members of the media WANTED to open the closet doors and find the skeletons. Now, more often than not, they're standing in front of the closet doors, pretending there aren't any. Beatty, by the way, made another valiant effort to shake things up with Bulworth, one of my favorite movies. It also made references to the RFK killing. Clearly, we can count Warren Beatty among those of us who suspect RFK was killed by a conspiracy.

Ron, I believe Jackie didn't say "in the back" she said "from the back." And neither Jackie nor Clint Hill said there was a large hole in the far back of Kennedy's head. I believe Clint testified that Kellerman showed him the small hole in the hairline at the autopsy. When people are laying on their back, people looking at them perceive the area above their ears as the back of their head. It's really that simple. Still, people are free to believe whatever they want. When all is said and done, they'll be wrong. No matter what REALLY happened, eventually historians and scientists will take an honest look at the accepted evidence. When they do, they'll see that Kennedy was almost certainly killed by a conspiracy. Once they come to this conclusion, all the "wild" theories of body alteration etc. will be ignored. Occam's razor, and all... As far as Reed, the Parkland doctors etc... how many of them have testified that the wound seen on the Zapruder film and autopsy photos was any different than the wound they saw? People can nit-pick through early statements and later interviews alll day long...and twist almost anything to say anything. But how many witnesses have testified that the wounds changed or that the photos are fakes when given the chance? I believe the answer is zero. Not Reed, who testified before the ARRB that the x-rays in the archives, which show a large head wound in front of the ear, was an x-ray he took. Ditto for Custer. Stringer, Riebe, and McClelland also had their chance to say the photos were fakes, and passed. They all testified that the photos and x-rays were as far as they knew legit and that they accurately reflected the wounds on November 22, 1963. Good luck convincing historians that all these men lied so many years after the fact.

Thanks, Sherry, for pointing out that footnote on Aguilar's paper. There's a few articles in there I need to read. I have read a few of them, however. The most common-mix up on beveling occurs with contact wounds to the skull. Sometimes, if the barrel of a gun is pressed against the skull the gases released with the firing of the gun will have nowhere to go and impact the skull in such a way that the bullet entrance ends up looking like an exit. Obviously, that is not the case here. Ron, to answer your question, what large exit on the back of the skull? The one that magically appeared at the hospital? When one reads all the statements of the Parkland witnesses, it's clear they remember ONE wound on Kennedy's skull? Since Zapruder and Newman saw this wound on the right side of Kennedy's skull, and talked about it on TV within minutes of the shooting, are we to believe this wound moved to the back of the skull en route to the hospital? And then re-appeared at the coronal suture at Bethesda? To me, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to believe that the Parkland witnesses were simply wrong. But how could so many be wrong about the same thing? I've done a massive amount of reading on human perception and cognition over the last year and it's clear to me that human memories are quite fragile. There've been literally dozens of articles written on facial recognition, and it's been reported, over and over, that people perceive faces differently when the face is turned upside down or sideways. One article even convinced me that people read faces the same way they read words. Think about it. It's hard to read upside down. It's also hard to recognize faces when they are upside down. Anyhow, a massive amount of research has been done on this subject. I'm convinced the answer to the question of how the Parkland witnesses could be so consistent and yet so wrong lies within. I'll have more on this in the next update of my presentation.

I don't think there were any bribes involved, John. It was pure power politics. Valenti, Moyers, Johnson, Ford, Specter, etc, have a lot of friends in government and the media. A lawsuit could have been damaging regarding the History Channel's fact-checking, etc. Of course, The History Channel took the smart way out. They aired a contoversial program and weren't prepared to back it up. Therefore, they disowned the product and aired a retraction. That's what media corporations do. Freedom of Speech isn't as important to them as keeping the FCC off their back.

John, I talked to Ed Tatro a bit at last year's Lancer conference, and in Dealey Plaza the year before. He's a researcher who really has it in for Johnson. He was quoted extensively in The Guilty Men. He says it was not Gerald Ford and Lady Bird who got the show banned as much as it was former Johnson aide, and long-time President of the Academy of Motiion Pictures, Jack Valenti, and former Johnson aide, and long-time champion of the liberal media, Bill Moyers. I found it extemely ironic that these two men in particular, whose lives have been devoted to introducing "a world of ideas" to the globe, via film, books, and television, would find the expression of the thought of Johnson's involvement in the assassination, something any rational man should have pondered, so reprehensible that it must be silenced. Although I didn't see it myself, my understanding is that at the same time they banned The Guilty Men, The History Channel ran a new documentary where mainstream historians discussed The Guilty Men and why it was so flagrantly wrong in its conclusions. It seems to me that history and The History Channel would have been better served if they'd aired The Guilty Men, followed it with the conservative historian response, and then aired a moderated discussion between the two sides of the issue. But that was not to be. The free exchange of ideas is a bit dangerous. y'know. If I had been on the side with Tatro my first question would have been to Bill Moyers; I'd have looked him in the eye and asked "Now Mr. Moyers, you're a student of history; certainly you know that there is a long history of assassination by men second-in-command to achieve power. Johnson was a man who sought power. What is it about Johnson, in particular, that makes it unthinkable to you that he would seek to achieve power in such a way? His involvement in the assassination must have crossed your mind. What made you reject it?" On occasion I've posted on The History Channel's Forum. It's a bit scary over there. There are a number of Gratz types, including one with the moniker Mr. Conservatism, who post all day long, seven days a week, creating threads with headings like "Why do Liberals hate America?" When I brought up the Kennedy issue a number of them jumped on me, stating that it's a dead issue and that the single-bullet theory has been proven over and over again. When I asked them a few questions about the medical evidence I knew none of them could answer, one guy posted a link to a site that would answer ALL my questions. It was a link to Dale Myers' site. When I let them know that I have a section on Myers in my presentation, and his animation is blatantly dishonest and demonstrably inaccurate, the thread promptly died. It is my suspicion that forums like The History Channel's have been targeted by ultra-right-wingers as part of their efforts to win what they perceive as a culture war. They're in it till the death...America, right or wrong, blah blah blah... I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Conservatism is sitting in a cubicle at The Heritage Foundation right now, plotting out his next attack on the "Dems" who "hate our men in uniform".

I absoultely agree, Norman, that the mob had a lot of control, but the question is did they USE that control to help Kennedy in Chicago? The answer seems to be "no". Has anyone done similar research on the West Virginia primaries? It would be interesting if it turned out that Kennedy's votes came from areas outside the influence of unions. Interesting thought. Perhaps the mob "double-crossed" Kennedy in 1960 by claiming to help him but by actually doing nothing. Perhaps Kennedy became aware of this, and responded by sicking Bobby on them. Someone could probably find a way to blame it all on Frank Sinatra.

This was one of the items in the Pfeiffer history that caught me by surprise. That doesn't sound like the Nixon I know. When I read the section on Nixon in the Pfeiffer history it became clear that Nixon was involved early on, but then appeared to lose interest as the State department pushed for moderates to replace Castro and as Nixon's own campaign for the presidency heated up. This makes me suspect that Nixon had a "secret" plan for Cuba, much as he did for Vietnam. Ask yourself, is it a coincidence that Robert King was traveling with Nixon on the campaign trail, providing "security," at the very time King's partner, Robert Maheu, was approached as the cut-out for the hits on Castro? I have my doubts.

I agree with Sherry that the evidence does not fit the pattern of a bullet's entering the back of Kennedy's head and exploding out the front. When I looked at the evidence as a whole, including the x-rays and the Harper fragment, I realized that the most logical scenario was that the bullet impacted directly on the top of Kennedy's head, at what is supposedly the exit. (Although the impact was on the right side of Kennedy's head, we need to keep in mind that his head was tilted 25 degrees to its left, placing his right temple near the top.) I believe Sherry agrees that this was the entrance, just not that it reflects that the bullet came from behind. I was convinced that the bullet came from behind by a chain of information. One, the nose of a bullet was found on the front seat. Two, there was crack on the inside of the windshield above where the bullet nose was found that appeared right after the headshot. Three, this bullet nose was found to match the bullet fragments removed from Kennedy skull. Four, this bullet nose was found to match the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the school book depository, which was behind the President at 313. Five, while some might argue that the crack on the windshield was in fact a bullet entrance from the front, that the bullet nose was a plant, and that the ballistics evidence has been faked, this fails to explain why this planted crumpled bullet nose was eventually determined to include large pieces of SKIN. This skin indicates the bullet impacted directly on top of the head and did not pass through Kennedy's skull from behind. If the evidence was planted, the inclusion of this skin would indicate an incompetent conspiracy, and not the almighty conspiracy capable of faking all the ballistic evidence and windshield evidence. Six, the x-rays indicate that yes indeed a bullet impacted directly at the supposed exit; fragments on the outside of the scalp surround the supposed exit; the fractures at this supposed exit, furthermore, predate any fractures at the back of the skull. Seven, the underside of the Harper fragment indicates both inward beveling and outward beveling; this indicates it was at the margin of a tangential "keyhole" type entry. When one places the Harper fragment in what has been widely (but not indisputably)determined to be its proper location, this places this "keyhole" type entry at the supposed exit, with the beveling indicating an entrance towards the back part of the Harper fragment, and the beveling indicatng exit towards the front. While many conspiracy theorists are understandably reluctant to follow the evidence as described above, as it argues against a frontal headshot at 313, which has been propounded so often that to many it feels like a fact, what they should understand is that the evidence as described above indicates that the bullet wound at 313 impacted on top of Kennedy's skull, and thus the small entrance seen at the autopsy came from a separate head wound. That this entrance came from a separate head wound helps explain why the Clark Panel moved this entrance to find a location more acceptible to their proposed trajectory. If Kennedy had two separate head wounds of the skull, of course, this means that in order for there to have been no conspiracy one other shot has to account for Kennedy's back wound and all the wounds on Connally. This is the single-bullet theory. It also means there was no first shot miss and that the Tague wound must have been caused by a fragment from the bullet at 313. Okay. This, of couse, also means that the non-practicing shooter Oswald picked up his rifle one day and hit three out of three shots at a moving target. Okay. But when did these shots occur? When one concludes that Kennedy was hit twice in the skull and looks at the Zapruder film, one is forced to conclude conspiracy, because the only reasonable times to conclude the low head wound could have occurred are within a few seconds of 224, when Connally is almost certainly hit, and within a second or so after Z-313. Both scenarios require Oswald to shoot both faster and with more accuracy than has been demonstrated possible. Thus, when accepted and taken together, the autopsy photos, x-rays, ballistics evidence, and Zapruder film indicate a conspiracy.

I've seen some photos of him somewhere before, but they were color. Are we even sure this is him?

Since John created a new thread on Pfeiffer, I thought I'd dredge this one up for anyone looking for an overview.

At the risk of sounding naive, what is it about a Life insurance company that makes it attractive to criminals? Is there a heavy cash flow? With plenty of opportunity to skim? A few years ago I was researching the criminals who'd taken over and cleaned out the record company I was working for; I was surprised to find that the mother of one of the crooks, whose every son and daughter had declared bankruptcy, and who lived in Oakland, was on the board of directors of an insurance company in the midwest. I was quite sure it was her because she had an unusual name with a Z for a middle initial. Any ideas?

Mr. Caddy, do you have any insight into Moody's feelings about LBJ? Were they involved in a long-time feud? In your talks with Moody, did the subject of Howard Hughes or Robert Maheu ever come up?

In the book The Grim Reapers, Ed Reid relates a story about the beginnings of Las Vegas. Evidently, Dalitz and the Cleveland mob were having difficulty getting a gambling license until Sam Maceo had a talk with Senator Pat McCarran. I found another reference to Maceo in The Green Felt Jungle. In the back of that book, Ovid Demaris re-printed a segment of Rosselli's 1950 testimony before the Kefauver Committee. Among the list of names he acknowledged knowing was Sam Maceo. In Mickey Cohen's memoirs he says nice things about Maceo. Evidently, Maceo contributed significant funds to Cohen's pet charity: the foundation of Israel.

Excellent, Lee. Beyond the obvious--Ferrie headed to Galveston after the assassination--there is the possibility Mr. Moody paid off Billie Sol to cover his own involvement. Remember, when Billie Sol made his claims, the HSCA was fresh, and Blakey's claim of Marcello's involvement was on everyone's mind. What better way to distract everyone's attention than claim it was LBJ on his own? Hopefully, Mr. Caddy will offer us some insight into the enigmatic Mr. Moody. I have a personal interest as well. When I was a kid my dad was in the oil business, working closely with an oilman named Johnny Mitchell. While reading the memoirs of Robert Maheu, I found out that Johnny Mitchell was one of Maheu's best friends, and that they'd met on a plane ride from Tampa (Trafficante country). When I googled Mitchell I found out that his brother George is still alive and one of the richest men in the Houston/Galveston area, and that the brothers had got their start under the tutelage of Sam Maceo. Johnny Mitchell even purchased the Maceos' flagship casino, The Balinese, after the Maceo brothers had died. Somewhere along the line I came into contact with Sam Maceo's son and he confirmed that his dad was close to the Mitchell brothers. He also told me that his dad and uncle--the Maceo brothers--died in the mid 1950's. So I'm always on the lookout for stuff on The Maceo brothers. Thanks. You can find a whole chapter on them and their complete control of Galveston in USA Confidential. Another interesting aspect is that, along with George Mitchell, one of the biggest developers in Galveston is the Fertitta family. Both empires derived from the Maceo family empire. If Moody money is tied into this stuff as well, that shouldn't prove surprising. On another thread Douglas Caddy discussed this, and said that as far as he knew the Moodys had nothing to do with the Maceos, however.

Of course, if it was Rodriguez, it has other ramifications. It makes one wonder if Rodriguez wasn't protected on some level during the Iran/Contra and cocaine-trafficking investigations. If he'd known that Bush was a CIA cut-out or CIA agent back in the sixties, he would have had a lot of leverage over the man. In 1976, we should remember, Bush told congress he'd had no previous experience with the CIA before he became its director. If he'd lied to congress about his previous involvement with the CIA, so that when he left the CIA he could return to politics without the taint of being a life-long spook involved in the Bay of Pigs, and Rodriguez had exposed him, it would have ended Bush' career. And his son would never have been Governor of Texas, let alone POTUS.

Nathaniel, I have come to think of the assassination in philosophical terms. Truth is a material object. We are all looking at this object from different points of view. A study of the Kennedy assassination reveals how people with different perspectives compete for respectability, quite often by deceiving themselves that they have the ONE view, the correct view. Once this deception takes hold, unfortunately, a view supposedly rooted in reason can not be altered by reason. At that point, one's perspective has become one's religion.

FWIW, the people at Mesa Verde lived on top of the Mesa for almost their entire time there. They only moved into the cliff dwellings for the last 100-200 years. Most of the dwellings were fairly inaccessible. They believe people climbed to the top from Spruce House on a large tree. Similarly, Balcony House had a narrow trail from the top, culminating in a very narrow entrance into the house. This entrance was made progressively smaller, to the point that today you have to crawl on your belly for 10 feet or so just to get into the house. The thinking ten years ago was that the various dwellings were in conflict with one another. The thinking today is that there wasn't war between the people as much as there was a concern for theft. As their soil became depleted, food was harder to come by and the ab ility to protect what food they had became more and more important to the various communities. At least that's what Ranger Duff said. As far as the different tribes claiming their heritage... As I remember the Zunis have always insisted they were the descendants, and the Navajo have never claimed they were the descendants. Apparently, the word Anasazi in Navajo means "ancient ones" or "enemies of my ancestors." The Navajo have never claimed the Anasazi were their ancestors, even though several Navajo communities were built on the ruins of the "ancient ones".

So who is it? Who left Cuba AFTER the Bay of Pigs? Felix Rodriguez? Any ideas?

Just read something which I find pretty interesting. Not sure if this is the right thread for it or not. Anyhow, in Roger Goldman's book on Thurgood Marshall, he recounts that Marshall had a couple of conversations with LBJ shortly before LBJ passed in which LBJ told Marshall that while many people believed that he didn't run for re-election in 68 because of Vietnam, it was really because of his putting Marshall on the Supreme Court. LBJ hinted to Marshall that he'd lost the backing of powerful factions as a result of Marshall's nomination. While this may have been LBJ blowing smoke, I suspect there's some truth to this. If this is true it is more revelatory than LBJ probably intended. It means that he looked to the backing of certain factions for his re-election and was rejected. Since it's clear he wasn't looking for the backing of the East Coast Ivy League crowd, who backed McCarthy and/or Kennedy, one should suspect he's talking about Southern money. As Marshall was confirmed by a vote of 69 to 11 we should look to who were the 11 and who backed them. Well, Goldman's book clues us in by pointing out that there were four Southerners on the Judiciary Committee who fought against Marshall. The four: Thurmond of South Carolina, Eastland of Mississippi, McClellan of Arkansas, and Ervin of North Carolina. From this, it seems clear that the backing and money LBJ was looking for was the backing of the South and the Klan. While the Klan ended up in the corner of George Wallace, I suspect the big money ended up backing Nixon. If these forces were desperate enough to abandon Johnson for a long shot like Wallace, or to jump parties for Nixon, might they also have been desperate enough to kill RFK, to make sure their worst nightmare didn't come true?

John, one of the things that led me to my conclusion that the bullet at 313 struck Kennedy at the large defect, and that the small entrance came from an earlier shot, was reading a book on wound ballistics--perhaps the first one--written by the WW1 military surgeon Edmond De Lorme. De Lorme says that the dura mater is regularly torn at entrance but not at exit. When I thought about it it made sense. A bullet or fragment pressing the dura against the brain will cause the dura to stretch for a spell before the dura tears and the bullet or fragment enters the brain , while a bullet or fragment exploding from within will cut through the dura when it's pressed against the hard skull.

Okay, enough of this Monkee bashing. While it is true the Monkees became a band for a TV show, it's also true that a number of great musicians tried out for the show, including Steve Stills. Ultimately, the show's producers opted to go with two musicians--Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork--and two actors, Mickey Dolenz and and Davey Jones. Dolenz and Jones did their own singing, however. After the show and the band became successful, the boys opted to throw their weight around and gain control of their careers as well. Mike Nesmith began writing more and more of the band's material--Last Train to Clarksville is a classic*--and the band began indulging in crazy 60's behavior--such as playing their own instruments...they even booked Hendrix as an opening act. Eventually, Don Kirshner pulled the plug on the band so he could gain TOTAL control of a band, and was successful. I believe his next big band was The Archies. If you don't believe The Monkees have any credibility you should check out their genuinely freaky send-up of Beatles movies, Head. *As James points out below, Last Train to Clarksville was NOT written by Nesmith. I knew he'd written a big hit classic record. It turns out it wasn't even a Monkees record. It was Different Drum by Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Ponys.

Living in Lala Land, home of the LAPD, I've witnessed a few similar, although much more minor, incidents. For a short while LA had a yearly street scene, where the streets of downtown were closed off and free concerts were staged. One year The Ramones were supposed to play. I was in a crowd of maybe 5,000 that waited an waited for them to go on. Finally, after waiting about an hour, someone from the crowd climbed up on the stage and picked up a microphone. Someone else threw some trash on the stage. At that point, my friends decided this is lame and we turned to leave. Well, gathered around the edges of the crowd were 20-30 mounted police, who immediately took off into the crowd with their billy clubs swinging. Meanwhile, from the south a wall of cops in riot gear moved in on the crowd and pushed everyone away from the stage. I don't think anyone got killed, but a few certainly took a club to the head. The crowd took off in all directions.. I saw girls fall down and get stepped on, etc. Well, the next day on the news the local newscasters repeated as a chorus that an unruly crowd had refused to disperse after The Ramones didn't show up, and that the riot squad had to be called in. It was a TOTAL lie. NO ONE ever told the crowd The Ramones were not gonna play, and NO ONE asked the crowd to disperse. We were waiting and waiting and then Daryl Gates' stormtroopers charged in and beat people up. No final warning nothing. That was the final street scene downtown. That was the final year the city put on free rock concerts. I have NO doubt that Gates and his friends made sure of it. The city tried a country fest in a park a few years later, but alas that too got shut down. As far as the media lying, I was in a peace march in 2003 that ended up at the CNN building in Hollywood. We were trying to draw attention to the media's lack of accurate coverage of the war in Iraq. Their "embeddedness". Well, CNN proved our point that night by reporting that there was a 5,000 man march in Hollywood against the war. They failed to mention that the protest was against them, and that their building was surrounded by angry protesters for half the day. They also got the number wrong. There were at least 10,000 protesters in the march. .

Those of you who know me know that I'm constantly digging through old books looking for bits of trivia that could be important. Today, while looking through a 1976 book by Washington Post columnist, Art Buchwald, I think I found one. In a column entitled Where are My Files? Buchwald writes about his use of the FOIA to get a look at his files; he has fantasies that they are really juicy and that he has secretly been followed for twenty years. When he finally gets his files, of course, he finds they are totally anemic and disappointing. The ONE thing he finds turns out to be of great interest, however. (At least to me.) He finds that Cord Meyer, after discussing the Bay of Pigs with Buchwald at a Georgetown party on June 9, 1964, wrote a memorandum on their discussion, which was put in Buchwald's file. Meyer wrote: "Mr. Buchwald added that it was his feeling that the policy control over the agency was not as close as it should be. He cited as an extreme example the claim of the Cuban exiles in the recent "Bay of Pigs" that they had been encouraged to proceed with the invasion even if the White House issued contrary orders. I stated that I was not personally familiar with the Cuban events, but that it was my clear understanding that no such incitement to mutiny had ever been officially authorized, and that it was inconceivable to think that it had been." Buchwald writes: "If I had known Cord Meyer, Jr. was reporting back to headquarters on what he heard at parties, I sure as hell would have come up with something more interesting than some idle gossip about the Bay of Pigs." Buchwald also notes that the first half of Meyer's memo involved a discussion Meyer had with Senator Eugene McCarthy, at the same party. For me, this brings up a few interesting questions. While we have pretty much taken it for granted that people like Meyer and Wisner and Angleton ran in the same circles as the Georgetown crowd, and that members of the media willingly played along with them, I now wonder if this was not by design. Perhaps people like Meyer and Wisner and Angleton insinuated themselves into this crowd so they could keep tabs on them as well. The other question is whether in June 1964 Meyer was paying particular attention to anti-CIA comments amongst the Georgetown crowd. Buchwald and Meyer ran in the same circles and had had other conversations over the years. Why was this one in his file? Was this the only time Buchwald had said something negative about the CIA? Or was Meyer specifically tracking such comments at Georgetown parties in early 1964? If so, we can all imagine why.

Wasn't it recently discovered that Napoleon was poisoned? Remember that history is written by the victors (and the killers). On the way to and from Dallas in November, I stopped off in National Parks. At Carlsbad Caverns I learned that within the last few years scientists have completely changed their minds on what created the caverns. While they used to believe it was an underground river, they now believe it was sulphuric acid. Similarly, at Mesa Verde National Park I found that both the ultimate fate of the cave dwellers there and the reason for their departure has changed in the last ten years. While ten years ago the Park rangers told the tourists that the people were Anasazi, that they created their cliff dwellings for defense purposes, and that they fled after a period of conflict, last year the ranger told us that the people who lived there were the fore-runners of today's Zuni tribe (and not Anasazi--a Navajo word), that they lived in the caves for protection from the elements, and that they moved on to warmer climes when their top soil became depleted. A huge difference. History is a living, breathing, thing.

I suspect the last line was meant to be ironic.