Pat Speer

This is a cover story. Hugh Aynesworth obtained a copy from the police and sold it, according to researchers. The district attorney had nothing to do with it. Jack I'm not so sure, Jack. I think Adam was able to get the real deal. I don't see Roberts, a former editor of the New York Times, making up a story that involves him illegally copying evidence in the DA's office, just to cover Hugh Aynsworth's fanny. Since Roberts doesn't go out of his way to say no money was exchanged between him and this DA employee, and since the Newsweek article specifically said there was money involved, I take it as an acknowledgement that money was indeed exchanged. I see no reason to think Roberts would admit so much just to protect Aynsworth.

In his criticism of the CIA's attitude, Phillips is actually mouthing Lyman Kirkpatrick's IG Report that was pretty much banned. If Phillips was capable of realizing the level of the CIA's responsibility, maybe he did express some regrets about the Kennedy assassination, as reported.

Thanks Tim. Exellent: that is the fox8 photo. Yeah, that's it. I'm still wondering why Groden delayed releasing this one for so long. Maybe because he knows the colors are off. I see the blue Sturdivan mentioned along the neck, but I'm not convinced that it's a towel. Part of the blue seems to creep up on the skull. Mucho thanks, Tim.

John, as I understand it, roughly 50% of those Americans who believe in a conspiracy(80%) believe the CIA was behind it--this means 40% of all Americans capable of an opinion walk around every day thinking the CIA is capable of killing their President and getting away with it. Not exactly the message we want to send out to the world. While you seem fascinated by the unwillingness of some Americans to accept that a coup d'etat took place, I am equally fascinated by the ease, even zeal, with which you and some of the others here accept it. Yes, America is a flawed giant. A brute. Stupid. And yet none of this means Kennedy was killed in a coup d'etat. Johnson, Hoover, and Warren may have collaborated on a cover-up for reasons other than their own involvement. Maybe they honestly believed Oswald did it, but knew that he was a CIA contact and thought revealing as much would hurt the country. Maybe they thought it would be bad for business. The cover-up and the crime are not necessarily connected. On the other hand, there is significant circumstantial evidence to suggest Johnson's involvement. Once Ladybird flies away, I suspect we'll see more media conglomerates willing to say as much.

Yesterday I purchased a copy of Richard Bissell's "Reflections of a Cold War Warrior". I am sure it includes a lot of disinformation. However, I think books like this are useful to the researcher. If you know enough about what they are writing about, you can work out when they are lying. This in itself can give you clues to help you discover the "truth". Absolutely, John. Some of the books most envaluable to understanding our recent history were written by men with an agenda, e.g. LBJ, Nixon. Once you understand the terrain, you can understand the men by what they avoid saying, or how they rationalize their behavior. I have this fantasy of constructing a history of the post WWII western world entirely from quotes from the autobiographies of famous men, and government reports. The conservative historians couldn't argue with it; at the same time, it could be devastating. To put Richard Helms' words side by side with the Church Report, or Nixon's words side by side with the Watergate Report, would reveal the men to be the self-serving liars we always knew they were. As for Bissell's book, he comes across as fairly credible, IMO. His take on Barnes is particularly interesting.

Tim, the key is that the photo supposedly taken from the front is obviously taken from behind. I agree with Groden, Livingstone, Lifton, and Mantik on this one. The Clark Panel, The HSCA Pathology Panel, The McAdams website, and a number of others, including Sturdivan, all claim this photo was taken from the front. Their mistake is obvious. This mistake can be corrected. The photo I'm talking about is the only photo available with the scalp peeled off of the skull. Half the skull is missing. I seem to remember that Groden's brochure last year was different than the one I was given years earlier, in that the new one had a color version of this photo. I appreciate the help, guys, but I'm virtually certain the photo I'm talking about is not available on the internet. Perhaps I only imagined seeing a color version in Groden's brochure. I'll double-check next month.

Ahh... I think we have our answer... looks to me like she's wearing a blue blouse with a gold skirt. In the Dorman film, the blue blouse is clear, but the skirt is darker and in shadow and is harder to make out. I mistakenly thought it was a blue dress.

In the new book by Larry Sturdivan, the HSCA's ballistics expert, he goes on and on about how the open cranium autopsy photo was obviously taken from the front. Those who know me know I've devoted myself to proving the photo was taken from behind. Sturdivan makes one claim, however, that I can't refute. He claims that what is considered by most conspiracy people to be neck is really a blue towel. As the color version of this photo is not widely available, this is hard to dispute. I do recall seeing a color version of this photo in a Robert Groden brochure he was selling in Dealey Plaza, however. If anyone has this and can scan it and put it up on the net, we'll all be able to see whether or not Sturdivan is full of it. Anyone care to share?

I think Tannenbaum's memory is just a little confused. A few months back I got all excited because I realized that both Tannenbaum and Sprague said the Oswald impersonator in MC idenitfied himself as Lee Henry Oswald, which to me was proof it was a CIA game because the only Lee Henry Oswald was the one in the CIA's files, either by accident or CI design. Anyhow, I soon calmed down and realized the two of them were probably old friends who talk about the case from time to time, and who, as a consequence, mis-remember the same things.

Since I was just informed by someone who knows Linda that Linda Willis is not the woman in the blue dress in the Dorman film, let me explain my rationale. 1. Marilyn Willis (Texas Monthly or TM): "My husband ran and Rosemary ran with him...Linda was right behind them too." 2. Marilyn Willis "My husband had gone up the sidewalk, and the two kids following him." 3. Linda Willis I followed my dad the whole time he photographed the motorcade...As he ran along the side of the car, snapping pictures, I was on his shoulders the whole time." This indicates the two girls were running together slightly behind their father. Since Rosemary is indisputably the little girl in Dorman, and she is running alongside the motorcade, this would indicate Linda was nearby. Since a young woman is racing beside Rosemary for several seconds in the Dorman film, wearing a blue dress, it would seem obvious this woman is Linda. Since the Zapruder film, which picks up a few seconds after the Dorman sequence, shows Rosemary running alone for several seconds, it would seem obvious this young woman in the blue dress stopped running somewhere between the fountain and Rosemary. What is between these two positions??? Phil Willis, stepping back off the street, and snapping pictures. Behind him is someone who may be wearing gold. We know Linda Willis is somewhere nearby because she said she kept up with her dad and because her testimony reflects she saw Kennedy raise his arms at 224. If Linda Willis was indeed wearing gold, as has been suggested, then it would suggest the color in the Dorman film is way off, and that the woman running along with Rosemary in the blue dress was really wearing a gold dress. After all, if Linda Willis is not the woman in the blue dress, who is? Who was racing along with Rosemary only to disappear within a few seconds? Could Phil Willis, taking pictures, and his teenage daugher Linda, wearing her good shoes, outrun Rosemary by so much that neither of them would be seen in the Dorman film? Would both Phil and Linda leave little Rosemary in their dust? Since Rosemary passes Phil around Z-142, it is not an option to believe she simply outran the others. If this mystery has another solution, fill me in.

The reference to Sirhan being a rider for a mobster near San Diego was not a reference to his riding on a track near San Diego, but on the man's ranch. My understanding is that Sirhan took odd jobs after having a spill at Santa Anita (near Pasadena...near Los Angeles) and that these jobs consisted mainly of working out race horses on the private ranches and stables of those rich enough to have race horses. The preeminent race track near San Diego, by the way, is Del Mar, which is, in fact, very glamorous. Del Mar was where Hoover and his mobster friends would vacation every year, courtesy of the track's owner, Texas Oilman Clint Murchison. For most of the fifities, Hoover and his friend Clyde were comped at Murchison's hotel, the Hotel Del Charro, where they would rub elbows with the likes of Frank Costello by the pool. Nearby was the La Costa Country Club, a posh resort and hide-out for the mafia elite, which had been funded by the Teamsters. Jim Braden, who was arrested in the Dal-Tex Building across from the school book depository shortly after Kennedy was shot, was a member of La Costa, and is believed to have been a courier for some of his fellow club members.

Drugs and the CIA, what a surprise. I corrected this post in a later post to more accurately describe Shackley's views. He acknowledged the drug running was a concern, but claimed to have shut it down. Ironically, he claims Dave Morales was the one who warned him about Trafficante.

It's Linda in the blue dress running along with Rosemary.

Ahh, that's right. He's one of the unwitting conspiracists, i.e. someone who claims not to have an opinion on the possibility of a conspiracy, but re-tells the same story year in and year out that only makes sense if there were more than one shooter. Most of the unwitting conspiracists are quite certain the last two shots were fired one after the other, but fail to acknowledge this rules out Oswald as a lone-nut. Still, I seem to remember one guy telling a story about throwing some film. Robert Jackson? And another guy telling a story about catching some film. Jim Lehrer? Dan Rather?

I remember reading in more than one member of the press' testimony that Houston and Main was their scheduled drop off for the motorcade photos. You can even see one of these drop-offs take place in the Hughes film, as I remember. Has anyone compared the photos of some of the press employees known to be in Dealey with the the faces of of those by lamp post man? Could this Shackley look-alike be Robert McNeil? While he was photographed on the wall by the railroad yards, standing next to Clyde Haygood, I think he started out at Houston and Main. I'd research it myself but I'm not at home.

James Richards does not have a photograph of George Joannides. Therefore, I suspect that one does not exist. We had someone called Joannides try to join the Forum. However, when I asked them for a biography they did a runner. Based upon the obit listed by Robert, it would seem the best bets for a picture would be a City College of New York yearbook, or perhaps the internal newsletter for one of his legal organizations.

Robin, we're on a similar track. You circled the small entrance in the hairline on F8 but didn't label it as such. This same entrance is apparent at the 2 o'clock position from the brain matter on the color photo of the back of the head. When they pulled the scalp up for the photo, they pulled the entrance slightly up from where the macerated brain matter had congealed in the hair. The beveled exit at the top is the real mystery. The doctors did not report this in the autopsy protocol, nor in their testimony before the WC. In 66 when they saw the F8 photo they said it was taken from behind and showed the entrance in the hairline. In 67 they suddenly said it was taken of the forehead and showed the outshoot, even though none of the doctors in any of their interviews has ever said they took a picture of the outshoot, or even that there was a beveled outshoot on the skull. Humes and Finck in particular have said the only beveled outshoot was on the large fragment found on the floor of the limo. In order to continue this deception the Clark Panel and HSCA Forensic Panel etc. have all had to pretend this photo was taken from the front. My seminar and upcoming presentation are devoted to PROVING this photo was taken from behind. I have recently developed the opinion that the beveled outshoot reflects the place where a slice of a bullet exploding upon entering the top of Kennedy's head from behind lodged under his scalp. This explains the red spot in the cowlick mistakenly believed to be an entrance. The hole in the scalp you circled as an entrance is I believe merely a tear in the scalp by the large entance/exit by the temple. I believe Kennedy was hit in the head by two bullets--one that hit him in the hairline and most probably exited his throat, and one that hit him on the top of the head and created a large gutter wound. I believe this is what Dr. Burkley alluded to in his statements to the HSCA about the possibility of two bullets striking Kennedy in the head. While looking online for photos of 6.5 mm head wounds, I found that most of the wounds, and all of the wounds as large as Kennedy's, were, in fact, gutter wounds. This idea that military bullets striking the skull create small entrances and huge exits, due to temporary cavitation, is a myth created by lone-nut theorists, much like the Thorburn response.

Im suspicious the Buckley spy books are really ghost-written by Hunt. Buckley is the godfather to at least one of Hunt's chidlren, with Artime I believe being the godfather to another. Consequently, I suspect Buckley knows a lot more than he's ever let on. You didn't even mention the David Belin articles Buckley published to combat the film JFK. It's clear he's abig supporter of the CIA. I think it's rather silly to think he's actually on their payroll, however. I mean, do "groupies" get paid by rock stars? Spytime portrayed Angleton's drift into paranoia. I've read it. By the end of the book Angleton is relieved when Colby fires him, because he at long last knows the identity of the mole he's been searching for: Colby himself.. It works as literature but is not the glamorous portrait of the CIA you might envision. In another one of Buckley's books, Blackford Oakes befriends Che Guevara. He has the chance to save Guevara's life at the end but chooses not to when Guevara acknowledges his role in killing one of Oakes' lady friends, who'd been spying on Fidel. I suspect he'd talked to Rodriguez before writing that one. My favorite story about Buckley is his famous run-in with Gore Vidal. Vidal called him a "crypto-fascist' during a live television debate, to which Buckley called Vidal a fag and threatened to sock him in the face. Classic stuff. Another great Buckley moment came when the movie and TV personality Gary Merrill--an ardent leftist--came across Buckley in an airport. As Merrill tells it, he banged on the phone booth Buckley was in and started calling him the pig that he was, to which Big Bad Buckley responded by...cowering in the phone booth till the airport security could drag Merrill away. I'd have paid to see that. Buckey is what he is... a smug, clever, selfish, egocentric, monster--despite his embrace of the party of Lincoln, many of his early books and ideas were just gussied up southern racism. He may be a nasty beast, hiding fear and hatred under intellectualism, but he wasn't the mastermind of the crime of the century. Still, maybe I'm just biased because when I was a kid I really fell for his I'm-smarter- than- the-rest-of-you routine. I wanted to be just like him, talking rings around everyone who dared to step in the ring with me. Now he makes me sick.

Len, I also am skeptical about Cohen's involvement. I don't believe he owned the hotel or the racetrack. Sirhan Sirhan was a workout rider for a mob figure living down by San Diego--I can find his name if you like. He was also a rider for Desi Arnaz, who knew Al Capone as a child and was a regular at Ciro's, where Mickey Cohen reigned supreme, back in the forties. Arnaz was also active in the anti-Castro movement. Cohen, by the way, had been a MAJOR fundraiser for the terrorist groups that eventually formed the state of Israel. He also HATED Bobby Kennedy, and admitted as much in his memoirs. Cohen may have had Kennedy killed then for multiple reasons, for REVENGE for his being put away, and to crysalize anti-Palestinian sentiment. Cohen may have been promised a pardon from Nixon, who knows? He admits supporting Nixon. But, as I said, I'm skeptical. My source on the Gerry Owen alibi was William Turner's book on the assassination. Owen was pals with Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, who was a business associate of Cohen's in the forties and fifties. They owned Slapsie Maxie's together. Strangely, Rosenbloom was also pals with Mayor Sam Yorty, who made some indiscreet comments about Sirhan early in the investigation. My source on the relationship between Cohen and Rosenbloom is Cohen himself, in his memoirs, and an ex-coworker of mine who used to dance at Slapsie Maxie's named Jackie.

This has me curious. Outside of Fonzi, virtually no one has looked into Veciana and explored his credibility. Is it that you suspect there was a Bishop, but that he wasn't Phillips, or that you think Veciana made up the whole story? Since Fonzi was able to match so many of Bishop's supposed travels to those of Phillips, do you suspect Veciana was deliberately implicating Phillips, for his own dark purposes?

Don, I'm not trying to drag you into a discussion of the evidence. But I am curious as to why you're skeptical of theories involving anti-Castro Cubans. Is it you're feeling that their hatred towards Kennedy has been exaggerated? Or do you doubt their operational capabilities?

Great post, Thompson. You make me homesick for a place I've only seen in postcards.

I don't know if you remember but the Media FBI office was broken into on the evening of March 21, 1971 and all their files stolen by persons unknown. These files were then copied and released selectively to the press over the next six or eight months. The documents obtained and then released to the press contained the first clear, indisputable evidence of the existence of the COINTELPRO program. They also showed that many members of the Swarthmore College administration were reporting regularly to the FBI on the political activities of students and faculty. Ditto for the athletic trainer at Haverford College. I believe some of these documents evidenced a continuing interest in me and "Six Seconds" by the FBI and Hoover. I have been sent various FBI documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests which evidence an intense interest on the part of Hoover and the FBI concerning me and "Six Seconds." These largely come from the late 1960s and show the FBI closely following the reception the book received and how it fared under the onslaught from Time Incorporated. Back then did I believe that any other critics were agents? No. Some I judged to be thoughtful and careful. Others I judged to be harebrained. But I never thought any were agents. Maybe some were. I never thought much about it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Good answer. Your 1 million is in the mail. Keep your fingers-crossed that that pesky ghost of Angleton doesn't get it. Seriously. Do you have any inside knowledge of the Media break-in? Here the FBI was totally exposed, totally humiliated, and yet not one person was arrested. This is astounding. Since the White House was trying to get rid of Hoover at this very same moment in time, and since Colson was hiring Hunt at this very same time, I'd harbored a suspicion that this was an early adventure of the "plumbers". A few months back, however, I can't remember where, I was reading a book on sixties radicals, and one of the journalists interviewed, who'd been one of the recipients of the stolen files, claimed he knew the members of the "Committee to Investigate the FBI" or whatever they called themselves, and said they were local radicals? Do you know whether they were, in fact, members of the left? Did you know them? I think the statute of limitations is up. Were you one of them? Maybe if you "out" yourself, Salandria can be swayed on your bona fides. On the other hand, everyone knows the spooks hate the feebies...

So, Josiah, the 1 million dollar question... Since you were there darned near the beginning, asking questions that really unnerved the people in power (I've read where Dr. Russell Fisher of the Clark Panel admitted the Panel was formed to refute your book), at a time when questioning those in power about the assassination may actually have been dangerous, did YOU ever suspect someone in the research community of being an agent of some kind? Was there anyone digging through your trash? Trying to encourage you to tone down your theories? Spreading lies about you to discredit you in the community? Did the FBI have a COINTEL-PRO for the research community? Did anyone besides Salandria start thinking other researchers were spooks? How widespread was paranoia at a time when it may have actually been justified?

I'll be honest. Those Salandria letters scare the crap out of me. Not because of the possibility Thompson was an agent. But because people actually follow Salandria's reasoning on this. Let me see: Thompson was offering Salandria mass exposure for his ideas. Thompson had a few ideas of his own that Salandria couldn't stomach. The ideas in dispute could be used potentially somewhere down the road to refute the central theory of Salandria's work. So, THEREFORE, this man who has befriended Salandria and offered to help him expose his ideas, Thompson, is most likely a disinformation agent intent upon diluting and discrediting Salandria's work. To me, these seem like the thoughts of a sick mind, an obvious paranoid! A rational mind would have saw the glass as ninety percent full and jumped at the opportunity to expose his ideas to a mass audience, without significant worry he was being co-opted by "them." The only way I can understand Salandria's fear of Thompson is if Thompson insisted on complete editorial control of the book. If that is the case, then Salandria's fear might be justified. What about it, Tink? Would Salandria have been allowed to disagree with your neck wound theory in the book, and make a case for alternative scenarios, including the CT-approved but otherwise unproven shot from the knoll? Or did you make it clear to him it was your book and that you alone would decide its direction? Was it entirely your opinions that drove Salandria to suspect you? Or did your behavior have anything to do with it? If so, was it just a misunderstanding?