Pat Speer

I read this article in its entirety the day I discovered it. (About a month ago.) I'm still debating whether or not to email Harris and tell him some of this errors. As I remember it, the early parts where he uses the eyewitness testimony to debunk Posner's theory, is quite good. Overall, however, it lacked focus. The gutter-shot is nonsense.

The problem with this claim is that the palm print was not found by the FBI but by the DPD. The FBI inspected the same rifle and found NO palm print. Apparently, sometimes the lifting of a print removes it. This is supposedly what happened.

The so-called roll-call never really took place. While looking at the employees in the building it occurred to Truly that Oswald was missing, and he went up to the sixth floor to tell Fritz. I believe the rifle was found around that same time. So this was after one o'clock. My understanding is that the radio announcement came as a result of Brennan's talking to a DPD officer right after the shooting. Was it Harkness? While I know that efforts have been undertaken to debunk that Brennan was the source, I don't believe they've been successful. So the description sent out over the radio didn't exactly match Brennan's later descriptions? So what? Since when has Brennan's memory or the accuracy of the DPD been infallible? It's not as if the description sent out was incredibly specific to Oswald. I believe many conspiracists make the error of excusing the inconsistent memories of people like Jean Hill and Beverly Oliver while finding the inconsistencies of men like Brennan highly suspicious.

Sullivan's book on Hoover was published postumously and states that the shooting was considered an accident by Sullivan's family. Evidently, his neighbor saw him in the woods and thought he was a deer.

Caster worked at the TSBD in one of the offices, but was out of the office on the 22nd. One of the rifles he brought to work on the 20th was indeed a Mauser. People saw him leave with the rifle cases, and his family acknowledged he came home with the rifles he'd bought on his lunch hour, but this doesn't mean the rifles he took home were the same rifles he showed Truly, Shelley, and Oswald. My suspicious nature reads Caster's behavior as an amazingly clever way of smuggling rifles into the building without anyone knowing.

My gut instinct is that Judyth has issues. While she probably knew Oswald, the rest of her story is probably a fairy tale. I don't believe she's lying. I'm convinced she believes what she's been saying. The human mind is a fragile thing. When confronted with a disappointing life, many of us crack a little and invent scenarios and stories that ease our pain and make our lives seem more worthwhile and interesting. Judyth is by no means alone.

I'll give you two quick C or Cs--simplified because Tim can presumably spell this correctly. Ha. 1. Two days before the assassination Warren Caster brought two rifles into the TSBD and showed them to his co-workers. This is the only time anyone remembred anyone bringing a rifle in to work. He then took them to his office. Whether he left with the rifles or with empty boxes later on is open to conjecture. One of the men who looked at his rifles was Lee Harvey Oswald. If Oswald had already decided to kill JFK then these rifles being in the building is quite a coincidence. If seeing these rifles in the building inspired Oswald to bring his own in then that points away from a conspiracy and towards Oswald being the sole shooter, which is not supported by the physical evidence. The remaining possibility is that Caster was involved, which seems unlikely due to his long-time employment at the TSBD, and lack of known criminal activity. One possible explanation could be that the JBS was involved, and Caster was a Bircher. 2. When Marion Baker went into the TSBD, he was followed by Roy Truly, who led him to the elevators. When both elevators were stopped at the 5th floor, the two men began to race up the stairs. When they got to the fifth, they noticed that one of the elevators was gone, and took the other one to the seventh, whereby they gained access to the roof, where Baker thought a shot had been fired. Thus, the sixth floor was the ONLY floor the two men did not take a quick look at. Furthermore, a short time later, Truly suddenly realized that Oswald, who he'd seen in the lunch room, had left the building, and that this made Oswald a suspect. Otherwise, the man-hunt for Oswald might not have started for another hour! So Truly may well have both led the police away from the shooters on the sixth floor when they still could have been caught, and sent the police out after Oswald before they otherwise might have considered him a suspect. Now is that a coincidence or what? While the possibility exists that Truly guided Baker away from the sixth on purpose, this would mean that Truly, a long-time employee of the TSBD with no history of espionage or crime, had decided to get his feet wet with the murder of the century. Once again, however, this could be explained if the JBS was involved, and Truly was a Bircher. or Klan. I tend to believe in the innocence of both men and that these were just coincidences. But who knows? If anyone can ever come up with credible evidence that both Truly and Caster were JBS or Klan, we might have ourselves a good case for conspiracy.

And the first shots rang out as Kennedy approached the Thornton Freeway sign. Coincidence??

After the above exchanges with Larry Hancock about Barnes I did quite a bit of reading on the Domestic Operations Division, the Division created specifically for Barnes after Dulles and Bissell went bye-bye. I found that among its other duties the DOD was responsible for the recruitment of foreign nationals while on American soil. Since Hunt was the covert ops chief for the DOD this means that Hunt was responsible for buddying-up to, or finding persuasive information on, Cuban and Russian employees at the U.N. I asked myself if it was a coincidence then that the woman Oswald supposedly had an affair with in Mexico, Duran, was the purported mistress of Cuba's ambassador to the U.N., Lechuga In light of the Angleton memo about Hunt, I couldn't rule out a connection. Perhaps Phillips told Hunt about Oswald and perhaps Hunt was using Oswald on missions completely separate from the assassination. Perhaps someone in the know turned the whole thing around. It's also worthwhile to note that Barnes was in fact the one who wrote Bissell's response to Kirkpatrick's scathing IG report on the BOP. Barnes blamed Kennedy for its failure, and felt the CIA was largely blameless. He must have been pretty upset to sit by and watch not only his mentor Dulles, but his closest associate Bissell, be pushed aside, and have his greatest rival, Helms, take over the Dirty Tricks Dept. Barnes so loved. Barnes was no coward and no bureaucrat and was considered rather reckless. He was probably the CIA's top advocate for assassination, having advocated and/or planned its use in Guatemala, Iraq, the Dominican, Cuba, and the Congo. He sent guns to Trujillo's assassins and ordered the transfer to be kept from the State Dept. Bissell lamented Barnes' influence in his memoirs. When you take into account that Barnes was instrumental in the careers of Hunt, Phillips, Robertson, and Morales, it's just hard to write this guy off as a suspect. He may even have been the ring-leader. P.S. I recently remembered that Gordon Novel was tied to the Double-Chek corporation, a CIA front. Double-Chek was run by Barnes.

Audrey Hepburn was in Charade with Cary Grant. Grant played a government agent on the trail of some rogue OSS officers after some stolen WW2 gold. In the film he is stationed in Paris and uses a multitude of false names... So I'm wondering... was Cary Grant QJ/WIN? And was Audrey Hepburn working for Lemnitzer as his control agent? By golly, James, I think you've cracked the case.

Hey, James, haven't we seen a good looking latin guy in dark shades in Robertson's vicinity somewhere before? Like at Houston and Main? Care to compare?

Ironically, I believe it was Perry's annoyance with disinfo that led him to attack me in the first place. The Geneva White story was something he'd helped debunk, and he was PO'ed that I brought her up as if she might have any credibility. I also suspect he's become a little too friendly with the DPD; his refusal to acknowledge that DPD officers at the very least stole some key evidence (2 of the 3 BY negatives disappeared) is proof of that.

You're right, David, in that I could have put Posner on there, and Dale Myers, John Lattimer, David Belin, etc... One of the things I found that was somewhat surprising is that when it comes to the medical evidence, these guys are all over the map, and have little consensus. Sturdivan, for example, believes in the low EOP entry and an exit from the forehead. Lattimer, for example, believes the autopsy photos are an illusion and that the back wound/neck wound/back wound really IS a neck wound. It's crazy. In most ways, I don't think these men are that much different from us. They are obsessed with the idea that something is wrong (they think the great wrong is that so many people believe there was a conspiracy, and lack faith in their government) and are determined to correct it. If I was in their shoes, I might try and do the same thing. I think the key to understanding these men is that they are anally retentive--they want things to be CLEAN. When they look at the case, they see SO MUCH that leads to Oswald that they fill in the blanks with Oswald Oswald Oswald, even though the evidence indicates conspiracy conspiracy conspiracy. I think these men would look away from a car crash and tell themselves everybody's okay rather than be a looky-loo or God-forbid stop and get out. In Posner's case I think there was an economic incentive as well; he knew that after JFK there was bound to be a backlash and he rode it like a wave, straight to the bank.

Now hold on guys, Lemnitzer was appointed by Ford to serve on the Rockefeller Commission, so he must have been on the side of truth and justice. Right..

They had a Massachusetts wedding, long before it was legal. John Kerry performed the services. With Willie Horton in attendance! (That wedding crasher Willie!) GHWB came as Boy Gray's date, and Dubya parked the cars for beer money!

Tim, you're forgetting about Bono's first big backer among the right, and one of the first converts to African debt relief: Jesse Helms! I'm also surprised that with your attention to detail, you haven't pointed out that U2, in true liberal fashion, got at least one of their facts wrong. King was killed in the afternoon, not the morning. And, FWIW, Adam Clayton was raised protestant but is now reportedly a non-believer.

A member of this Forum recently contacted me and asked if he could follow up on some of the leads I've thrown out here. I told him "go ahead" and mentioned the Stovalls as well, so maybe we'll be hearing something about it soon.

I believe Segretti kept at it until his name was found on Hunt's phone bill. The Post broke the story in Sep 72, I think, but several men told tales to delay the investigation of Segretti until after the election. I believe Chapin was the one to fall on his sword, serving time ultimately so America could have Gerald Ford as President and George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as his cronies. Remind me to slug Chapin if ever I meet him.

I think the larger point to be made is that the U.S. DID support the overtrow of a dictator (Batista) and helped Castro, who, despite the complaints of many, DID have the support of his people, only to have the whole thing backfire. The question is why. The record seems to indicate that Castro's aim, from day one, was for Cuba to be nobody's satellite, and his personal experiment. The Eisenhower Administration, particularly Dick Nixon, who saw everything as pink and white, couldn't stand for this. Robert Anderson's policies at Treasury in particular pushed Castro away. I'm not so sure this wasn't by design. Once we pushed Castro into the Soviet camp, and proved to the American people that supporting leftists was a waste of time, we could go back to supporting dictators and getting kickbacks on their sugar crops. Business as usual. Because of this, I believe, Nixon set Castro up to fail from day one. If Castro had stayed within our sphere and had showed everyone that a leftist dictator could be both good for his people and an American ally, Nixon's whole world view and raison d'etre in politics would be over. He needed to make Castro a bad guy before Castro destroyed him. He got his wish. This journey through the mind of Nixon was brought to you by the world of Microsoft.

As usual, I have a bit of a different perspective than most of those leaning towards a conspiracy. I think the "lone-nutters" are right on about 80% of the issues. The problem is that their beliefs are so locked in a corner that me disagreeing with them even 5% of the time makes me a conspiracist. Over the last year I have read and studied a lot of the work of Robert Artwohl, Kenneth Rahn, Chad Zimmerman, Joseph Riley, Paul Seaton, John McAdams and Larry Sturdivan. I believe more likely than not they are all sincere. I think you can learn more by figuring out where these men are wrong (and they are) than by deciding that everything they say is disinformation. If there are disinformationalists out there, working for the government, they would have to know that a certain percent of conspiracists will fall for almost anything, and that by falling for the bizarre, they drive a certain percentage of undecideds back towards the lone-nut position. That's just the way it works. As a result, I would suspect that the REAL disinformationalists don't adopt a lone-nut position at all, but create web-sites in which they try and blame the evils of the world on vast right-wing conspiracies against the ever-noble left, etc... Oh when oh when will John Simkin finally step forward and admit his real role... But wait...maybe John is legit, in which case I'M the disinformation agent... Hmmm I'm trying to make a point that when conspiracists hunt for disinformation agents they lose the mainstream and appear to be the lunatic fringe. The process is self-defeating. The only way to deal with them is to ignore them on the personal level and PROVE them wrong.

Of course, Cubela was another FAL fanatic. I believe he got his through Artime, or was that just his silencer?

Great work, James. Do we know if he worked with Robertson? Ayers usually disguised guy's names, but I suppose Julio was generic enough so that he might not care.

I'd mentioned that others discussing the backyard photos might want to go back and read this and decided to go back and read it myself. Re-activated so that some of the recent arrivals won't have to go digging.

I went back and re-read Ayers' passage about Rosselli, and it is indeed "Bob" who tells Ayers about Rosselli. Bob says that Rosselli worked out of Washington and ran raids from time to time, using "Bob's" own team, led by a Julio. Ayers mentions that in his presence one of Julio's snipers came up and told Julio that he'd hit 3 cormorants at a range of nearly 500 yards. If Ayers' book names the names of men like Julio it should be VERY interesting.

I once wrote something about the photographs kinda like you guys are doing now, only to find out some months later that Dave Perry had created a web page about how stupid and lazy most researchers are, and used ME and my post on the backyard photos as an example. Well, this kinda pissed me off, but I determined I'd go back in and check my facts, and admit I was stupid if that was the case. Instead, I found out I was basically correct in what I'd said, and that the backyard photos were even fishier than I thought. Some of you might want to use John's new index and see if you can find that thread. It might even be worth re-activating.