Pat Speer

I believe it was the County Records Building across Elm from the Dal-Tex. And Shanet, I believe that photo was taken from the sniper's nest.

My God, I think I'm sensing middle ground here! If I'm following you, Dave, you believe there was a film taken by Abraham Zapruder, and that most of what we've seen came from his original film, but that there was some alteration performed on it later, most logically to hide something. While I believe this is possible, it makes sense to me that if they were gonna change anything on the film, it would have been the "back and to the left" movement of Kennedy's head after frame 313. Since this was left in, do you think it was just an oversight, or do you believe the CIA or whomever stupidly felt this movement would help convince the public Oswald acted alone?

Carl Oglesby is not so confident about Fensterwald's non CIA links. He admits that he has a penchant for cases involving the hypothesis of conspiracy. For example, he worked with Jim Garrison when he prosecuted Clay Shaw. We now know that other CIA assets got closely involved with Garrison during this period. Oglesby also points out that Fensterwald was Andrew St. George's lawyer, another CIA asset (although not a very reliable one). He also represented James Earl Ray when he was trying to get a new trial in the Martin Luther King case. Are you aware of the taped conversation between Richard Nixon and John Dean on 28th February, 1973 about Dorothy Hunt? Fensterwald, by virtue of his Committe to Investigate Assassinations, definitely had his fingers in the conspiracy jar. He took on Ray because he believed there was something bigger behind Ray. St. George was the one who did the interview with Sturgis where Sturgis admitted knowing Hunt since back in the day. You should try to find a copy of Coincidence or Conspiracy? which dug through the implications of the CIA/mob hits, Howard Hughes, and Watergate years before Summers. Oglesby probably didn't trust him because Fensterwald was a Washington lawyer, an insider, who not unlike Harold Weisberg was nevertheless a major pain to the powers that be. I have no doubt that the CIA considered Fensterwald one of its worst enemies.

McCord was in on some of the early meetings with Liddy and Mitchell et al in which break-ins for political intelligence were discussed. He was the chief of security for CRP and did personal security work for people like Mitchell as well. As a result, he felt quite confident that the break-in was done on behalf of CRP. After all, he knew who asked him to bug O'Brien, and he knew damn well it wasn't because O'Brien had been in contact with Castro, as Hunt had incorrectly told the "Cubans." (Sorry, Tim.)

I have the book. Doesn't talk about her death as I remember. No index. Book does shed a light on McCord's motivations and convinced me he was not part of a CIA master scheme to overthrow St. Nixon, the way some seem to believe. Book does have a passage about Mrs. Hunt detailing a conversation she had with McCord after giving him some of the "hush" money. She was the one who let him in on the CRP plan to blame the break-in on the CIA, in order to get the FBI to back off, as well as the White House plan to blame Liddy, claiming he stole the money from CRP to pay the burglars. This sleaziness rubbed McCord the wrong way and was a core reason for his eventual betrayal of Mitchell, Magruder, Haldeman, Dean etc. As Hunt said in the movie Nixon "You don't leave your men on the beach!" The realization that McCord's lawyer was the late Bud Fensterwald, whose Coincidence or Conspiracy remains one of the best books on the JFK assassination, put to rest any thoughts in my head that McCord was part of a CIA conspiracy to get Tricky Dick. I just don't see the CIA giving money to Fensterwald, and thereby funding the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, under any circumstances.

The Pearson book is a biography, not an autobio, and it's by Oliver Pilat, and came out in 73, entitled simply Drew Pearson, An Unauthorized Biography. The Maheu book covers the Nixon loan on page 84 and says simply that Maheu had talked with two reporters who were working on the story. Since Pearson and Anderson jumped on it once Nixon blew the lid off it himself, I made the assumption that it was they that Maheu had spoken to, but I could be wrong. Considering how Pearson had helped Hughes with Brewster in earlier times, I thought there might be a connection. For an alternate view on the Brewster/Hughes feud, you should see The Aviator, which gets into the nitty gritty of it, including verbatim transcripts from the hearings, in which Hughes more than adequately defends himself, and exposes Brewster's ties to Pan-Am. I believe Robert Morrow ties Brewster into the JFK assassination as well. Like Smathers, he got around.

Noguchi answers four questions. He says 1) that the stomachs of habitual drug users are conditioned to digesting pills very quickly, and that he did not expect to see any physical evidence of pills. He says 2) that the autopsy report does mention a red raw appearance in the stomach, consistent with having digested a large number of pills recently. He says 3) that the yellow color in Nembutal capsules does not run and would not be expected to line her stomach. And finally, he says that her body showed no needle marks even though she'd recently been injected because fine needle marks heal within hours and become invisible. He says his problem with the case, beyond the fact it took everyone so long to call the cops, was motive, because tapes made by Greenson and played for Noguchi's boss Miner indicated she was not suicidal. Since Greenson played Miner these tapes, even though he didn't have to, I tend to think he was not involved in any conspiracy, which would have wanted the suicide story to stick. Having known a few roller-coaster women in my time, however, I wouldn't put much credence in Monroe's comments to her psychiatrist; she could very well have been lying.

While you are probably correct to defend Greer, you are incorrect in stating he was in anyway limited in his ability to take action by the car in front of him. The car in which Curry and Decker were riding was more than a hundred feet away and could easily be passed if Greer was to put on the gas. We know this is so because that's what he did. The Daniel film reveals that the Presidential limousine had passed the lead car before they'd even cleared the railroad overpass.

I believe this is all covered in Noguchi's book.

John, I have a different understanding of most of these events. You might want to re-read Maheu's book and Pearson's biography. In '56, for instance, Hughes paid Maheu to conduct a phony poll to con Eisenhower into keeping Nixon on the ticket. Maheu's book also makes it clear that Hughes did not leak the loan story and that he, in fact, hired Maheu to control the story so that it would not effect the 1960 election. Maheu says he contacted Pearson and arranged to keep the story quiet until Nixon himself decided not to trust Pearson and leak the story, incorrectly believing he could control it. The Pearson biography makes clear that LBJ and Pearson had a very friendly working relationship. Pearson, like Hoover, considered himself an independent man, and would occasionally write columns against men he otherwise favored, and LBJ was no different. When Maheu wanted an investigation into his wire-tapping charges snufffed out, he went to attorney Edward Morgan and told him about the CIA/mob attempts on Castro. Morgan told Pearson, knowing Pearson would take it straight to his close pal, Earl Warren, who told SS Chief Rowley, who told LBJ. Somewhere, I think it was on his tapes, LBJ admits that Pearson also came straight to him. They were that close. Anyhow, Pearson sat on the story for weeks until the day after Bobby Kennedy came out against the war in Vietnam, and then ran it with the added implication that Bobby was somehow responsible for the attempts, and that they had backfired and resulted in JFK's death. This SMELLS of a political reprisal and has LBJ's fingerprints all over it. This incident indicates that LBJ's cries of Castro did it are just as likely disinfo designed to implicate Bobby in his own brother's death as LBJ's actual beliefs. The man was nothing if not an ingenious xxxx when he chose to be.

My impression of the events is that Bobby stepped in with MM when she got a little possessive and became a threat to JFK's presidency, and that this relationship was not sexual, at least not at first. (There is no evidence Bobby was a womanizer; to Hoover's disgust, among others, he kept pretty busy with Ethel.) Not surprisingly, MM quickly grew dependent on Bobby's compassion. The relationship may have become sexual at this point. Ultimately, Bobby had to cut her off. Since she committed suicide within a short period after this, many blamed Bobby, whether or not he was on the scene. The idea that he actually had her murdered was developed over a number of years, and is, in my opinion, a disgusting lie, similar in intent and content to the rumors that Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain.

Tim, Noguchi explains the absence of pills in her stomach, claiming she died over several hours and her body had the time to digest the capsules. Secondly, within the left, there has been a consistant cry of what if? when thinking about life if the Kennedys had not been killed. There is a sense among many that America would be a better place today if they hadn't been murdered. As a result, almost since their deaths there has been a tremendous backlash against them, sponsored by the Republican Party, which has sought to demonize the Kennedys, and emphasize their failings, referring to JFK's love life as a security risk, and painting Bobby as both the bloodthirsty ringleader of the Castro attempts, and the calculated killer of Monroe. It's unbelieivably naive of you if you don't see the political motivation behind these "second assassinations of JFK and RFK," which reached their peak during the reign of Richard Nixon, and have been continued by the likes of Hersh and Russo. I'm concerned this anti-Kennedy-itis has somehow infected you; your interest in who killed JFK seems directly proportional to how much of the motive can be linked to some awful deed by Bobby. The likelihood that JFK was killed for revenge for something Bobby did that was GOOD, like declaring war on the mob, just doesn't seem to catch your fancy. Or am I being unfair? I suppose after Lincoln was killed the Dems tried to find ways to blame him for it, saying it was because he'd brutally abused the South, or that he'd been a tyrant. While that may be the way of history, I'd like to think we can rise above it.

A careful analysis of the various films shows that the limo slowed down, but did not stop, after the first shot was fired and Greer stupidly turned around to see what was going on. Like most drivers who turn around, he simply took his foot off the gas, and even briefly braked. At the explosion of Kennedy's head, the motorcyclists on his right side panicked and slammed on their brakes. This may have caused others in the motorcade to slam on their brakes, like in a traffic jam. But the limo never came to a complete stop. If I remember right, Greer admitted to Sibert and O'Neil that he slowed down and turned around but later changed his story after the WC was formed. Obviously the SS had entered the CYA zone.

OK guys, get prepared to get pissed off, but after having read Kenneth Rahn's site about the neutron activation analysis, and concluding he was Rahng, I found myself convinced on one point that he made with the help of Larry Sturdivan, and that's that the Tague fragment most likely came from the missing lead of the bullet hitting Kennedy in the head at 313. The trajectory to the cut in the curb by Tague back to Kennedy at 313 passes right between the trajectory of the nose and tail of the bullet onto the front windshield from Kennedy, and is only a few inches higher. Sturdivan did the math and showed that the distance traveled was consistant with the drop expected of an exiting fragment. We should remember that the curb cut revealed only lead, and no copper, indicating that whatever made the cut was unjacketed and probably a fragment. Of course, this means the fatal head shot came from the TSBD, which some people refuse to accept, despite the numerous witnesses and the ballistic evidence. That doesn't mean a shot wasn't fired from elsewhere. As stated earlier on this thread, I believe the neck shot came from the Dal-Tex.

dgh:02 ahh, conspiracy is such a ""BROAD"" subject, isn't it? How about: create LHO as the sole, whacked out LONE assassin-patsy perhaps? That goes back to the Single Bullet Theory, doesn't it? Anyway, when someone get's up to speed around here regarding optical film printing and motion picture compositing, well -- till then, I/we will just plug along waiting for the first opportunity to do a little film forensics Hi GaryM, how are ya? Great NAB this year David <{POST_SNAPBACK}> David, I must confess ignorance. What the heck are all your references to Gary M about? Are you accusing me of being Gary Mack? Or of Gary Mack lurking on this Forum? As for the SBT, I believe it's possible there was one bullet that hit Kennedy and Connally at frame 224. I also believe the Zapruder film reveals Connally to be out of position for this bullet to have come from the sniper's nest, and that it most logically came from the roof of the Dal-Tex. As I've said, why fake or alter evidence to show a conspiracy? I really don't understand the claims for alteration, of the autopsy photos or the Zapruder film, at all, except as an easy way out for those unwilling to really look at the evidence. I have stared at the photographs, the x-rays, and the Zapruder film, until they finally made sense to me. And they tell a story of more than one shooter from behind. When one studies the earwitness testimony, there is additional evidence for a shot or loud noise from somewhere west of the TSBD, but further back from Elm than the stockade fence. I believe I could beat Bugliosi in a court of law with this evidence. I am that certain. And yet, you'd wish for me to spend my time studying film alteration techniques so you can convince me that a conspiracy occurred, but that it was covered up. Sorry, but I would consider that a waste of time. Please read my seminar and we can discuss that, if you think I'm wrong.

On another thread, we've discussed this aplenty. Nancy swears by the Secret Agenda and Silent Coup scenarios and I think they're bunkum. Nixon was shot with his own gun, the CIA wouldn't save him from himself, and he took his revenge on Helms (who wasn't terribly unhappy as Ambassador to Iran, by the way) and the CIA, via his pit-bull Schlesinger, and his lap-dog, Colby. I'm not sure Nixon's "clean-up" wasn't justified, but his motivations seem more personal than professional. The secretary at the DNC, Ida Wells, who was accused of running a call-girl ring in the Colodny book and subsequently by Liddy, tried to sue Liddy. I believe it was Ron Ecker who pointed out that she lost her case not because anyone believed Liddy's story, but because she couldn't prove malice, and couldn't prove that there was sufficient reason for Liddy to doubt his story. A quick read through the updated Will, which includes an afterword on this theory, reveals that Liddy is obsessed with his hatred for Dean, as he once was with his hatred for Magruder. It's logical to assume that this has affected his judgment. He now believes that Magruder and Hunt et al are all in cahoots with Dean, covering up the real reason for the Watergate burglary. This is a bit paranoid. I don't believe Colson has ever denied Magruder's statements that the pressure came from him and was related to the Hughes situation. I'm disappointed in Liddy; after reading Will for the first time, I had respect for the man--he broke the law for what he believed was a just cause and was willing to pay the price. Now I find him a bit pathetic--searching for scapegoats among those equally disgraced by the just fall of Richard Nixon. By the way, John, you're way off to think that Nixon hated Hughes. He was a bit scared of him, but courted him and treated him like royalty, calling him on his birthday etc. He even assigned his hit-man Colson the job of finding Hughes a worthy representative in Washington once Hughes cut Maheu and O'Brien adrift. (current Senator Bob Bennett, who became Hunt's employer in the process.) I wonder if current Senators Bennett, Specter, Kennedy, and Christopher Dodd ever sit around and discuss what really happened back in the sixites and seventies. Something tells me it's the great unspoken.

from ajweberman's site Nodule 19: The HSCA reported that on October 4, 1977, "an anonymous informant named Fred [Fred Claasen ] called the HSCA several times and indicated a close relationship with the late JOHN V. MARTINO. Fred said that MARTINO told him he 'worked for the CIA,' and that President Kennedy was killed by anti-Castro Cubans. MARTINO said the assassins knew the motorcade route before they went to Dallas." [HSCA Memo Fonzi to Fenton 10.4.77] Author Tony Summers quoted Fred Claasen as having said: "MARTINO said OSWALD wasn't the hit man. He told me 'The anti-Castro types put OSWALD together...OSWALD didn't know who he was working for...He was there to meet his contact at the Texas Theater [the movie house where he was arrested]...They were to meet OSWALD in the theater and get him out of the country then eliminate him. OSWALD made a mistake. There was no way we could get to him. They had Ruby kill him." Steve Thomas <{POST_SNAPBACK}> While Martino almost certainly was involved, and while Claasen probably had some insight into Martino's involvement, the comment about the Texas Theater strikes me as incorrect. (Claasen is probably just guessing.) The Texas Theater is not on a direct line between Oswald's rooming house and the Tippitt shooting site, but would be the logical place to run to should one desire to get off the street. Jack Ruby's apartment, on the other hand, WAS another half a mile or so further along the route between the rooming house and the Tippitt site. It could very well be that that's where Oswald was headed.

Actually, one of the early CTs, Vince Salandria, came to the conclusion that all the crappy evidence and bogus drawings were designed to let the educated liberals of America KNOW there had been a conspiracy. To his thinking, the evil powers that be WANTED the left to know there'd been a coup, in order to show them how helpless they were and break their spirits.

Tim, before you get too far along on this whole thing, I suggest you read Noguchi's book Coroner and Daryl Gates' book Chief. Both of them go into detail about the investigations into Monroe's death. Gates, while insisting it was a suicide, throws in the juicy tidbit that the LAPD had spies at LAX and that Bobby Kennedy was indeed in town on the night of MM's death. A book on Peter Lawford by his widow also gets into it a bit, and her version as I remember was that MM called Peter and passed out on the phone, and he was too scared to get involved so he called his agent, who called Marilyn's psychiatrist, who called Marilyn's housekeeper, who saw the light on in MM's room and interpreted that that meant she was okay, or something like that. Evidently, Lawford was guilt-ridden about his not rushing immediately to check on her himself, since he was concerned about the negative publicity it might make for the Kennedys, and this ate at him for his remaining days. MM was a deeply self-destructive woman. To my way of thinking, believing she was murdered is akin to thinking Kurt Cobain was murdered. Just as everyone who believes Kurt was murdered seems to have some grudge against Courtney Love, everyone who believes Marilyn was murdered seems to have some grudge against or a resentment of the Kennedys.

Actually, the WC DID say the first shot would be the best, and believed that the first shot was indeed the single-bullet shot. This went against the testimony of the Connallys, who swore Kennedy was hit by the first shot, and that Connally was turning when he was hit by the second shot. CBS, The HSCA and the current Posner crowd have all decided there was a first shot miss, and that the single-bullet shot was the second shot. The HSCA, amazingly, to get their shots to match the sounds on the dictabelt, found that the miss was at 160 and the single-bullet shot was at 190, both by Oswald, which means he took two shots within 1 and 2/3 seconds, with the second one hitting the target. This is idiotic. Expert marksman hired by the HSCA couldn't replicate this shooting, although they did find they could chamber the bullet and pull the trigger in that amount of time. The HSCA ruled then that Oswald must have accomplished this shot through "point-aiming," meaning pulling the trigger while aiming in a general direction without spotting the target in the site. This is equally idiotic. What are the chances of hitting a moving target under such circumstances? Why not take an extra second and aim? Ridiculous! The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files re-enactment using lasers was not a waste of time, and was actually quite helpful to those who believe there was a conspiracy. For the show demonstrated that the only way DiMaio could get the wounds to line up with the TSBD was to have the dummy lean forward. Dale Myers' cartoon demonstrated essentially this same thing, only he lifted the wound to the position of the Rydberg drawing so he could say it all added up. If one were to sit the dummy upright where do you suppose a backwards projection connecting Connally's back wound to Kennedy's throat wound ends up? That's right. The roof of the Dal-Tex. I said it in my seminar and I'll say it till I'm blue in the face: the autopsy photos and the Zapruder film are concrete proof of a conspiracy. To believe they have been faked is to believe the government has perversely faked the evidence for a conspiracy. It is the interpretations by government experts and doctors that are questionable.

Jim, in trying to understand Ruby's obsessive concern that a malevolent force was out to get the Jews, and his worry that his actions had somehow fed into it, I went back and read the testimony of Bernard Weissman, who'd purchased the full-page ads calling Kennedy a traitor on the day of the assassination. When one reads this testimony one finds that Weissman was the lone Jew in a circle of Birchers, and that they'd received backing from H.L. Hunt (as I remember) among others. I believe it's reasonable to assume that Ruby was worried that the same men who pressured him into killing Oswald had also pressured Weissman into putting his name on the ad. This would explain his fear that Jews were being used as scapegoats and that some retaliation was planned. Dimestore psychology, for sure. But it makes more sense than assuming Ruby's guilt about killing Oswald, which many considered a brave act, would by itself have been the trigger.

James, did your friend tell you when he bought these photos? Before Life Magazine bought the rights for the backyard photos from Marina, someone had already sold a number of photos, including the backyard photo which made Life's cover, to the Detroit Free Press. If your friend bought the photos in this same time frame, then maybe we can uncover who in the DPD was selling evidence, including the two missing negatives.

Regarding the bomb plot, are you saying there was no trial? If so, then how are we supposed to know that these men weren't arrested simply to pressure Castro into releasing the BOP prisoners? Where is the evidence? And why didn't Goldwater jump on this in 64? When I head back home, I'll look back through Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo to see if it was a campaign issue in 64... If it wasn't mentioned back then, I'm afraid I'll be forced to conclude it was only a discredited rumor that someone dug up years later. As far as the baby murderer, in Marita Lorenz's book she says she went back to kill Castro thinking he'd made her have an abortion, but discovered he was raising her son in Cuba. (The rape and abortion story was pushed in the U.S. press and can be found on the Cuban Archives website.) She says she went back to Cuba years later and met her son, who was a doctor. Her story is so squirrelly I'm not sure what to believe. In any case, there is no reason to believe that Castro was behind an abortion. If I remember right, Anthony Summers says it was June Cobb who was somehow behind the abortion, and that this same June Cobb was somehow involved in the Silvia Duran/Oswald stories in Mexico. Does anyone remember the connection? I feel naked without my library.

One thing I noticed when I was there in November was that there were fire escapes from the roof down the North side of the building onto a lower roof. I was wondering if anyone has ever tracked whether there were fire escapes from this roof to the East. If so, someone could have climbed down on the far side without being seen. Of course there was a mysterious character discovered on the INSIDE of the building: Jim Braden.

Since David Healy insists on debating me on this point, I've created this thread so our discussion will no longer side-track the discussion between lone-nutters and conspiracists on Mel's thread. Although I don't worship in the temple of expertise, I have respect for those who know of what they speak. For example, I trust professional snipers as to the difficulty of the purported shots from the sniper's nest (apparently quite difficult, but not impossible). Similarly, I trust film-makers as to the ability of the government in 1963 to add images into the Zapruder film. If those who believe the film was altered can get a number of prominent film-makers, or film-editors, or special effects men, who were working in 1963 and remember the technology available, to say that they believe the film was altered, I'll probably believe them. I KNOW the FBI reversed the frames in the Warren Report. I know this was probably not a mistake. But, if anything, this argues to the film's bona fides. Why deliberately misrepresent images which you've already altered, or have the ability to alter? As I've stated, I DON'T BELIEVE the Zapruder film shows that Oswald acted alone. Why would someone alter something to show what they are trying to cover-up? Probably half the people who believed the Warren Report, and then came to doubt it, did so after viewing the Zapruder film. Could a government so ingenious when it came to altering the film, be so stupid as to their perception of what the film shows? To me this whole debate is a major distraction from the truth: the Zapruder film and the autopsy photos show convincing evidence for a conspiracy.