Pat Speer

Hemmings just has all the answers, doesn't he? Call me somewhat skeptical. As for the Johnson attempt on Duvalier, let's recall that de Mohrenschildt visited the U.S. military in April 63 asking them to overthrow his boss Duvalier. Any known connection between de Mohrenschildt and Johnson?

I noticed that both your Duran look-alike and Big chin man look-alike in Dealey Plaza appear several years older, and have their hair cut shorter, than in your training camp photos. Are your training camp photos from 60-61, and could this represent normal aging? Or are the photos taken too close together in time to account for the apparent differences in age? What are the dates of the photos?

Mel, I read the Moldea book, and while I think it's possible he's right about a lot of stuff, he doesn't come close to explaining how Sirhan could shoot Kennedy point blank from BEHIND in front of numerous witnesses, and have no one see it. He also makes an ENORMOUS leap at the end of the book; once he concludes that Sirhan is a xxxx, he jumps to the conclusion that Sirhan acted alone, ignoring the equal or greater likelihood that Sirhan was lying in order to protect himself or his family. After all, at this point, Sirhan's quickest route to getting released would be to admit he acted alone for political reasons, claim he now sees the error of his ways, and become the poster boy for mid-east peace. That he hasn't done this, and has been kept isolated as a possible terrorist since 9/11, is indicative that either he IS a current supporter of terrorism, or that he simply doesn't remember what happened. While it's pefectly possible the guy just got drunk one night and decided to kill someone famous, it's equally likely someone put him up to it. Your efforts to stifle dissent sound suspiciously like the workings of a well-intentioned, but ultimately wrong individual, a la former WC counsel David Belin. Your choosing to accept the words of Serrano after she came under pressure from the detectives over Serrano's original words or her words once she escaped the pressure of the detectives, reveals your bias. There's just a stank about both Kennedy assassinations that isn't there in most homicides. Even with a lack of absolute proof, which rarely comes in a homicide of this size and scope, it's reasonable and correct to suspect a conspiracy.

Yeah, that evil Barney Frank just pushed the Administration of George HW Bush all over the place. They were helpless to defend this country against the man they privately referred to as "Barney Fag.." Right. Posner pisses me off so much he makes me want to hiss... Always looking for a way to blame the liberals. You'd think Ted Kennedy had killed his girlfriend or something...

As I'm sure you well know, the Dallas doctors intiially thought the neck wound was an entrance wound. Since the FBI stuck to their story for as long as possible that the back bullet fell out, they theorized in their January report that a fragment from the head wound had created an exit at the throat. They weren't exactly studying the Zapruder film, except to create a timeline for the shots. The FBI had also intially refused to read the autopsy report, and continues to refuse to study the autopsy photos. As far as I know, no FBI investigator has ever analyzed the autopsy photos. Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyhow, this story of a fragment coming down the neck was leaked by the FBI to a number of sources, including the Journal of the American Medical Association in January 1964. Clearly, Rankin, who had the autopsy report, was confused by the FBI report of a fragment coming out the throat, and the autopsy report in which Humes decided the bullet creating the back wound had come out the throat, and merged the two together in his mind.. After all, the trajectory wouldn't matter if the fragment had come from the head, as that bullet had exploded in different directions. I believe a number of the Dallas doctors, modifying their early statements that the neck wound was an entrance, and having never seen the Zapruder film, where Kennedy reaches towards his neck long before the fatal head wound, also embraced the fragment theory. When I first read about this theory in Six Seconds in Dallas, it helped convince me that what at that point for me was only half-baked conjecture, that an object had passed down Kennedy's neck, was possible. After all, all the doctors who inspected Kennedy's neck in Dallas seemed to think an object had passed down his neck. Only in my theory, as discussed in my seminar on this website, it is a bullet.

Pat, I remember this differently, at least insofar as it is covered in The Haldeman Diaries. Haldeman wrote that LBJ warned Nixon that if he went public with so and so, then LBJ would go public with - and here there was an editorial insertion that said, as I recall, "deleted for reasons of national security." I'll have to try to find the passage again, but I remember being struck by the fact that someone (presumably at the CIA which has been given the right to read books like Haldeman's before they're published to delete anything that the people have no right to know about) openly deleted from Haldeman's book what LBJ had threatened to reveal. Ron <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You're right, Ron, and in Stone's Nixon he has Haldeman mumble something into Ehrlichman's ear. This country still isn''t ready to face up to Nixon's guilt. I remember reading a review of Anthony Summers' book on Nixon that covers this, and it was all the reviewer could talk about, saying that it was absolutely preposterous. Never mind that Johnson and Rusk discuss Nixon's likely interference in their memoirs, and that Califano says LBJ was convinced, and that Clifford says he himself was convinced, or that Ms. Chennault and Thieu felt betrayed by Nixon and talked about it afterwards. It is sad, of course, that the CIA or whoever would envoke National Security over something so obviously political. The American people need to be told the truth so this kind of thing won't happen again. Wait a sec, it already has...

1. Helms testified that he and Fitzgerald made a decision not to involve Robert Kennedy in the Amlash operation. They clearly were afraid he'd shut it down. So, unless you drank the kool-aid and believe Helms was protecting the memory of RFK many years after his death, at an enormous cost to his own memory (using Kennedy's name without his permission in order to arrange a murder), Fitzgerald lied. 2. Castro had survived many attempts on his life. Even if he was aware of Cubela, he would have had no reason to think killing Kennedy would change a thing. Kennedy was seen as a more reasonable man than LBJ, and there was that back channel. Castro would have almost certainly felt there was time to make nice with Kennedy before the Cubela plots could get to him. 3. The Artime-led second invasion was almost positively a ruse by the U.S. to keep the anti-Castro forces out of the U.S., while we figured out what to do with them. It should be remembered here that one of the main reasons Kennedy went along with the Bay of Pigs was because he was afraid what would happen if he called it off. The anti-Castro forces were a domestic problem, and better to have them in Nicaragua or Guatemala then on U.S. soil. If McCone, Bundy, McNamara and the JCS were all gung-ho why didn't they go ahead and push it once LBJ came rushing in? No way was LBJ so strong-willed on Foreign Relations that he would make the decision to retreat from agression against Cuba, whilst simultaneouslly upping the ante in Vietnam. Remember, he was close to Thomas Mann, the father of all Castro did it bureaucrats. It just makes no sense that LBJ would back off from Cuba purely on his own. It's obvious to me that the CIA et al had grown sick of the anti-Castro forces, and were hoping they'd just disappear. I believe the anti-Castro forces knew this to be true. There's your motive. They were the ones who had nothing to lose.

I seem to remember reading some time ago that the so-called pool of blood was most logically soda pop--Cherry Nehi, or Cherry Crush... This made sense to me at the time. Was not the pool by the bench precisely where the black couple was seen drinking soda pop? And didn't Marilyn Sitzman say they broke one of the bottles? Or am I mixed up?

I've read Mrs. Paine's Garage, and I'm pretty sure that's where I read a response by Ruth to the "we all know" statement. And the statement refers to Marina. Evidently, it was Michael Paine's opinion, (as well as the de Mohrenschildts), that Marina was an impossible bitch, who quite possibly had driven poor Lee to distraction.

I just don't understand how Castro, assuming Cubela was a double and told him of Futzgerald's lie, would think he'd be better off with LBJ. I also fail to understand how Castro could be sure that the actions of the CIA accurately reflected the wishes of the President. If the Cuban exiles were as infiltrated as most believe, he would certainly have known better. Castro hasn't survived as long as he has by being that reckless. Some madman like Trujillo or Duvalier, maybe, but Castro, no way, Jose.

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same incident or not, Nancy, but I'm pretty sure you're misreading this incident to make Nixon look like the good guy. He was anything but. This is what I've gathered from the many books I've read. When word got out about Nixon's use of bugs, Nixon was desperate to point the finger at other Presidents who'd used wiretaps. I believe he first asked Connally to ask LBJ to come forward and admit that he'd bugged people too, but Connally refused. He then asked Haldeman to make the approach (or was it Ehrlichman?). Anyhow, LBJ told them to buzz off, and that if Nixon went public with stories about his bugging people he'd tell the public the REAL story, which was that LBJ had bugged Nixon himself for National Security reasons because he suspected Nixon was interfering with the 1968 Peace Talks in order to help himself get elected. If one reads the memoirs of LBJ, Dean Rusk and Clark Clifford, they all agree that LBJ had surveillance put on some of Nixon's people, Mitchell and Agnew to be precise, due to his suspicions they were sending messages through a a woman named Anna Chenault to President Thieu of South Vietnam, and telling Thieu that if he refused to go to the peace talks he'd get a better deal once Nixon was elected. This is called TREASON by the way. Clifford wrote that the evidence was convincing. Anyhow, LBJ aide Califano recalled that right before the election LBJ became sure of his suspicions and begged Humphrey to make the evidence public, but that Humphrey wanted to win without resorting to such ugliness. I vaguely recall that in recent years, someone, probably Anthony Summers, tracked down Ms. Chennault and she confirmed the whole story. Anyhow, a lot of LBJ's bitterness in his final years apparently came from the knowledge that Tricky Dick had stabbed him in the back, but that there was nothing he could do about it. This leads me to suspect that Nixon had something on LBJ as well--could it be knowledge of the Kennedy assassination? Just thinking out loud. Anyhow, the papers of the South Vietnamese Government were released in a book called The Palace Files and these papers revealed that Nixon and Kissinger's peace proposals in 1974 were virtually identical to Harriman and Johnson's peace proposals in 1968. Thus, Nixon extended the war by five years for his own political purposes. The man was a crook and a traitor.

You're right in that I can not presume to understand Philbrick's true intentions. My memory is that he didn't really accuse the Paines of involvement in the assassination, but was just using Michael's family to paint Oswald as communist-influenced, when neither Michael nor Ruth had any communist ties whatsoever. It struck me as disingenuous, but you're correct that I can not know his heart. Michael's father was a militant Trotskyite, so he wouldn't have been playing footsie with Khruschev or Castro. On page 54 Philbrick states "The Communist use of the Paine family is a tragic reminder that the seeds of Marxism bear evil fruit." He then recounts how George Paine and his son George Jr. sponsored many communist-front activities. He mentions the naivete of Michael and Ruth, and says "although the record of communism throughout the world shows a continuing pattern of murder, assassination and violence, Mrs. Paine told the FBI that she did not think Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist "would do a violent thing such as killing an individual." Philbrick makes it clear in his comments that in his opinion all Marxists are communists, and all communists are in favor of violent political action. He doesn't seem to have processed that most of the assassinations between WWI and 1973 were sponsored by capitalists. The man is simply obsessed with his "better dead than red" mentality. On page 250, Philbrick mentions a communist attempt to infiltrate the ACLU...interesting in that Michael Paine took Oswald to his first ACLU meeting. On page 261, Philbrick mentions George L. Paine as a sponsor for the (anti-Marshall Plan) World Peace Conference.

Tim, while the rest of your post is an effective defense of your suspicions of communist involvement, your line about "scintilla" almost made me scream. When one looks over the historical record, one encounters Hoover, Specter, Belin, Posner, etc. using this line over and over, quoting each other, winking at each other, rolling around together in a field of poppies. The use of the word scintilla has become a code of sorts for "I refuse to think about what I don't want to think about and so I'm just gonna stomp my feet and insist there's no evidence to contradict what I want to believe." While you could very well be right about Castro--I think you're wrong--but you could be right--you should at least acknowledge that Oswald's getting killed while in police custody in LBJ's home state of Texas is many times more suspicious than Kostikov knowing Cubela, who was, after all, an official of a country his country had placed under protection. You should also acknowledge that LBJ's motive in killing Kennedy was many times stronger than Castro's motive; Castro, after all, had reason to think things were getting better, while LBJ, due to the brewing Bobby Baker scandal and Bobby Kennedy's lock on the Justice Department, could only think things were getting worse.

This is the kind of thing that gets us into trouble. Armstrongs says "knowingly," as if he has any way of knowing Robert's thoughts. The more likely situation is that Robert remembered that Oswald watched the show, and incorrectly remembered him watching it during a certain time period. The "re-runs" he remembers Lee watching were probably the first runs. Sometimes we forget that most people don't use fact-checkers when they write their memoirs, or when being interviewed on their own life. It is the arrogance of the human species that we prefer to believe our memories are solid, when they are really more like putty.

I think I know what this is about. As Robert Oswald has discussed, LHO's favorite TV show was "I Led Three Lives," based on Philbrick's real-life exploits of infiltrating various communist circles. This is intriguing to say the least. Anyhow, this led me to track down a copy of the book about a year ago and see if there were any parallels between Philbrick's undercover work for the FBI and Oswald's mysterious activities. And what I found blew my mind, for about a day. For one of the circles Philbrick infiltrated included Michael Paine's father. This led me to suspect that Oswald, in his emulation of Philbrick, maneuvered himself into close association with the Paines, in hopes of uncovering a spy ring. Like I said, this lasted about a day. I then realized that the book I was reading had been updated after the assassination to include the material on the Paines, and that Philbrick was deliberately implying through Michael Paine's association with Oswald that Communist forces were somehow behind the assassination. Where I went looking for clues I found only half-truths with a clear agenda. Philbrick was a propagandist.

This is typical of the problems inherent in Buchanan's book. I really wish he'd updated and corrected some of this stuff after the Warren Report came out and pointed out his errors. One: he incorrectly thinks that the TSBD was some sort of government operation and that Oswald's employment there signifies government awareness of his activities. Two: he assumes that the DPD had extensive files on Oswald before the assassination, when Oswald was politically inactive while living in Dallas and this would have been unlikely. In short, he lets his anti-American bias fill in the blanks a little too often. His political analysis is good most of the time, such as when he discusses the lack of motive on the part of the communists, but his assumptions of Oswald's victimization at the hands of an oppressive government is not backed up by the facts. It seems he's identifying too much with Oswald.

The Nixon book by Stone is excellent. It includes the script with footnotes plus twenty or so essays by the likes of Daniel Schorr, John Dean, and Howard Hunt. Anyone who believes that poor tricky Dick was set-up should put down their copy of Silent Coup or Secret Agenda and read these essays. The Schorr essay is particularly good.

Afer Jim Root came forward with the information that Karemessines had worked with Walker I pulled out every book I had on the CIA and read every word on Karemessines. And the consensus seemed to be that he was very professional and very cautious, and that he was fiercely loyal to Helms. This led me to doubt that he'd have anything to do with the Kennedy Assassination, outside of helping Helms keep the lid on info that was damaging to the CIA. As I remember it, both Karemessines and Phillips were against track II in Chile, and were quite upset with Nixon and Kissinger for putting the CIA in such a difficult predicament. John, perhaps you can ask Joe Trento to fill us in on the memo Angleton showed him. I was under the impression it was from Angleton to Helms, and here you mention that Groden and Livingstone have written that it was from Karemessines... Perhaps Trento can clear this up.

I found that strange at one point, but somewhere in the 26 volumes I came across the testimony of Tippitt's superior. It's been awhile, and I can't remember the officer's name, but I'm almost certain he testified that Tippitt was ordered to patrol that general area. Although the bulk of DPD was merging onto the crime scene, they still kept a few out on the streets elsewhere. Tippitt was just unlucky. In the words of his killer, who I believe was Oswald, he was a "poor dumb cop."

Well, then I guess we're not as far apart as I thought. I think Specter, Ford, Humes, Boswell, etc. all told little lies and made minor misrepresentations for political purposes, not realizing they were covering-up a conspiracy. I think Baden, Guinn, Canning etc, took their moment in the sun before the HSCA to try and show that those darned conspiracy buffs were wrong, and inadvertently buried the truth. The only individuals involved in the investigations I don't trust are Hoover and Warren; I don't believe either one of them would have allowed the WC to come down with a conspiracy verdict. That both of them seem to have adopted this attitude reflects back on LBJ, I believe.

I've recently come across a book called "Legacy of an Assassination" that came out in May 1964, before the Warren Report, and its thesis is a mixed-one. It claims that Kennedy was a traitor AND the Russians killed him. Why they would kill a man supposedly sympathetic to their cause I haven't yet uncovered. Perhaps the author Norbert Murray was onto the Trento theory years ahead of anyone else. In the back of the book, he lets us in on a secret, however, when he includes both a list of books which will help one understand the assassination and pictures of candidates with the proper attitude towards the Russians. Among the books is Robert Welch's The Politician, in which he says Ike was a Russian sympathizer. The two politicians he endorses are Goldwater and Nixon. I consider Buchanan's book well-intentioned but not particularly well-informed. Murray's book is neither.

Bradlee's memoirs were published in 1995. The story of Bradlee and Angleton searching for the diary became public in March, 1976. This was as a result of James Truitt giving an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Meyer was having an affair with John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated. He also claimed that Meyer had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me". It was only at this point that Bradlee admitted that he had searched for the diary (he lied about this incident when he gave evidence at Crump's trial). James Truitt, who had divorced Anne by this stage, knew a great deal about this case. He was very close to Mary (they were probably lovers). He had also been working for the CIA while at the Washington Post (part of Operation Mockingbird). James Truitt committed suicide in 1981. His widow, Evelyn Patterson Truitt, claimed that a CIA agent, Herbert Burrows, stole all his private papers soon after his death. He was not the last person to die. Leo Damore, a journalist who found out about the case while researching his book, Senatorial Privilege : The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up, began writing a book about Meyer's death. Damore claimed that a figure close to the CIA had told him that Mary's death had been a professional "hit". Damore committed suicide in October 1995. His book was never published. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> While Truitt's death, as with so many, seems suspicious, I stand by my belief that if Bradlee had been involved, he would have left the death of Mary Meyer and his discovery of Angleton out of his memoirs. Those interested in his memoirs were mostly interested in his take on Watergate; the Meyer story was totally secondary. The Truitt story in the Enquirer, as interesting as it was, had about as much credibility to historians as the Elvis is still alive stories have to music fans, without Bradlee's confirmation. I think Bradlee says in his book he first confirmed the story to the Post at the time of the Truitt article, but only wrote about it himself in his memoirs. We're just on different sides of the fence when it comes to a GRAND conspiracy. While I tend to think one is unlikely, and tend to believe that favors were called in, mistakes were made and asses were covered, in both the Warren Commission and the HSCA, you seem to believe that such a thing could only happen if some force were orchestrating the whole thing. Everything I've learned in life tells me different. Nobody in the government wants to be the trouble-maker, and the same is largely true of the media. While the good stories might come from raking the muck, the good paying gigs come from playing ball and never doing or saying anything that will embarrass your corporate sponsor. While much of the HSCA investigation was a mess, I can't help but respect Robert Blakey on at least one level. He knew, in his gut, that Ruby's connection to the mob was not a coincidence. The dicta-belt recordings merely confirmed what he already believed. And he forced this view upon the HSCA. This took real courage, as Michael Baden of the medical panel, along with Vincent Guinn, and Thomas Canning, et al, had all bent over backwards to twist their evidence to point towards a single-shooter. And yet so many in the research community accuse Blakey of being a part of some conspiracy to keep the CIA out of his investigation, over-looking his recent letter on Joannides. If it weren't for Blakey, I don't think the U.S. Government would have ever acknowledged there was any evidence for a conspiracy. It's just too threatening to our deluded self-image.

I think you have it a little backwards. Nixon's fall was set in place by McCord's meetings with Sirica months before. McCord was former CIA, as was Hunt, and the other burglars. Nixon blamed Helms for not shutting down the Watergate Investigation in the beginning. He fired Helms and replaced him with his stooge Schlesinger. Schlesinger thereupon set about doing Nixon's dirty work, firing a lot of old-timers and having the family jewels compiled into a single report. It's unthinkable to me that Nixon himself was not given a copy of this report. Nixon was forced out in August 74. The jewels became public knowledge a few months later. While Colby has often been blamed for this, I believe there is reason to suspect that Nixon himself was behind the leaks to Hersh, etc. The man was that petty. I believe Nixon destroyed the CIA (temporarily) rather than let it get the best of him. In his books Nixon talks about how horrible it was that the CIA was investigated by the Church Committee, etc, but that's probably just PR. I think there's every reason to believe the Church Committee investigation was Nixon's revenge for Watergate.

Corrected my original post...it was Ed Reid not Ed Becker!