Pat Speer

The feeling among the acoustics proponents is that it is locked in--that they can't throw out when and where the shots were recorded without throwing out the value of the recording. I would like to see them try. It is 100% clear McLain was not where he needed to be to record the shots as proposed. Those holding onto that possibility engage in self-deception--"Well, maybe McLain slowed down his bike and cruised through the plaza at 4 mph without anyone noticing, etc." It's desperate.

The films are consistent and prove McLain was nowhere near where the "stats" needed him to be. Now, if someone wants to propose the stats work without McLain being where they theorized he was when the shots were fired, they should go for it. But they don't. Instead, they rehash Thomas' stuff and pretend it's all good. The acoustics is pretty much a CT SBT.

The photo at right is not JFK. Groden has been scamming people about this for awhile. "Hey, I am publishing a previously unpublished JFK photo! Buy my book!" Only...it's not JFK.

Yes, this is fake. I wonder where it came from.

It might not be relevant, but context is everything. By 1963, the American public, of all stripes, had been inundated with stories and movies depicting good Quakers who would not harm a fly. It makes sense to me that whatever normal instincts the DPD had about the Paines--that they shouldn't be trusted--were put into the deep freeze once they realized they were Quakers. I mean, these were freakin' Quakers, for crying out loud. I had a similar response in my personal life. When my dad died in a different state, I had to go up and sort through his stuff, etc. At the time he was working as a property manager for a religious couple--I think Mennonites. In any event, they had his keys and could have stolen all sorts of stuff--cash, jewelry, electronics, etc. But they were super nice. And religious. So it never crossed my mind.

I seem to recall that Life Magazine came out on the morning of the 23rd, and took pictures of the Paines and Oswalds. I think there was something about them going to a hotel afterwards to negotiate a deal, exclusive rights or some such thing. So the Paines leaving on errands during the search may have been a euphemism. They were looking to cash in. Just spit-ballin'. Hopefully someone has a better recollection of the timeline...

Only adding to the oddness is that Frazier is purported to have told the DPD Oswald brought some curtain rods to work on the 22nd, and not one cop thought to check to see if any curtain rods were missing from the Paine's garage. I mean, why the heck not? The only "innocent" explanation is that they'd decided the pinko was dirty and had no interest in helping him with anything resembling an alibi.

FWIW, Nixon knew he was in deep doo-doo, and used Agnew as a bargaining chip. Essentially, it was agreed upon that Agnew would step aside for his overt corruption, and receive a handslap, in exchange for the Watergate investigators taking a slower course with Nixon. It had become clear that forcing Nixon out and leaving Agnew in power would have been awful for the country--as Agnew was kinda like a Sarah Palin, not someone anyone, including Nixon, actually trusted. This then left the congressional mucky-mucks--not the CIA--but the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Barry Goldwater--to craft an acceptable replacement. Ford was one of them. He got appointed, and this freed Ervin etc to go after Nixon without leaving Agnew in place and having to go through it all over again. (Much of this comes from Agnew himself--who felt he'd been railroaded out of town. From the evidence against him to later come out, he was probably lucky as heck, as he may very well have been headed towards prison if not for Nixon's deal.)

It's the same old argument, David. You make a gigantic assumption and then say it makes no sense for others to do other than you have assumed. The plotters may have wanted it to look like a plot. The investigators may have not wanted it to look like a plot. There may even have been a double-cross, as in "We want it to look like there were two shooters, agreed?" "Uh, no, I've changed my mind about that--we need people to think it was just this one looney, sorry." Problem solved. Over and over again. We don't know and will probably never know.

We should remember Vince to credit Harry Malcolm and Bart/DPUK whenever possible.

I believe Harrison's files were sold to Malcolm Blunt, and he gave them to Bart Kamp to put up on the DPUK site. I'm not sure if what you're looking for is there, but I remember watching some of the interview videos on DPUK.

Although I was two on 11-22-63 and remember the assassination weekend as a confusing blur, I had a similarly life-changing reaction during the 2000 election coverage. Florida had just been called for Gore. Someone asked Bush for a response. He smirked and said something about his having a feeling it was gonna go his way--I think he even mentioned his brother. I'd been a professional buyer and had learned how to read faces--it was clear to me the fix was in. I was rather blasé about politics at the time. But not after that. In no short order Bush handed out billions in tax cuts to the wealthy, spent billions fighting a country that didn't attack us, or anybody, and pushed the economy into economic collapse. I've never been the same.

Shortly after writing that chapter, I became Facebook friends with the writer David Cay Johnston, who'd had an article in Newsweek on a similar situation, on which Jim D and I vociferously agreed. The author David Heymann had made numerous claims about the Kennedy family in a series of books, which were clearly made up to sell books. He would write a book about RFK and claim some stuff, and then put out a book about Jackie that claimed some stuff, and then regurgitate this material, with new and improved claims about them having an affair, where his sources were all well-known gossips like Truman Capote, and very very dead. It was obvious he was just making it up. If he had notes from Capote at the time of the first book, he would have used them, instead of waiting 20 years or whatever. Even before this time, I'd had some exchanges with an historian named Jon Weiner, who'd written a book on plagiarism. He assured me that none of the top publishers did a lick of fact-checking--and that they considered the authors 100% responsible for the accuracy of the footnotes. So it's the Wild West. If you wanna print lies you just create a footnote saying you had a talk with someone who may or may not exist and may or may not have been dead at the time of the supposed interview. It doesn't matter. The publishers consider themselves protected by the footnote. The truth be damned.

Freedom of speech is one thing. Freedom to lie with the specific intent of injuring others with your lies is another. In this case, there was also an explicitly expressed profit motive. Fox is in deep doo-doo, and if they are not, then we're all in the crapper.

The point is that what Tucker practices is "journalism" not journalism. I once went to dinner with David Lifton after a movie screening of John Barbour's movie. The idea was that we could have a respectful conversation. In no time at all, a number of fanboys surrounded Lifton and demanded all his attention, which he was more than happy to provide. This left me and my friend at the other end of the table, chatting with a "journalist" who'd attended the screening. It turned out he was the guy who "broke" the "story" about Ted Cruz's dad's (actually non-existent) connections to Oswald. When I confronted him on this he agreed that there wasn't much there there, but defended his "scoop" on the grounds it got picked up by those pushing a certain political candidate, and could be used against another candidate. The "truth" of the story was immaterial--it could be used to help someone who's had nothing but help his whole freakin' life so therefore it was valuable. This kind of "journalism" should not be protected, and those victimized by such "journalism" should have recourse in the courts. And no, it isn't chilling. Far more chilling is when powerful interests use the courts to stifle dissent and truth through the use of NDA's, and the threat of counter-suit. I spent an evening once with a journalist who was nearly killed in a terrorist explosion she thought was sponsored by the CIA. She sued the government. The government in turn ruined her by running up unnecessary and excessive legal bills, and then convincing a judge she should cover the costs. This imbalance of power--and Murdoch has a lot more of it than anyone suing him--makes "justice" in this country a pipe dream. No tears for Rupert.

As a formerly active moderator, Mark, I remember that the vast majority of people claiming they were "banned" from this forum wore it as a badge of honor, and took their banishment elsewhere where next to no one gave a crap. I remember as well that the reality was often that they were in fact suspended temporarily, and asked to leave the sandbox for awhile, or god forbid, have their posts approved before publishing as they are in other sandboxes. Unaccustomed to being chastised by mom or moderator, they then sulked and brooded only to send the occasional threatening email to the moderators, demanding their free speech rights, in what was once John Simkin's invite-only living room, and was never designed as a place where people can spew on and abuse others about anything. I remember for example a long heated debate with a supposedly learned person who claimed ALL his posts should be published at the top of the JFK Assassination forum--even if they were about 9/11, the moon landings, or Watergate...because what HE had to say was so important no one interested in the JFK assassination should be allowed to avoid them. As stated in an earlier post, this, too, will blow over.

I discuss Kurtz on my website to demonstrate why this case has been such a mystery. A lot of what has passed as research has been questionable--or outright deception. in Kurtz's case he ended up grabbing for attention with outlandish claims supposedly backed up by interviews--that were almost certainly fabricated. As a consequence, everything he wrote should be tossed in the trash, and would be tossed in the trash by CTs if they didn't just find Kurtz's bs so enticing. It's like when someone says something you want to believe, and you say "maybe", when his eyes are glazed and he's drooling, and he's got crap dripping down his leg. Walk away.

And yet a billion-dollar loss and some heads on a stick to assure shareholders it doesn't happen again might lead to a new direction--one spun to the right but not to outright lies. Remember Glenn Beck? Lou Dobbs? Bill O'Reilly? Roger Ailes? They are living (and dead) proof that that the brand is more important than the brand-carrier, and that Tucker could be dumped any minute. No one really cares about him. He has always been a crap "journalist" and his trying to save himself by re-inventing Jan 6 is a PR disaster that will almost certainly backfire. I mean, can you imagine, say, Chet Huntley, spending night after night replaying My Lai footage to prove not EVERY child was murdered, and that those doing the murdering didn't all have scowls on their faces! Paging Mr. Pulitzer!

A quick note. Context is everything. The history of this forum is littered with posts from people insistent on a particular point--the Jews did it, the black warehouse workers did it, JFK, LBJ, Clinton et al were perverts and we can only serve history by discussing in detail their each and every perversion, Watergate was about controlling secret technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard, Pat Speer and others reluctant to acknowledge it was Oswald in the Altgens photo are CIA plants, etc. It is a magnet for obsessive minds, which quite frequently leads to increasingly unhealthy rants. And then moderation. And then cries of "my free speech is being suppressed by authoritarians!" Moderators are constantly under fire from those who see this place--designed as a discussion place on the JFK assassination--as their personal soapbox to scream out about the secret history only a few can see--or are even willing to contemplate. If you reach the point where you see the forum as a whole, and the bulk of its fellow members, as something you need to scream about, then just go. Leave. The forum will be no poorer minus your posts than it is the thousands of posts blaming Jews, NASA, perverts, etc that have historically clogged up its bandwidth. You can find some space on reddit or whatever to foment anger among your fellow-marginalized.

When Belin interviewed DPD crime scene chief Day in DC Day brought up that Belin had previously interviewed him in Dallas. This in itself is not surprising. A number of witnesses were interviewed in Dallas then brought before the commission in DC. But Day's was disappeared.

A lot of his correspondence re his FOIA cases are available at the Weisberg Archives website. I don't think they are in chronological order. But there's a heap of it. He does mention some of his FOIA cases in Post Mortem, mostly regarding bullet lead analysis.

No. She said he screamed like a stuck pig

Most of the WC documents released post 1964 came through the efforts of Harold Weisberg. He read Jackie's testimony and saw things like "reference to wounds delated" and said "I think we have a right to know what she said." So he sued the government. He won case after case, round after round, with Jim LeSar as his attorney. (6-5-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 5H178-181, with words deleted from the Warren Commission's transcript only to be re-discovered by Harold Weisberg and Mark Sobel presented in bold) “the car was very slow and there weren’t very many people around…I was looking to the left. I guess there was a noise, but it didn’t seem like any different noise really because there is so much noise, motorcycles and things. But then suddenly Governor Connally was yelling, “Oh, no, no, no”…I was looking this way, to the left, and I heard these terrible noises. You know. And my husband never made any sound. So I turned to the right. And all I remember is seeing my husband, he had this sort of quizzical look on his face, and his hand was up, it must have been his left hand. And just as I turned to look at him, I could see a piece of his skull sort of wedge-shaped, like that, and I remember that it was flesh colored with little ridges at the top. I remember thinking he just looked as if he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that. No blood or anything. And then he sort of did this (indicating), put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap. And then I just remember falling on him and saying, “Oh no, no, no,” I mean, “Oh my God, they have shot my husband.” And “I love you, Jack,” I remember I was shouting. And just being down in the car with his head in my lap. And it just seemed an eternity. You know, then, there were pictures later on of me climbing out the back. But I don't remember that at all." (When asked if she remembered Secret Service Agent Clint Hill's climbing onto the limo after she climbed out the back.) "I don't remember anything. I was just down like that. And finally I remember a voice behind me, or something, and then I remember the people in the front seat, or somebody, finally knew something was wrong, and a voice yelling, which must have been Mr. Hill, "Get to the hospital," or maybe it was Mr. Kellerman, in the front seat. But someone yelling. I was just down and holding him. I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on.” (When asked how many shots were fired) “Well there must have been two because the one that made me turn around was Governor Connally yelling. And it used to confuse me because first I remembered there were three and I used to think my husband didn’t make any sound when he was shot. And Governor Connally screamed like a stuck pig. And then I read the other day that it was the same shot that hit them both. But I used to think if I only had been looking to the right I would have seen the first shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot would not have hit him. But I heard Governor Connally yelling and that made me turn around, and as I turned to the right my husband was doing this (indicating with hand at neck). He was receiving a bullet. And those are the only two I remember.”

I discuss this on my website. They changed certain testimony for reasons of taste. More problematic, IMO, is that the FBI's experts testified on behalf the FBI, and not as individuals. As a result unnamed higher-ups were allowed to change anything they thought might be a problem, without leaving a paper trail.

Oh my. This is a ridiculous set of questions. You've read my posts. You've been to the conventions. (I'd assumed you'd read my website.) I am a layman, albeit one who grew up in a medical family, who'd read medical textbooks as a kid. After viewing the mystery photo in The Killing of a President, and realizing there was a bullet hole hiding in plain sight, I took an interest in the medical evidence. This led me to read other books, including Best Evidence, and to joining this forum. In short order, I was able to ask both Groden and Lifton if they saw what I was talking about when I pointed out the bullet hole in the photo. They both said yes, that that was a bullet hole. When I asked them why they'd never mentioned it in their books, however, neither one had an answer. This led me to realize that there was plenty of evidence hiding in plain sight that group-think and politics had prohibited folks from seeing. Inspired by Lifton, I performed a deep dive, researching the case full time for 3 1/2 years or so. Following Lifton, I became a regular at the UCLA medical library, photocopying hundreds of pages of articles, and then returning a month or so later, to photocopy hundreds more. In time I was invited to speak at Lancer Conferences, and then Copa. I put out a respected video series on YouTube. In 2013 I was asked by the Wecht family to speak at Duchesne University, in opposition to Dr. Mantik. Mantik surprised me by admitting several mistakes of his and his followers that I helped bring to light. In 2014, I was asked to speak on the single-bullet theory at the 50th anniversary of the WR conference in Bethesda. At that conference Dr. Wecht set aside an hour-and-a half so I could give him a personal presentation. He found much of it eye-opening. Since that time I have been to several mini-conferences, and have provided a number of juicy tidbits to the most famous names re the medical evidence. As a layman, I am not allowed to view the medical evidence myself. But even a quick comparison of the various statements by those who've seen it shows that being a doctor doesn't mean much, as these guys are all over the place.