Pat Speer

Jim, this is something I have read quite a bit about. Autopsy photos are sometimes withheld because they are considered too gruesome, and might prejudice a jury. If the prosecution wanted to show them to the jury, and the judge agreed, they would first have been shown to Stringer, and he would have been asked if these were the photos he'd taken. He would have said yes with the possible exception of the brain photos, which would probably not have been shown anyway. (I say possible because Stringer never said anything to disavow the brain photos prior to his 78th year.) They may have then shown them to Humes and Boswell, and asked them if these photos reflected the wounds they saw on the evening of the autopsy. They would almost certainly have said yes. There is little chance then that these photos would have been withheld, should the prosecution want them placed into evidence and the judge agree they were not too prejudicial. Once entered into evidence, of course, the defense could have countered with a few Parkland witnesses--but by no means 40 of them--as many if not most of them refused to say the photos were fake when questioned by researchers. In short, the scenario you describe in which the photos would be withheld based upon the say-so of Knudsen and the Parkland witnesses is highly unlikely. If this would have happened, moreover, it would have been a mistake, IMO, as the official photos and x-rays do not support the single-assassin solution as offered by the WC, Clark Panel, HSCA, etc.

Thanks for noticing, David. The irony is that today was the most normal day I've had since before the pandemic. I went to a Tiki restaurant, visited with some friends, and went to a movie. I felt almost normal. And here I get roasted over and over... P.S. I drove by the North Hollywood Library after visiting the Tiki restaurant. This was where I met your hero, Vincent B. He was pleasant enough, and thanked me for the copy of the video I'd handed him. He was there promoting his book on Dubya, and the war crimes in Iraq. I felt then and still feel that if we'd had an hour or two alone in an office, I could have convinced him of some stuff. But it was not to be.

A couple of points, Jim. I wasn't aiming at you with the comments about O'Donnell. My concern is that Horne and Mantik continue to tout him as an important witness when they know full well about his credibility problems. But they support him to support Knudsen, who absolutely positively was not at the autopsy. It's a house of cards. I once received a stream of hate emails from some poor soul who felt certain Knudsen must have been at the autopsy, because his family remembered him saying as much. When I pointed out to him that Knudsen was interviewed by the HSCA, and that he told them he'd developed photos the morning after the assassination, this poor fellow kept insisting that Knudsen meant by this that he took the photos and developed them after midnight--thus, the morning after the assassination. It's nonsense. And totally unnecessary. The official story has Knudsen developing the photos. When shown the photos later, he expressed his disagreement with some of them. Why isn't that enough? Why does it have to be that everyone who failed to see him taking pictures at the autopsy is an idiot, or xxxx? You cite Stringer and his latter-day comments about the brain photos. Why did you let Horne espouse his ridiculous belief in your movie--that some of the autopsy photos in the record were taken by Knudsen? Can you not see how silly that is? I mean, think about it. This is the message sent by Horne within the context of your movie: John Stringer is a fibber who has taken credit for photos taken by another man--who was not a forensic photographer and who no one but no one remembers seeing at the autopsy. But never mind, an aged Stringer thought the brain photos he'd taken were on a different kind of paper than the ones in the record. So yeah, he's a courageous truth-teller. It's desperate and unnecessary. The whole Knudsen at the autopsy angle is a waste of time. As you know, I studied certain elements of this case to a greater degree than just about anyone. And one of the things I read a lot about was autopsy photography. And this idea pushed by Horne--that forensic photos of the President's body were taken by a White House photographer normally tasked with taking pictures of the President shaking hands and playing with his children--is beyond loopy. (Sorry, Doug. But it just is.) It would be like handing a bluegrass fiddle player a chart and expecting him to play with a string quartet at the Lincoln Center. It makes no sense and just isn't done. As far as Fred's book... I believe one of your close associates has just put out a book comprising articles from years past, including some from your website. Is that a book? Of course it is. As with Fred's book, it's quality or lack thereof rests on its arguments, and not on whether or not those arguments were previously shared online.

Heck, Litwin actually understates the problem with using Knudsen and O'Donnell. I'm fairly certain I was the first one to realize that the Joe O'Donnell at the center of a major controversy in the photographic world was the Joe O'Donnell interviewed by the ARRB, and propped up by Horne and Mantik, even to this day. Upon O'Donnell's death, articles were printed about his life as a government photographer, including that he'd taken photos of John-John at JFK's funeral. The actual photographer of that famous photo complained, and an investigation was begun. It turned out that O'Donnell had become obsessed with the Kennedy family, and had taken to telling all sorts of stories about his closeness with the family, and Knudsen. He''d sold prints of photos he had not in fact taken. If I recall there'd even been an exhibit at a gallery of his photos, which included numerous photos of the Kennedy family taken by others. I think it was The NY Times that broke this story even wider and interviewed White House photographer Cecil Stoughton, who'd worked with Knudsen, and said he'd never heard of O'Donnell. In the end, O'Donnell's wife admitted he'd been suffering from dementia for years, including the time period he was interviewed by the ARRB. Now, when I first shared this with the "community", some pushed back, and said I'd been duped by a fake story created to discredit O'Donnell. But this was flat-out stupid. I mean, it was right there in Horne's interview of O'Donnell, for anyone looking. This guy claimed he'd shown the Z-film to Jackie, and had edited out a massive amount of footage at her direction. None of those continuing to support O'Donnell's bs believe such a thing happened. He was demented, literally, and the refusal of all too many to acknowledge this is freakin' embarrassing, IMO. \

I'm beginning to think you're just trolling me, dude. I was not a member of the film actors guild. I wrote a screenplay and became a member of the WGA, Writers Guild of America, so I could register my screenplay. I met some screenwriters along the way, and have a good friend who's produced a movie and plays along with numerous music videos. And it's just a fact that people drawn to story-telling tend to be liberal just as it's just a fact that people drawn to law enforcement and the military tend to be conservative. As to your specific points... 1. I am probably no more narcissistic than average. The fact is that I've been on this forum almost since the beginning and have seen a lot of people come and go, and have spoken at a number of conferences, and have just flat out done a lot more work on this case than most everyone here. But I am a relative newbie on certain aspects of the case. So I read and learn on those threads and share what I've learned on others. Unlike some, there is no financial incentive for me to participate. This forum was not created so people could share their opinions on stuff they think they heard somewhere. It was supposed to be a place where actual witnesses, researchers, and informed people could hash things out, and maybe come to some conclusions. I would be doing the forum a disservice if I failed to share some of what I have learned. I greatly appreciate the contributions of those who've been around awhile and who've performed some actual research, even when I don't agree with them. Heck, I was defensive of David Lifton, even though we disagreed on much. So I am not the blowhard you think I am. I am a blowhard, of course, but not for the reasons you imply. As for Trask, he did a heckuva lot of work and every serious student of the case holds him in high regard. So thanks for the back-handed compliment. 2. By your own definition, Russian is not a race. To point out that Sicilians got a bad rep from so many being connected to the mafia is not racist, and it is similarly not racist to point out that the Russian mafia has done an equivalent amount of harm to the reputation of Russian immigrants in the U.S.A. U.S. citizens abroad had a bad reputation for many years and probably still do--the Ugly American and all that. It was not racist for people to find such Americans obnoxious and a bad reflection of the American character. 3. I wrote a book-length article on the 2016 election that kept growing and growing before concluding Trump was at heart a fascist. No one else was reporting this back then. He proved me right by refusing to concede in 2020, and trying to run again on a platform that elections where he loses are illegitimate. 4. I have discussed this many times on this forum. I was an independent when there were but a few independents, and when there was a disadvantage to being independent, since you couldn't vote in primaries. I was raised Republican, with Abraham Lincoln as my all-time hero. I rooted for Nixon. I watched the Watergate hearings when I was 12, however, and this, along with knowing a number of Marines who'd fought in the Vietnam War, changed me. When I registered at 18, I couldn't register as a Republican, but probably would have voted for Ford in '80 if he'd received the nomination. I just couldn't vote for Reagan, however, and voted instead for John Anderson. My vote against Reagan was not so much against his conservatism--I listened to his radio show and thought he made a lot of sense on some issues--but his behavior on two specific issues were deal-killers. I was raised in a house of women, and his switcheroo to suck up to the anti-abortion crowd was a deal-killer in my family. And I thought his talk of the Soviet Union as The Evil Empire was dangerous and idiotic. Those two issues, when combined with some of the stupid stuff he did as Governor--such as releasing thousands of mentally ill onto the streets and germinating the homeless problem we still have today--led me to not trust him. I've been independent ever since.

Except in this case it's incorrect. I have read many of Litwin's articles and know where he's coming from. And, like I said, I agree with him more than probably any CT on this forum. I have roughly 200 books on this case. My buying books at full price days are over. As my website includes probably 10x the original material of Fred's book, and has been provided for free, I sometimes receive free copies from writers who've used it as a resource. If Fred wants to send me a copy, I'll check it out. And if I see it in a used book store, I'll probably pick it up.

How old are you? It seems that ideology and the internet are your new toys through which you can insult and demean others. You have repeatedly attacked me for bizarre and incorrect reasons. 1. I have engaged in thousands and thousands of online discussions of the JFK evidence, and suspect there is little new in Fred's book that would be of interest. I also suspect I would agree with many of his arguments, and that many of his arguments are arguments I have made on this forum and on my website. I have read many of his blog posts, and agree with roughly half of what he says. if you think I'm some sort of CT fanboy you are mistaken, as I am somewhat of a pariah in certain CT circles do to my acceptance of many of the facts espoused by LNs. In fact, I have probably considered the LN side of this issue more than any CT on this forum, and count Robert Wagner, a published LN, as one of my closest friends in research-land. 2. Russia is not a race. It is not racist to point out facts about certain cultures and waves of immigrants. I knew a Russian immigrant young woman who was nothing but nice and sweet, and she explained to me a decade or so ago why she and other Russians liked Putin. It was the same reason so many Americans loved Reagan. He made them feel good about themselves and their place in history. That was it. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians developed an inferiority complex, and Putin made them feel like they were in fact superior, and that it was the enemies of the state who had made them feel bad. Does this sound familiar? This was Hitler's recipe in post WWI Germany. Trump tried the same tactic here. Make America Great Again was in fact a euphemism for Make America White Again. That he encountered resistance after "winning" an election by negative 3 million votes was not surprising, nor was it a bad thing. 3. Trump was not a conservative. He was dictator-wannabe disguised as a conservative. Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, George Will, and John McCain were conservatives. 4. I like Bernie but was not a supporter. I thought he was unrealistic on many issues. I have never registered as a Democrat but consider socialism in small doses a good thing, when compared to the pure capitalism of the Robber Baron era. This makes me a moderate, IMO.

We had a whole thread on this awhile back. "Deep State" was a left-wing term to describe the MIC, the hidden hands behind our foreign policy, and the powers-that-be (FBI, CIA, etc) that terrorized the left in the 60's. Roger Stone and others then co-opted this term to make out that the real "Deep State" was the Washington old guard, the bureaucrats and journalists who have fought and will continue to fight against Stone and the far right's desired turn towards fascism. Stone was horrified that his hero Nixon was removed by people who were not as charismatic as Nixon (LOL) and was hoping Trump would complete what Nixon tried to do--make the entire government subservient to the whims of one man.

I will probably never read Fred's book, Tracy. But I'm curious to know if he acknowledges that many of the arguments against what was in the film started with other CTs, and that the so-called CT community is not of one mind when it comes to many of the issues raised in the film. I, for one, destroyed the Knudsen nonsense a long time ago. To be clear, I have been in the trenches for two decades now. And I've lost respect for anyone who thinks one side is wrong about everything and the other side of the conspiracy/no conspiracy divide is right about everything. It's the same in in politics. While the truth is not always in the middle, it is rarely far to one side. In my case, I've come to conclude that at least 50% of what most CTs believe is garbage. But that still leaves a lot of reasons to doubt the official story. I rarely see such flexibility from the other side. There's a need for certainty among many LNs that is not as widespread among the CTs I've known. Instead of thinking Oswald may have done it, they say they know he did it--and that the truth of this is obvious. They then cite a bunch of nebulous stuff. I recall now that I discussed this on my website. I made the analogy that the evidence for Oswald's guilt is a 1 1/2 out of 2 and the evidence he acted alone is a 1 1/2 out of 2. LNs see this and round up, so that 2 + 2 = 4. While CTs see these same facts and say 1 1/2 + 1 1/2 = 3, and 3 is not 4, so something is wrong. So who is correct, here? Those who routinely round up--and think the problems with the official investigations and story can be summarily dismissed? Or those who focus on the shortcomings of that investigation, and refuse to complete the equation in the manner the school board requires and move on with their lives? I am curious as well, if Lance is reading, if he finds a similarity to religion. There are those who look at the evidence for God's existence who are fully versed in reasons to doubt his/her existence, who nevertheless round up and choose to believe. And there are others who look at these same facts and can't believe. It's a peculiar thing.

I drove through Roswell once on the way to a convention in Dallas. I would agree that the sensationalism and opportunism of those hawking their wares in stores in Roswell, and at Dealey Plaza, is similar. I was fairly certain most of those selling this stuff (outside Bob Groden in Dallas) actually knew little about what they were selling. It was a way to make some quick cash off some dumb tourists. American capitalism at work.

Thanks for sharing. I think we are alike in that we both take pride in being reasonable but have experienced events that have made us question certain aspects of everyday life. When I was near death in the hospital almost two years ago now I was visited by ghosts. My rational brain says I was probably hallucinating but I can't declare that with total conviction--it felt pretty real at the time.

I, too, would be curious as to your opinion on UFOs, Lance. My mom lived in Arizona. I spent many a night under the stars in the desert. And a lot of people living there will tell you they've seen things. Have you seen things?

As stated, I met Shermer after a talk he gave at a local community center. In his talks and his books he acknowledges his past--that he used to jump from trend to trend--I believe he was even drawn to pyramid power at one point. My hope was that we could exchange ideas re the Kennedy assassination without either of us representing a "side". He quickly fell back upon arguments from authority--"Well, Bugliosi says this, etc" When I then tried to engage him in an actual discussion of the evidence, he essentially said detailed studies were worthless and reflect bias and that one must accept the big picture stuff provided by the experts and authorities, and go from there. My conclusion was that he isn't the real deal, and that "skepticism" for him was just a newfangled version of astrology. I am an agnostic in that I feel quite sure one can not truly know whether or not there is a God. But a friend of mine--who was traumatized by his religious upbringing--asked me to come along to Atheists United meetings, and I went for six months or so. It was a strange experience. Most of them were not just desperate for company with their fellow atheists, but anxious to share their ideas with believers, and make them see the error of their ways. They were essentially atheistic ministers, who had replaced what I saw as true atheism--we can not know and should not pretend to know--with a zeal to "convert" as many believers to their atheistic orthodoxy. They even had books listing hundreds of reasons to doubt the existence of God, and discussed the writers of these books as if they were leaders of their cult or something. It kinda creeped me out.

The point is that there was not a five second gap between shots two and three. I've studied a thousand or more statements from more than 200 witnesses, and that pause--which has become accepted as a fact by those desperately clinging to the single-assassin solution--never happened. Perhaps it should also be pointed out that numerous studies have been performed on eyewitness recollections of time, and these all confirm that perceived time slows down dramatically during stressful events. A 10 second event can be expected to be remembered as 15 seconds and so on. That so many recall the shots as rapid fire (with shots two and three bang-bang)--and that so many of these witnesses were distant witnesses, including a number of Dallas Deputy Sheriffs--is lethal to the single-assassin solution as currently pushed in the LN literature and on TV. It did not happen that way. And that is in concrete.

Wow. Shermer is a piece of work, a total tool. I met him at a local talk, and we exchanged emails after agreeing to have a serious discussion of the Kennedy assassination. After I sent him some stuff demonstrating problems with the single-bullet theory, he cut me off, and said if you looked at the details of the shooting, you would get lost in the minutiae, and that the only way to understand what happened was to look at the big picture, and not question the details. Now he praises Litwin for his hard work and attention to detail. What a hypocrite! It's like people who praised Bugliosi's book saying it answered all the questions who never read the book, and would never read a comparably-sized book (such as my website) or Harold Weisberg's books. "It's got a lotta words and footnotes and tells me what I want to hear so it's gotta be smurt!"

I had a stretch where I read quite a bit about Hollywood and its beginnings. One book that comes to mind is "A Kingdom of Their Own." It detailed the rise of the Hollywood movie studios from the penny arcade business in New York and New Jersey, with a particular focus on the fact the moguls were mostly Jews living in constant fear of a backlash against their Jewishness. As a consequence, they were reluctant to make films about anti-Semitism--until Darryl F. Zanuck, one of the few non-Jews running a studio, broke the seal. There is another great book I read whose title escapes me. It was about the Hays Code--an actual code put in place to control Hollywood productions--that put restrictions on subject matter and what could be shown on the screen. As I recall, this was largely put in place to appease the Catholic Church, which was most upset by what those darned "Jews" in Hollywood were showing the country. In any event, the book detailed a number of films where the producers and directors fought the code, and helped erode its harshness. I particularly remember the chapter on A Streetcar Named Desire.. The code would not allow Stanley to rape Blanche--so they were forced to make it seem like maybe he only beat her up. But the director and actors made sure the audience knew what happened anyhow. I remember also that the code forbade Stanley's receiving no come-uppance for the rape. So they were forced to pretend his wife Stella, Blanche's sister, left him. Only Kim Hunter, the actress playing Stella, played the last scene in a way where the audience could tell she was still in love with him, and would probably return to that sexy beast, played by Marlon Brando. I also read another book or two on the pro-Russian propaganda films put out by Hollywood at the onset of WWII. These were created at the request of the U.S. Government, which wanted the public to accept our partnership with Uncle Joe and his Commie Army. Many of those working on these films were socialists, and sympathetic to Russia. Their work on these films would come back to haunt them, as their work for the U.S. Government would come to bite them in the ass after the war when the Government decided Russia was the new enemy, and they were no longer trusted. Hoover, McCarthy, et al, pressured the studio heads--ever-fearful of an outcry against their Jewishness--to create a blacklist, and disallow those insufficiently anti-commie from working. If I recall, one young actress, Nancy Davis, was concerned she would be roped into this nonsense, and kissed up to the head of the Screen Actors Guild, who had decided to side with the studios against his fellow actors. She soon thereafter married this man and became Mrs. Ronald Reagan. (I could be wrong about the timing of this, but I think that's correct.) History is made of such things. If Edison didn't claim a patent on films made in New York, the early film companies may not have moved to Hollywood. If they didn't have to move to Hollywood, they may not have been run by recent immigrants with no long-time roots in New York, which is to say, they may not have been run by Jews. If they hadn't been run by Jews, well, they may not have put up with the Hays Code, or gone along with the blacklist, and maybe Ronnie and Nancy wouldn't have become an item, and he wouldn't have run for President, and he wouldn't have spent a gazillion on his Star Wars scheme, and bankrupt the Soviet Union. So, heck, if it weren't for Edison's greed, the Soviet Union might still be around, and Putin could have stayed in the KGB, hunting down Ukrainians who wanted to defect, and disrupting western democracies. . It's all one big circle, ain't it?

I think the CIA long ago realized the propaganda value of films and has helped with the production of a number of them. As I recall, Zero Dark Thirty was created with the CIA's assistance. There is a problem with assuming all propaganda of this type is a lie, of course, just as there is a problem with assuming everything that is spun by the White House or a spokesperson for big tobacco or big oil is a lie. But it should make one think twice, IMO. As a one-time member of the Writers Guild, I can assure you that the stereotype for writers--leftists, progressives, etc, is mostly true. A lot of people get interested in writing and story-telling because they want to change attitudes and change the world--that's just a fact. In my lifetime, I've seen a lot of movement as far as race relations, along with a much more tolerant attitude towards gays. Gay marriage would have been unthinkable in 1965, or 1975, or even 1985. But the straight public's exposure to people such as Elton John, Ellen DeGeneres, and Neil Patrick Harris led to a softening of this stance, and a realization that gay people deserve a chance to be married and raise children. As far as myself, I was raised in white suburbia, in the 1960's. I didn't know any black people, outside of one or two kids at school. But I remember seeing MLK on TV, and he seemed pretty smart, and I watched TV and sports and appreciated the talent and/or warmth and humanity of people like Leslie Uggams, Diahann Carroll, Bill Cosby, Wiilie Mays, Maury Wills, Willie Davis, Gale Sayers and Elgin Baylor. I couldn't imagine a world in which they would be forbidden from being my neighbor, or where their kids would be prohibited from attending my school. So media exposure makes a difference. It changes minds and changes the world.

Oh boy. My point was that the negative characterizations were not invented from whole cloth. I suppose you are equally upset that so many movies have depicted Middle East terrorists as Muslim, and New York mob figures as Italian. And God forbid anyone should depict an Irish-American as a heavy drinker, or a white southerner as a redneck. Most cliches are based on reality. The problem, of course, is that if the only thing people see is the cliche, then they develop a prejudice. That is why alternative depictions are needed. in the case of evil Russians...I just watched the films Red and Red 2 with my son. The bag guys were pretty much all white members of the CIA. The Russians were much more likable. Not to lecture but it should also be pointed out that much of the improvement around the world has come from Hollywood, and its depictions of various people as humans, and not as stereotypes. That is why it's so dangerous, and is why totalitarian states like China and Russia are constantly on the lookout for positive depictions of gay people in the movies. Disney, as an example, has lost billons of dollars in business in countries who fear its influence, and are afraid its positive depictions of certain types might influence the masses, and lessen the government's ability to villainize these people.

If you lived in Southern California, you would understand why Russians continue to be presented as the bad guys in numerous filmed productions. After the fall of the wall, thousands of Russians fled to the good ole USA for increased opportunity. Not to come here and work hard and live the American dream, like most other immigrants. But to spread organized crime throughout the southland. It was a mobster invasion. I remember going to the Glendale mall with my Ukrainian friend, who'd just moved back from Ukraine, after spending time in Moscow. He would look across the mall, and spot a group of people a hundred yards away, and say "Those are Russian gangsters." We''d then walk past the group and sure enough, they'd be speaking Russian, or English with a thick Russian accent. We must have spotted fifty of them. After awhile, I could spot them too. They wore brown leather jackets, and almost always had a blonde on their arms. It was like going to the Bada Bing. Mobsters were everywhere.

I'm drawing a blank as to when Marina saw Lee leave. My recollection is that she said she woke up when he got up but then went back to sleep. Can you point us to where she said she saw him with a bag?

I go through the head wound witnesses in chapters 18c and 18d on my website. From doing so, I came to realize that the blow-out wound low on the back of the head purported by numerous CTs is nonsense, Recently, some have taken to claiming my argument is a straw-man argument, and that the BOH wound purported by the CT community was not low on the back of the head. But that's incorrect. If you read the chapters you will see that many of the most prominent CTs and best-selling authors have claimed the "actual" location of the large head wound was at a location at odds with where the witnesses have claimed to see the wound, and that numerous deceptions were employed to "sell" this lower location.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. Oswald was a weirdo. His wife was living with Ruth Paine. Ruth had undoubtedly told her things about Oswald--about his trip to Russia and possibly even that he beat Marina. And there he is walking up to he house with a package in his hand. Of course she watched him. Keep in mind that Oswald had only received a few rides from Frazier, and that, if memory serves, he normally got picked up outside the Paine's. This may have been the first time Linnie got a good look at Oswald, the brooding young man that her baby brother seemed so taken with...and the subject of so much gossip.

Her statements about seeing him put the package in the car are pretty much beside the point. She said she saw him walking towards the house with it, and described the way he held it. She was then asked by the freakin' FBI to approximate the length of this package in comparison to the replacement bag. And she said it was much smaller. Months later, she was once again asked about this, and pressured by Joe Ball into saying the bag she saw was the size of the bag put into evidence. She once again claimed it was much too small. She got nothing out of this. Never tried to make money off it. Nothing. She was an honest camper, an extremely loyal sister, or both. I suspect both.

Geez. Holmes' report is almost worthless. He wrote it what? two weeks after the shooting, apparently from memory. Oswald said he didn't go the week before because of the birthday and Holmes thought he meant that he wasn't gonna go there on Friday because of the birthday. Obviously. Let's recall that this is the same guy who claimed that Oswald said he was upstairs at the time of the shooting. Bad memory or a bad xxxx. You take your pick.

I talked to Frazier about this. The outer wall was slats. You could see movement on the other side. If I recall she saw Oswald through a window and then followed his movements around the side by opening the door to the garage. She then saw him approach Frazier's car and heard the car door open. There's nothing mysterious about this.