Robert Charles-Dunne

Mr. APPLIN - Well, about the only thing I heard was the snap of the gun and the officer saying, "Here he is." Mr. BALL - You heard the snap of a gun? Mr. APPLIN - Yes, sir. If it wasn't "Oswald's" pistol that misfired, whose was it? If the intent was for a cop to kill the perp in the theatre, who screwed the pooch? McDonald's weapon was drawn; who else had drawn theirs? Applin seems to place the snap of the gun and the discovery of Oswald - "here he is" - at about the same time, with the melee following the attempt to fire. This is why Oswald began shouting about "police brutality" and "I am not resisting arrest." Both statements would be ridiculous on their very face to anyone who had witnessed Oswald try to kill a cop or fight to avoid being apprehended. He thought they were going to kill him. Some would construe that as guilty knowledge, the natural fear of apprehension exhibited by a felon who fully expected to be chased down. Some could interpret that otherwise inexplicable behaviour as a man frightened by an incoming wave of police, at least one of whom seemed intent upon killing him. Since the webbing between McDonald's thumb and forefinger was injured (shown to media), do we infer that in the scuffle with Oswald, McDonald's flesh prevented the firing of his own weapon? If we don't at least consider this, why not? It has also always bothered me that in the first press accounts, McDonald waved away the matter by saying words to the effect of "He didn't give us too much trouble." While it is possible he was displaying an admirable false modesty, it is also possible that Oswald didn't give them too much trouble, with the thwarting of an Oswald pistol-shot being fabricated after the fact. Cue the false heroics of the subsequent story. Good thread, lads. (And Lady Bernice.)

Very amusing, well done. Though it would be slightly more effective coming from someone that is able to distinguish one end of a horse from its other. No worries. Your avatar is sufficiently clear to preclude confusion. More amusing by far would be to see your response to Martin Hay's challenge. It is easy to impugn Mark Lane by doing a cut and paste drive-by - using the words of other hacks, as you are wont to do - but not so simple to post your own observations. It would require you to actually know the topic at hand. We've seen your kind here before. When you have no handy rejoinder to those who expose your chicanery, you simply ignore the offending post until it scrolls into the ether. To wit: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15647

Yes it is, for those who like to hear things from the horse's mouth. Those wishing to hear from the horse's other end still have their own spot to congregate: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

Is it reasonable to assert that this is the same event that Mercer witnessed? If so, there is clearly a simple and innocent explanation. For whatever reason, Mercer decided to add the rifle (and later, Oswald!) Herein we get to the heart of the issue. McAdams' Marauders - hardly dispassionately objective - invariably confer the worst human motives upon witnesses they seek to diminish. It is not enough to assert that Mercer was wrong; it must be assumed that she invented or fabricated or added or lied. Based upon evidence so transparently flimsy and skewed as Murphy's interview with the Bureau. From his WC testimony and FBI interview, Murphy seems to have been a standup guy. But it is clear this report was drafted several weeks after 11/22 in direct response to Mercer's contentions. And in which FBI make Murphy both overstate what he can personally know, and understate what he should have been able to provide, but didn't. Nor did FBI. Clearly, Murphy cannot personally know what transpired in Dealey Plaza while he was absent driving one of the workers to the National Bank building. According to FBI, Murphy claimed to know with certainty that the two workers he left behind never left the truck, because it was being guarded or watched by two unnamed officers. End of Mercer's story. Case closed. Couldn't have happened. While this superficially appears to dispose of Mercer's tale - which was FBI's intent in creating the report - it fails to convince for a number of reasons. Did Murphy not know the names of the officers he left behind? Or didn't care to disclose them? Did FBI not care to discover those names, if only to obtain corroboration for Murphy's account? If not, why? Given that the only ones who could really describe what transpired in Murphy's absence were the two officers left behind, not the one who drove away, didn't FBI interview the wrong guy? Was any effort expended to determine what the two unnamed officers had to say about the Mercer incident? Why was Murphy not asked about any of this stalled truck episode in testimony to WC counsel? The FBI-Murphy report, and his handling by the Commission, more blatantly disclose official indifference to the details of Mercer's story than any interest in legitimately resolving them. The goal being pursued wasn't determining the truth, but the neutralization of what Mercer had to say. Which is precisely the line being advocated by McAdams today. It is also instructive to note what McAdams infers from the testimony of Forrest Sorrels. On the same site to which Paul Baker linked above, we find this synopsis for a hotlink: "Then the account of Secret Service agent Forest Sorrels, to whom Mercer told an early version of her story." However, that relies purely upon a major assumption for which there exists no proof of which I am aware. First the pertinent Sorrels testimony: (One should note Sorrels' failure to "pursue that any further" because a weapon had already been found elsewhere. Apparently the notion that there might have been more than one weapon in play that day received short shrift.) Whatever the identity of the first witness alluded to, it was a man. As for the "somebody" who saw the stalled truck - which Sorrels calls a car - this was something Sorrels "later checked on," but while actually in Dealey Plaza he "didn't pursue that any further" because a weapon had already been found elsewhere. Nowhere in this testimony do we see evidence that Mercer "told an early version of her story" to Sorrels. We see no indication that he knew her name or had spoken to her himself; only that he knew of "this lady who thought she saw somebody that looked like they had a guncase." While it may be reasonable to assume Sorrels was referring to Mercer, for it mirrors her tale, there is no basis for the McAdams claim that Mercer told anything to Sorrels. In order to do so, one would have to present evidence that police took Mercer from Ft. Worth back to Dealey Plaza where Sorrels was, which - if it exists - I've been unable to locate. Why split such hairs? Why is it possibly important? It has always seemed odd to me that nobody else seems to have seen what Mercer witnessed. With traffic stalled, surely more than one driver should have noticed something this puzzling. They might not have attached much significance to it when they saw it, thinking - as did Mercer - that the man with the guncase must have been Secret Service. But after the assassination made it apparent that this might not have been the case, why do we find nobody else with similar observations? McAdams and his minions will assert this is further proof the event didn't occur. However, if it turns out that Sorrels did speak in Dealey Plaza with "this lady who thought she saw somebody that looked like they had a guncase," and it wasn't Mercer because she wasn't taken there - then to whom did Sorrels refer? While it is far from certain, there nevertheless exists the possibility that "this lady" wasn't Mercer, but somebody who provided corroboration for her account, yet remains unidentified for obvious reasons. McAdams and his minions will also assert that such considerations are the contortions of a CT who cannot accept the obvious. When in reality what it indicates is how shockingly low they are prepared to set the bar for "evidence" they then mischaracterize as probative, with only assumptions for a basis. Both the Murphy FBI report and SS man Sorrels' testimony are misconstrued to contain the very things they lack. For anyone seeking actual resolution of troubling anomalies, it's no way to run a railroad. Again, this so grossly overstates what transpired it cannot be accidental, nor rationalized. Mercer did not tell anyone that she had seen conspirators. She glibly stated in a restaurant, before the assassination, that the Secret Service weren't very secret because she had seen them in Dealey Plaza taking a gun out of a truck. That would have been the end of it, had she not been overheard by police who, upon hearing of the assassination, took Mercer into custody to take her statement. As well they should have done. There was no attempt by Mercer to make herself seem more important. She mentioned something to some acquaintances that would have been entirely innocuous at the time she said it, and would have remained so had the assassination not taken place after she made the comment. It is by ignoring details such as these - important ones, as it happens - that people like McAdams wish to dissuade us from giving a full hearing to witnesses who contend uncomfortable things. Again, we see something interesting. Per McAdams and his minions, Garrison didn't just collect data suggestive of conspiracy, but invented what he couldn't find and embellished upon what he could. He resorted to bribery, intimidation, drugging and hypnotizing witnesses to suborn perjury, and a number of other wilful acts unbecoming a DA. Yet the same people will cite him as authoritative so long as the end product can be used to likewise smear another problematic person, in this case Mercer. In this instance, Garrison can be trusted because Mercer is the xxxx, and Garrison is just gullible. Either Garrison is credible or he is not. Which is it to be? Those unfamiliar with the ethics at play here - and by now they must be very few indeed - might wish to see an old but still germane tutorial: http://www.prouty.org/mcadams/faq.html Caveat emptor: the same methodology cited by Hargrove above is on display here. Daily.

Oh good. Another blinkered moron to deal with. Why don't you consider indulging in a bit of thinking yourself, assuming that's something you're capable of? Immediate ad hom. Way to stay classy, there Paul. You are nothing if not consistent. Since participation here is voluntary, you are not required to “deal with” us, but choose to do so. If you cannot abide our company, you know where the door is, don’t you? So you believe that an assassin walked up the grassy knoll carrying what was obviously a rifle case, 90 minutes before the assassination? Isn't that a bit stupid? This is straight from the David Aaronovitch school of logic. “I can’t be arsed to do the homework necessary, so I’ll just dispense with that formality by claiming something is too ludicrous to have occurred and hope that’s sufficiently persuasive.” If you have investigated the case at all, you will be struck by the number of completely counter-intuitive events that transpired. The fact that you find Mercer’s tale hard to credit doesn’t make it wrong, and you certainly haven’t proven it is. By your logic, President Kennedy wasn’t slain in Dealey Plaza because it would have been “a bit stupid” for Secret Service to allow the motorcade to turn onto Houston and then Elm, given that it violated their own protocols. And by your logic, Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t slain on TV either, because it would have been “a bit stupid” for the DPD to let just any bozo into their midst at that critical juncture; particularly a man well known to them from his multiple arrests in Dallas, including at least one pinch for packing a concealed weapon. “Things” happen all the time, even those you might insist are too stupid to occur. Moreover, had you done your homework on this, you’d have noted that both Mercer and Arnold Rowland reported seeing presumably different gunmen in the vicinity at different times prior to the event and - surprise! - assumed they must have been Secret Service. By their own independent accounts these two people who were unknown to each other uttered a virtually identical phrase: “The Secret Service isn’t very secret.” And why? Precisely because they assumed it would be stupid for an assassin to be so bold as to hide in plain sight. Nothing is too absurd to be true, so long as it works. Her story has been thoroughly discredited, so I don't need to do that. Citation please? Hit pieces by McAdams and Reitzes, et al, don’t count. Or perhaps they will suffice for you, if you’re prepared to set the bar that low. Whomever “thoroughly discredited” the Mercer story certainly wasn’t with the Warren Commission or even the HSCA, both of which gave her a wide berth. And little wonder. The wife of a former Congressman, Mercer wasn’t so easily dispensed with as the strippers, hookers and junkies who were habitues of Ruby’s milieu. What’s more, she had the means necessary to bring legal counsel with her had she been called to testify. Perhaps you think her story is preposterous because she maintains that statements she gave to the local cops and FBI were altered., and that her signature was forged. Were this the only instance of such allegations, one could easily agree. But numerous witnesses claimed intimidation tactics, alteration of their statements and even alteration of their WC testimony. Oddly enough, if one catalogues each such instance of claimed alteration, the result always runs in the same direction, counter to anything suggestive of conspiracy. Were these alterations the result of mere mistakes or misunderstandings, one would expect a rather more even distribution of outcomes. I was merely adding something that I'd never heard dealt with before. As the pictures above demonstrate, Ruby is not readily identifiable at the time of the shooting of Oswald. Mercer claimed she recognised him at that moment (as does Hill), Citation please? Provide documentary proof that Mercer claimed she identified the shooter as the man she’d seen in Dealey Plaza at the instant the shot was fired, rather than after seeing his picture on TV soon thereafter. Your Garrison memo quote from more than four years after the fact doesn’t quite make it clear. Failure to provide same only underscores that what you’re arguing against is your own preferred assumption as to what she said, and not necessarily what she did say. Since she still seems to be alive, and would only be about 70 years old by now, perhaps you could undertake the effort to locate her and find out precisely what the truth of the matter is. At least at that point you’d either be able to make your claims with some basis in fact, or be forced as a matter of honour to retract them. and I suggest that isn't possible. I appreciate that his name was established immediately, because many of the people in the basement knew who he was (I've listened to the radio broadcasts over and over), but how could his name mean anything to Mercer? It's the face that's important here. Mercer, I think, has to go the same way as Arnold, Hoffman and Hill. You are entitled to your opinion. However, perhaps before you dispatch her to whatever purgatory you think appropriate, you might explain the following: Mercer didn’t come forward voluntarily, but was apprehended by police who overheard her make a comment. If she lied as an attention-seeker, why didn’t she rush forward to capitalize on her tale? If her description of the vehicle (green Ford pickup with toolboxes in the rear) was invented, why is there precisely such a vehicle present in some Muchmore frames? If there was no such truck broken down in Dealey Plaza prior to the event, why is there a police affidavit specifying that the reporting officer thought it was a legitimate breakdown in traffic? (CD 205, page 320) If the men she saw in that truck weren’t real, why does her first-day description of them match exactly the description of men later seen in that area by Lee Bowers? Did Mercer and Bowers secretly collude to invent matching observations for no known reason? That some aspects of her tale are corroborated by other facts and witnesses doesn’t automatically make her story entirely true or accurate. But one cannot simply dispose of such a problematic witness by first ignoring her in the hopes that her story will recede (WC, HSCA) and then pretending there was never any corroboration for it, as you seem intent upon doing. It never fails to amuse me that those who rail against Jim Garrison as being incapable of tying his shoes nevertheless cite him as gospel when it suits their purposes. Assume, presume and suppose whatever you please. Don’t insist that others share your bias without offering something more persuasive than "it's been done so I don't need to." Thanks for posting the pictures Bernice. And thanks for the whimsical bitch-slap, Greg Parker. Paul.

Soon after the shooting, TV reportage on all channels identified the killer by name - per the DPD-supplied info - and showed his photo. No mystery here, as the slightest attempt at thought would disclose. Those actively seeking to debunk Mercer's "incredible story" - for whatever spurious motive - need look elsewhere.

I should think that any and all potentially libelous material has been removed from public view for obvious reasons. And Peter's being denied an opportunity to resurrect them. I don’t usually weigh in on such procedural matters, and I feared precisely this type of cockup would become inevitable with the introduction of moderators. The level of debate here was coarsened when members were no longer trusted to comport themselves as responsible adults. The resulting name-calling and appeals to the referees make soccer dives seem legitimate by comparison. However, now that the predictable bun-fight has erupted with a vengeance, a few thoughts, if I may be so bold. I don’t think Peter was an appropriate choice for moderator, based in large measure on posts of his that were tediously superfluous and often only tangentially pertinent to the point being discussed. I don’t say that to demean him, only to underscore that if I now say anything in his defense, it is not because I am his friend, nor because I think that he was a splendid choice for mod. I am not and do not. However, if the powers-that-be who run this place have sufficient confidence in a member to award him moderator status, then those same powers ought grant him an opportunity to challenge and refute whatever charges are leveled against him. In this instance, it seems that this wasn’t done, with Andy Walker unilaterally and arbitrarily taking executive action against somebody for whom his loathing was hardly a secret. Summary execution, if you will. Lethal failure number one. [Full disclosure: Andy Walker and I have recently crossed swords in a thread here, but whatever I say herein is entirely unrelated to such issues. My impression of Andy is that he has been swift to demean those who displease him (with Jack White being a favoured whipping boy, imho), but has often been so bitingly witty in the process that I couldn’t - and can’t - hold a grudge. He thinks the lot of us are starkers, is my best guess, and seems to amuse himself by occasionally picking off those he thinks are the easiest targets for his well-honed scorn. Were he not an administrator, he’d be virtually irrelevant, based solely upon contributions hereto. He is not one of our number.] No doubt Andy thought he was saving a damsel in distress, and mitigating his own legal liability, when he acted by shutting Peter down. However, that ill-considered gambit has resulted in an even worse situation. Peter’s reputation hangs in the balance upon unproved, un-itemized allegations of sexual predation - repeated here in the general abstract, along with glaringly stupid suggestions that Peter is mentally imbalanced - that have been denied by Peter, and now, also by his alleged accuser. Having already found Peter guilty and passed sentence summarily, this is a rather shaming development for our Mr. Walker who seems to have found himself at road’s end. Action taken for ostensibly laudible goals has been revealed to be based more on personal animus toward Peter Lemkin than upon any foul he may have committed, by Andy Walker's own admission, I would strongly argue. Lethal failure number two. It is unlikely that Andy would acknowledge this, for he seems to think conspiracy is a rare thing, but the conventional wisdom in such matters has it that the coverup only serves to accentuate the crime. The very fact that Dean has posted this thread illustrates that it will not be forgotten simply because the evidence has been so crudely scuttled from public view, no matter how much the responsible party may wish it to be so. Elimination of the evidence doesn’t move the hands on the clock backward, nor remove from the public consciousness all awareness of its one-time existence. Lethal failure number three. I do not know how this thing can be negotiated into a mutually agreeable resolution, but I do know that all parties had best make a good faith attempt to achieve same. The alternative is an unenviable one, in which barristers and solicitors with no personal skin in the game will be the only ones made happy, at the expense of those with the most skin in the game. Please, gentlemen, work this thing out, for your own sakes and that of the Forum that I fear will be sacrificed if you don’t. (If my past efforts at attempting to broker peace deals on the internet are any indication, I will now expect to be shot by both sides. Fire at will.)

To correct every mistake, supply every detail deliberately avoided and provide context where it was omitted would take a book four times the size of Aaronovitch's, so great are his failings. Had Aaronovitch intended penning a book on what gives rise to conspiracy culture, he might have argued that it is the direct result of the disconnect between what the government tells the governed, and a contrary reality that the governed know to be true. JFK assassination = official lie. Vietnam = official lie. Watergate = official lie. Iran/Contra = official lie. Iraq War I = official lie. 9/11 = official lie. It is not difficult to understand the need felt by the governed to fashion alternate explanations when the official ones are so wholly divorced from reality. How much official malarkey must one swallow before one is entitled to puke it all back up? That might have been a worthwhile book, and might have advanced understanding of the issues it contained. But that book isn’t what Aaronovitch has written. We all know someone like Aaronovitch; smugly self-satisfied that he has a monopoly on the truth, yet unwilling to bother proving it. Page after page of false equivalence, false assertions, refusal to acknowledge - let alone address - key issues, etc. But an unstinting volley of insults at those who question official versions of reality that are patently false to all but those whose own credulity requires them to remain silently incurious. This book presents nothing new about any of the topics covered - indeed hides from its readers much that is new and worthwhile knowing - and even less about the man who wrote it. It was a foregone conclusion Aaronvitch couldn’t find a conspiracy even if he were in the midst of one. He’s already demonstrated as much. Recall that this author was a gung-ho cheerleader for Iraq War II, the premises for which were fraudulently cooked and rushed toward with the hysteria of panicked teenage girls: “If we don’t take Hussein out, he could lob a nuke into Whitehall in 45 minutes.” The more Iraqi ground that was covered by UN weapons inspectors who found nothing, the more shrill and panicky became the advocacy for war by Blair, Bush and their various sycophants, Aaronovitch among them.. Those who favoured this course now say they did so on good faith, having been duped by faulty intelligence. Again, palpably false. The intelligence used to promulgate this crime against humanity was invented and selected for its provocative value, not because of overwhelming credibility. Those who have studied the issue know that members within the US and UK intelligence community warned strongly that the cherry-picked “evidence” was questionable at best, manufactured specifically to trigger war at worst. Joe Wilson was not alone in such wariness, merely made the most famous at the behest of the war criminals who plotted this outrage. Now that the invading countries court bankruptcy and untold volumes of blood has been unnecessarily shed, it would be fitting for those who were so wrong to admit it. They don’t, of course, because they claim to have been operating with the best information available, and after 9/11 it was more critical to be proactive than to be right. With blood on their hands, they remain wholly unrepentant, assuring all who still bother listening to them that they acted only for queen and country. This is a necessary ruse, for the alternative is to unmask themselves as vile sociopaths of the first order. Unsurprisingly, they now prefer to claim stupidity and incompetence rather than cop in public to even lower motives. Aaronovitch has already claimed stupidity and incompetence, on his own behalf and that of the war criminals whose callously indifferent plans he championed. He’s also made it clear that he, personally, didn’t need any fancy pretext to justify the illegal war against Hussein; ousting him from power through unprovoked force was a sufficient means and end. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,945381,00.html I was never in favour of this war mainly because of the threats of terrorism or WMDs. Getting rid of Saddam (and therefore the myriad afflictions of the Iraqi people) was enough. But the weapons were the pretext on which the invasion was sold to a lot of people in this country, and was attempted to be sold to the people of the world. The British dossiers, released last autumn, claimed that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, drawn up military plans for their use, retained illegal missiles capable of carrying WMD warheads, and concealed equipment from the weapons inspectors. At the United Nations in February, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, presented evidence claiming that there were mobile laboratories and showing clear signs that the Iraqis had moved material to escape inspection from UN teams. Put together, all this was argued as constituting a clear breach of UN resolutions that therefore required urgent action. That “urgent action” could far more easily have been locating those “mobile laboratories,” for if Colin Powell had been able to identify and locate them before, surely such a feat could be accomplished again, particularly with a UN team on the ground that was briefed on precisely what they were seeking. One is hard pressed to imagine how US intelligence knew about such “mobile laboratories,” yet they were as invisible to UN inspectors then as they have remained to this day. But that option of seeking WMDs was foreclosed because the intent was regime change, not disarmament. These claims cannot be wished away in the light of a successful war. If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere. Yet now we have a book in which Aaronovitch advocates the readers should believe the self-same governments whose credibility he, himself, had foresworn seven years ago. Such rank hypocrisy should be drawn to the attention of anyone gullible enough to think Aaronovtich’s book has something new to offer. This man couldn’t see a criminal conspiracy for which he was a leading media mouthpiece, in real time while it happened, and even with the benefit of hindsight cannot admit the ways in which he was used - unwittingly or otherwise - for that criminal purpose. But this is the man we should entrust to educate us about historical conspiracies? This is the man we should believe when he rails against cranks, hysterics and mentally defective conspiracy believers? Physician, heal thyself. There is a cure for ignorance.

Sorry for the delay in replying to your erudite words Robert. Normally as you know I hang on your every word it is just that during term time I have real children to attend to and they I fear always must take precedence. The difficulty, Andrew, arises when you can no longer discern the difference between the children you tutor, and the adults who habituate this forum, very few of whom would benefit from your tutorials. For, in order to do so, they would have to know less than you do on the topic at hand. You have made it clear this applies to very few persons who post here. Unlike you I managed to read all of the book under discussion. Next time you endeavour to read a book I would urge you to persevere for it does put one in such a better position should you feel the urge to go online to discuss its contents with others. Maybe if you set yourself targets and perhaps trail your index finger under the words you might have greater success next time? Were the book worthy of the effort, I would have expended it. The book is not, so I didn’t. You are free to disagree, of course, but I have yet to read word one from your own pen indicating what makes the scant few pages Aaronovitch devotes to the JFK assassination a worthwhile read. But then, in order to argue anything on the topic, you’d actually have to know something about it, wouldn’t you? So much easier to read four pages of tripe written by Aaronovtich than to read, for example, 26 volumes of the Warren Commission. Or another 15 volumes of the HSCA, any of which might have caused you to wonder why the "evidence" cited doesn't bolster the conclusions reached. I have expended that effort, but I can assure you Aaronovitch didn’t. Nor have you, but it doesn’t prevent you from presuming to lecture those who have. What a truly odd world in which we live. I would have thought a teacher, of all things, might actually require an author to know something about his topic before setting pen to paper. Not necessary in your world, obviously. I find the venom and bile that Aaronovitch has provoked amongst conspiracists like your good self most interesting given that a major thrust of his evaluation of conspiracism is that it originates from deep seated psychological problems within the conspiracist. I take it you don’t wish to discuss the nuts and bolts (heavy emphasis on the former) of Aaronovitch’s argument or any of the related studies he uses in support? Page 302 onwards on hysteria I found at least interesting. I am sure that once you get your library copy with a really determined effort you might be able to read that section and then get back to me. Finally we get to the nub of the matter. Like Aaronovitch, you can condescend with the best of them, without having actually troubled yourself to investigate whether there’s anything to this “conspiracy stuff.” But why bother with all that effort and heavy lifting when it is so much simpler to merely characterize people who do undertake that effort as hysterics and cranks and mental defectives? Does it not cause you the slightest twinge of self-consciousness to prattle on about a topic that is clearly foreign to you? Or is the “soft” bigotry which you share in common with Aaronovitch the only grounding you need to make your pronouncements? If there is venom spewed in the author’s direction, perhaps it is because his shallow, wholly inadequate term paper doesn’t even deserve an “incomplete” mark from those who know far more than he ever will. It is a little depressing to read that so many of you gathered here seem to think that it is OK to rubbish published written material on the basis of the political affiliations, ethnicity of the author or the religion and motivations of unnamed and to this point unknown donors of political parties the author may or may not support. I suppose this is an easy way of protecting the idea of conspiracy without the inconvenience of assessing the views and evidence of others? I have asked you to indicate where John Simkin’s observations are incorrect. You haven’t taken the opportunity to elucidate, so one can only conclude that you cannot do so. You have read much more into his comments than I would have done, because none of them seem untrue. Rather than admit that Aaronovitch is a hack of the first order, you prefer to take umbrage at inconsequential trivia. Since Simkin is the only one to raise such points, one finds it hard to discern the identities of “so many of [us] gathered here” who agree. But to you the one may seem to be the many, because you clearly don’t read well, or you wouldn’t make such grossly exaggerated comments. I do not for one minute think that David Aaronovitch offers us the final word on any of the conspiracies he covers. However unlike many gathered here I have not spent my life ‘studying’ conspiracies and was naively hoping that some of our better informed members like your good self would be willing to discuss some of the books actual premises, theories and contents. It is entirely OK that you haven’t spent your life “studying” conspiracies, but without such a background you’re hardly in a position to judge what constitutes a good book on the topic. And since Aaronovitch is as disinterested in the topic as are you, he’s hardly in a position to write a good book on the topic, is he? I would have expected more from a teacher.

Refer to post 7 in this thread and read it carefully (i.e. not like a conspiracy theorist). I am not a public school boy - always have been delightfully and reassuringly working class. This could also make me unique here. I struggle to find a point in your post aside form the insults which I am sure gave you pleasure, other than the obvious one that you too would like to avoid discussing the book in question – have you read it? Oh, Andrew, what is to be done with you? It took only three weeks for you to read and reply to my post, yet you have the temerity to instruct others on how they should read (“not like a conspiracy theorist.”) Having read John Simkin’s post #7 herein “carefully,” I do not detect any anti-Jewish sentiment whatsoever, though you seem to do so. Please itemize which of John’s statements qualifies for such a characterization: “David Aaronovitch, a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (not an unusual background for NeoCons), became a cheerleader for Tony Blair after he received £6.5 million from the group of Jewish businessmen to help him in his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party.” Did Blair not receive the money? Or did it not come from Jewish businessmen? Or was Aaronovitch not a Blair cheerleader? “From that point on, along with Melanie Phillips, another left-winger who has moved sharply to the right over the last few years, Aaronovitch became the leading apologist for Israel's foreign policy.” Is Aaronovitch not a “leading apologist for Israel’s foreign policy?” If you have a problem with Mr. Simkin’s observation, please do spell it out, rather than leave the taint of an implied charge of anti-Semitism. It’s as unseemly as it is unwarranted, from where I sit. Or to find such a gross sin in Simkin’s prose must one read it “like a conspiracy theorist?” I am sorry to hear that you “struggle” to find a point to my prior missive. Surely they have remedial courses for such cognitive disability, no? It is remarkable that someone who feels free to hurl insults and invective at those here takes such offense when the favour is returned. Finally, to your point regarding the egregiously awful book in question, yes, I did toil through too many pages of tendentious codswallop, presented as though it were divinely inspired revelations, or even common sense "logic." It is, of course, no such thing, as you might have gathered had you bothered to read the review to which I linked. But you don't wish to read the opinions of others; only to instruct others on what they should read. The fact that arrogant people parade their twaddle as though it were holy writ doesn’t make it so. However, like Mr. Simkin intends to do, I borrowed a copy from the local library because, to paraphrase Elvis Costello, I don’t “stand to be insulted and pay for the privilege.” I recommend that others do likewise, because this sub-standard door-stop is an environmentally criminal waste of paper. It could certainly appeal to the congenitally incurious. If nothing else, it will reassure them that they need not think about things they might find troubling. And then they can recommend that everyone read it. As Andy Walker seems to do.

Dear Lord, what is vexing Andy Walker so? We are accustomed to his imperious pronouncements from on high, for that is the proclivity of school marms in general. And Andy usually dispenses them with an equal measure of wit and pith. But this recent volley of insults contains neither. It is grousing dressed up as argument and falls far short of what we expect of learned men. “... a jew who supports Tony Blair?” Is that what passes for reasoned argument these days, aspersions of bigotry not in evidence here? Being Tony Blair’s useful idiot is hardly a recommendation, but his religion is irrelevant except, perhaps, to those who raise it. Andy feels he is free to proclaim the greatness of Aaronovitch’s most recent literary output, yet seems to take issue with the right of those who have a different opinion. Those who seek to determine the true causes of historical events shrouded in mystery - there is no shortage of such phenomena - are considered “losers” by this author, yet are nonetheless expected to shell out for his bon mots. It is not as if Aaronovitch comes without preamble; his sub-literate scribbling on behalf of war-mongers is well known to those who read, and unforgivable to those who think. But never mind that, for even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn. It doesn’t, however, incline thinking people to pick up the latest tome by a blind pig, because the hit-to-miss ratio is simply so unfavorable as to dissuade us from doing so. Reading Aaronovitch on conspiracy is akin to reading a Sarah Palin book on climate change: a foregone conclusion. As John Simkin cited from the Robin Ramsey quote in Sparky Satori’s article - for which I provided a link - Aaronovitch hasn’t bothered himself with doing the homework necessary to debunk the conspiracies he derides. It is an intellectual charlatan who cherrypicks only what he feels he can neutralize, while gingerly avoiding that for which he has no countervailing argument. It is an impotent fraud who begins by accusing others of having a mental imbalance, then seeks examples to make the case. That is Aaronovitch in a nutshell. And, based on the blanket condemnation uttered against us all by Andy Walker - “we don't appear to have any of them here.... never have had in my opinion” - Aaronovitch is not alone in this smugly condescending self-satisfaction. Since you are no longer a co-owner of this forum, and since you find the company here so odious, can I suggest, dear boy, that you run along now and leave us to our own devices, that we might no longer cause you such offense? Or are you one of those little under-achieving snot-nosed public school boys who parade their presumed superiority in order to feel better about their own wretched little lives?

For a righteous spanking - well deserved by the Voodoo author - see: http://www.shortsshortsshorts.com/2009/09/...%80%9D-edition/ It's six months old, but not yet stale, unlike the book it demolishes.

The answer is most assuredly “yes,” provided one is prepared to interpret certain circumstantial evidence in a fashion that allows for that conclusion. 1. Why did Oswald go through the hassle of obtaining a phony early out from duty when he had so little time left to serve anyway? I have long argued that the speediness of his exit from the Marine Corps, with the USMC’s apparent connivance, indicates Oswald’s hardship discharge was a spurious ruse. Either his command was unaccountably lenient toward Oswald, or he was remarkably prescient in knowing precisely which lies to tell in order to obtain the discharge. For some clear but undetermined reason, it seemed imperative to have him arrive in the Soviet Union at the earliest possible opportunity. And an invisible hand - in a superior position in the bureaucratic food chain - facilitated the discharge by prevailing upon the USMC to dummy up the necessary rationale. As WC documents disclose, LHO’s choice of Helsinki as an entrance point coincided almost precisely with the CIA’s own concurrent “discovery” that the Soviet consul there had unique discretion in granting entry visas without lengthy bureaucratic delays. Either he was remarkably prescient, or - again - we see an otherwise invisible hand directing Oswald toward a goal, via the path of least resistance. When the Soviets failed to greet Oswald warmly as a genuine defector, he visited Consul Snyder under the pretext of wishing to renounce his citizenship. That it was a ruse designed for the consumption of the eavesdropping Soviets is indicated by two factors: first, that he loudly proclaimed his intention to betray US military secrets to the Soviets, an act against his own self-interest that served no purpose but to invite closer Soviet interest in him; and, second, that he failed to effect such renunciation when Snyder advised him to come back to do so, which Oswald did not. It is possible this Moscow Embassy charade served a third purpose, unknown perhaps even to Oswald, who seems to have been following a script written by others. Let us hypothesize, as many have already done over the past five decades, that the downing of Francis Gary Powers’ U2 overflight - launched in direct violation of Eisenhower’s own prohibition - was designed to sabotage the Peace Summit between Ike and Nikita, which is precisely what transpired as a result. Yet the Soviets had no known means of accessing the necessary technical information regarding the U2's capabilities in order to shoot it down, and no means of shooting it down if the plane was flying at maximum altitude.. If the plot was designed to scuttle the Summit, then the parties responsible for that plot had only one true option. They need sabotage the U2 to ensure that it could be shot down at something lower than maximum altitude. They could do this with little fear of their plot being exposed, for the pilot would never survive being hit, and if he somehow miraculously did, all U2 pilots were ordered to kill themselves (with the means thoughtfully provided them) rather than allow being captured. The plotter(s) had every assurance that the only meaningful witness would not survive. (Powers did survive, and failed to commit suicide as instructed.) But in order for said plot to succeed, the plotter(s) also needed a superficially viable - albeit entirely false - narrative of how the Soviets managed to achieve the missile accuracy to bring down a stealth flight at 100,000 feet. Enter Comrade Oswald, stage left, loudly announcing his intention to provide the Soviets with every military secret he had learned during his Marine Corps tenure at Atsugi’s CIA-operated U2 base. It is imperative to note that the plans for the Peace Summit had been made when LHO suddenly sought a discharge for which he was ineligible, and applied for a passport by stating an intent to travel to countries that would have otherwise disqualified him for said passport. It is also instructive to note that Powers himself allowed that Oswald might have provided the Soviets with the intelligence necessary to down his flight. 2. Why did Oswald write to the Albert Schweitzer College from Moscow advising of a date of arrival? Speculation: the arrival of said letter, irrespective of what it contained, was a signal of something, perhaps that he had arrived in Moscow or that the Soviets weren’t biting, or whatever. This is routine tradecraft disguised as something so mundane it wouldn’t raise a suspicious eyebrow among Soviets screening such outbound mail. 3. Why was Oswald not prosecuted for his threat to give the Soviets classified information? And, for that matter, why was he never even debriefed by CIA upon repatriation, when the Agency had multiple programs to do just that? (Of course there is now ample evidence that he was, but that’s not the charade script that everybody stuck to at the time, was it?) Anyone with the means to facilitate Oswald’s early USMC discharge and his easy entry into the Soviet Union presumably had sufficient sway to ensure that proxy agent Oswald wouldn’t be punished for having served his “patriotic” purpose.

Well, finally Bohning has outed himself, and his fellow traveller Ayton, as the fascistic anti-democrats that thinking persons have long known them to be. Imagine the nerve of John Simkin being educated in a school of which these two do not approve, and then being a member of a perfectly legal trade union. Good thing you weren't raised a Jesuit, John, or they'd have you strung up by the thumbs for spreading that dreadful liberation theology that keeps getting good priests killed in Third World hellholes to prevent the spread of anti-capitalist thought. Brave men and women refute bunkum through rigorous intellectual debate of the facts. Scared and tiny little men cannot muster the courage or intellectual skills to do this, and resort instead to impugning the messenger rather than the message. The truth remains the truth, no matter who speaks it. And, conversely, lies remain lies no matter how often the likes of Bohning and Ayton repeat them. They no doubt fancy themselves to be defenders of liberty and justice, yet the record of the Agency in whose service they toil is an entirely different tale. While loudly extolling the virtues of a democracy they claim should be global, they are hypocritical apologists for an agenda devoted to preventing democracy from spreading wherever it might impinge on profit. Since 1947, we have seen a trail of despots, military juntas, death squads, "disappeared" and shallow graves, all with the blessing or connivance of CIA. This is what they seek to defend, doing so here and elsewhere by asserting that people like John Simkin have no right to free association, freedom of thought or freedom of expression. That's some "democracy" they espouse. What easily frightened and feeble little fellows they be. When do the witch trials begin?

Bohning becomes more self-revealingly, laughably risible with each new missive. So the "militant leftwing organization, the politics of which are now rejected by the mainstream British Labor Party,” to which you belonged was the Labor Party. My God, how will you EVER rebound from being outed for such a youthful folly? AND you were a member of TRADE UNIONS? One is aghast to hear such things about you, John. Why could you not instead have joined a guild of retired covert intelligence operatives whose lifelong work is lying, treachery, obfuscation, misdirection and, ultimately, the overthrow of democratically elected governments, torture, and murder? Then you could hold your head proudly high, as does Bohning. As for being an "unethical sleazebag," or whatever, one wonders what the average person would say about a "journalist" who pretends that his first and only allegiance is reporting the truth to his readers, only to be unmasked as an aparatchik of a covert intelligence service. Would that make one an "unethical sleazebag" to readers who did not know for whom the "journalist" truly toiled? Since one cannot ride two horses with a single behind, when CIA and journalistic integrity took divergent paths, which horse did Bohning ride? Disingenuous, deceitful, duplicitous are among the words that spring to mind. But I'd best not anger Bohning, or he'll have Mel Ayton look through my sock drawer and reveal my habit of voting for a perfectly legal and rather dull democratic socialist party. How would I ever live down the shame of that being disclosed to the public? What a smug, miserable little pissant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8086738.stm

Don Bohning needs to consult with legal counsel. In order to launch an action against you, John, the AFIO would need to demonstrate it has standing to do so: i.e., it has become an injured party as a result of your actions. There is nothing in your postings that defames AFIO. Bohning is bluffing. Mind you, I'm sure AFIO has the financial resources to covertly underwrite an action against you should one of the parties you named wish to pursue it. However, that would require their individual willingness to face hostile questions about their background in open court. AFIO founder David Atlee Phillips was among the most litigious former Agency personnel. However, if memory serves, not one of those cases he launched ever reached open court. This demonstrates Phillips was unwilling to have his dirty linen aired in open court. Rather, a settlement was reached in each case, the terms of which were kept secret by non-disclosure language written into the settlement. He was often successful as a nuisance through intimidation and superior financial resources, but never did prevail based upon the facts or merits of a case, because those were never heard, let alone adjudicated. In point of fact, nothing you've posted reaches the level of libel contained in Bohning's own contribution, accusing you - as he does - of being an underhanded charlatan whose motivation is more determined by militant leftist ideology than a pursuit of the truth. If defamation has occurred, it has not been by you citing the writing and testimony of others, but by Bohning in his quest to discredit those who seek the resolution of this historical event. If anyone should fear a legal action, it is Bohning and the AFIO's own Intelligencer for having published Bohning's libel.

Jefferson: First, thanks very much for all your sustained efforts in plumbing this issue. It is a scab on the US body politic that must be healed, and your work will do much to accomplish that. We all owe you a debt of gratitude, no matter the outcome. Second, to your list of nexuses where we should be able to note an Oswald-Phillips convergence, might I add the matter of Phillips and McCord conducting an anti-FPCC campaign, from at least as early as January '61 onward? The Court Wood incident illustrates the extent to which both men were actively involved in monitoring FPCC, and one doubts that CIA somehow blanked out on Oswald's FPCC charade. Consequently, even if Phillips was no longer involved in such an anti-FPCC campaign by May '63, onward, when he consulted the Langley files he should have located data re: Oswald's FPCC contacts, even before LHO appeared on the radar via the Bringuier incident. Third, a few questions, if you're able to offer anything new. Dick Russell's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" offers data from CIA Mexico City operatives that beg for clarification. Russell's sources contend that Win Scott did have in his safe both photos of the real Oswald in Mexico City and a recording of his voice, purportedly on an acetate disc. Have you encountered any evidence of this being the case? As someone who suspects imposture in Mexico City, I think this is a highly pertinent point. Also, Russell has an obscure little footnote regarding the discovery of "lost" Oswald luggage at the Mexico City airport. Were we able to track that little item to its origins, I suspect it could have an explosive impact on what actually transpired in this case, and who was attempting to make it appear that Oswald had either been to Cuba previously, or was on his way there post-11/22/63 had he not been arrested in Dallas. Can you provide any additional information in that regard? Have you been able to determine anything further about LI/COZY-3, purportedly a Quaker-related young man from Philadelphia who, it was asserted by a reliable source, had given Oswald a ride on his motorcyle to one of the enemy Embassies in Mexico City? Thanks again for all your hard work.

Chris: The Considine piece originated during Ruby's trial in early '64, but the FBI apparently knew something well prior to that date. The following are from the NARA holdings. Please note the dates: AGENCY INFORMATION AGENCY : FBI RECORD NUMBER : 124-10254-10296 RECORDS SERIES : NK AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 62-3060-30 DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR : FBI FROM : REESE, MERRILL F. TO : SAC, NK TITLE : [No Title] DATE : 11/26/1963 PAGES : 1 DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT SUBJECTS : LHO, TELCAL, ADVICE, RADIO, WOR, OPINION, "LONG JOHN" CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL CURRENT STATUS : OPEN DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 06/02/1994 AGENCY INFORMATION AGENCY : FBI RECORD NUMBER : 124-10014-10165 RECORDS SERIES : HQ AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 105-82555-297 DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR : FBI FROM : SAC, PH TO : DIRECTOR, FBI TITLE : [No Title] DATE : 12/03/1963 PAGES : 1 DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT SUBJECTS : LHO, POST-RUSSIAN PERIOD, ASSOC, NEVELL, LONG JOHN, RADIO, WOR CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL CURRENT STATUS : OPEN DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 10/26/1992 Also odd is FBI's failure to spell Knebel's name correctly. A search of NARA using "Knebel" returns only references to Fletcher, while searching for Nebel returns nothing. It is only by searching for WOR Radio that a dozen hits come up, all except the two above referencing Mark Lane's or Jim Garrison's appearances on the station.

UPDATE: As you read the following, recall that Michael Townley was run by David Atlee Phillips. From: http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/20...-operation.html Death Squad International: New Operation Condor Revelations An Italian judicial investigation into the transnational snatch-and kill program known as Operation Condor has brought to light new evidence of U.S. government foreknowledge and probable complicity in these murderous operations. According to information posted last Friday by the National Security Archive, newly declassified documents, ... show that the U.S. government had detailed knowledge of collaboration between the Peruvian, Bolivian and Argentine secret police forces to kidnap, torture and "permanently disappear" three militants in a Cold War rendition operation in Lima in June 1980--but took insufficient action to save the victims. The new documents, ... address what has become known as "the case of the missing Montoneros," a covert operation by a death squad unit of Argentina's feared Battalion 601 to kidnap three members of a militant group living in Lima, Peru, on June 12, 1980, and render them through Bolivia back to Argentina. (A fourth member, previously captured, was brought to Lima to identify his colleagues and then disappeared with them.) "The present situation is that the four Argentines will be held in Peru and then expelled to Bolivia where they will be expelled to Argentina," a U.S. official reported from Buenos Aires four days after Esther Gianetti de Molfino, María Inés Raverta and Julio César Ramírez were kidnapped in broad daylight in downtown Lima. "Once in Argentina they will be interrogated and then permanently disappeared." Operation Condor, the brainchild of Chile's murderous Pinochet regime was launched in 1975 as a covert program that targeted leftists for elimination; a planned political genocide that claimed tens of thousands of lives. By the time of its official launch, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay Peru and Uruguay were collaborating in the project. The program became infamous for its terrorist operations when Chilean agents and anti-Castro exiles affiliated with Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles' fascist group CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations), planted a bomb under the car of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and detonated it in September 1976 on Washington's Embassy Row, killing the outspoken Pinochet opponent and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean Condor operative, Michael Vernon Townley, an American ex-pat with links to the Chilean fascist group Patria y Libertad and long-suspected of being a CIA asset, was later apprehended by the FBI as the organizer and bomb maker for the attack. Though convicted for the murders in federal court Townley was freed by authorities and remains to this day, in a U.S. Witness Protection Program. Shortly after Letelier's assassination, Bosch and Posada conspired to blow up Cubana Airline Flight 455 on October 6, 1976, killing all 73 passengers on board. Operation Condor drew from a seemingly inexhaustible pool of neofascists, anti-Castro terrorists, drug traffickers and military/intelligence operatives, many of whom were trained by the Pentagon at its infamous School of the Americas, and by the CIA at the Agency's Camp Peary facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. As such, Condor bears a striking resemblance to today's "extraordinary rendition" program and, similarly, utilized an unaccountable network of paramilitary "specialists," corporate cut-outs and dodgy characters to do the dirty work. According to the Archive's latest revelations, Peru's former military ruler, General Enrique Morales Bermudez, has admitted authorizing the Montonero kidnappings but continues to deny that Peru was a member of Operation Condor. But a secret CIA report, dated August 22, 1978, and titled "A Brief Look at Operation Condor" described Condor as "a cooperative effort by intelligence/security services in several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion. The original members included services from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia. Peru and Ecuador recently became members." (Emphasis added) A Chilean intelligence document confirms that Peru formally joined Operation Condor in March 1978. A State Department cable dated several weeks after the kidnapping stated that "there seems to be little doubt that the Peruvian army, acting in concert with its Argentine counterpart, resorted to the kinds of illegal repressive measures more familiar in the Southern Cone" than Peru. Italian judge Luisianna Figliolia, issued a 250-page court filing last December, indicting Morales, his military deputy Pedro Richter Prada as well as 138 other military officers from Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay involved the kidnapping, torture and "disappearance" of 25 Latin Americans who had dual Italian citizenship. The indictments followed a six-year probe by investigative magistrate Giancarlo Capaldo who referenced hundreds of declassified documents provided by the Archive's Southern Cone project. "These documents provide hard evidence of Condor crimes," according to project director Carlos Osorio, "that almost 30 years later still demand the resolution of justice." Battalion 601: The CIA's Handmaid Argentina's Battalion 601 was tasked by the ruling junta to "internationalize" the battle against Marxism beyond national borders. A Foreign Task Force (GTE) coordinated through the State Intelligence Agency (SIDE), was created for this express purpose. Commanded by Gen. Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason, a graduate of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and a hard-line Nazi with links to Operation Gladio, Suárez Mason was later tied to international narcotrafficking networks throughout Europe and Latin America. Suárez Mason was a key proponent of the crusade to "fight the first battle of World War III" in Central America. Indeed, much of the funding that flowed into the coffers of the so-called Nicaraguan "resistance" from Southern cone "dirty warriors" were derived from illicit narco-profits; a by-product of Argentina's involvement in the 1980 Bolivian putsch that installed Gen. Luis Garcia Mesa as president in La Paz. The coup had been financed by drug lord Roberto Suárez. (see "The CIA, Paramilitarism & Narcotrafficking: The Colombian Connection," for details of Bolivia's "Cocaine Coup.") At the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist League in 1980, an affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), Suárez Mason argued for the need to develop the anticommunist struggle in Central America, especially in light of the 1979 overthrow of the corrupt Somoza dictatorship by the Sandinistas. During the early 1980s WACL was directed by former U.S. Gen. John Singlaub, a key figure in the illegal arming of the Contra network. During Singlaub's watch WACL provided some $8 million for the initial cost of stationing Argentine advisors in Central America. According to Uruguayan journalist Samuel Blixen, the money may have come from secret funds managed by the CIA. A strong argument in favor of this scenario stems from the fact that years before the U.S. was publicly committed to overthrowing the Sandinistas, Argentine GTE operatives had created an extensive financial- and money-laundering network inside the United States. Blixen reports: Leandro Sánchez Reisse is the only member of the External Task Force of Batallion 601 who has confessed the link between the Argentine advisors and drug trafficking to finance undercover operations. ... Sánchez Reisse revealed that General Suárez Masón and the section of the army under his command received drug money...to fund counterinsurgency efforts in Central America. He explained that two businesses in Miami, one called Argenshow, dedicated to contracting singers for Latin American tours, and another called Silver Dollar, in reality a pawn shop, managed by Raúl Guglielminetti, were the two locations for transferring money. He admitted that Silver Dollar and Argenshow had channelled US$30mn in drug money sent via Panama to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. The money, he said, ended up in the hands of the Nicaraguan contras. He also revealed that since the mid-80s the CIA was fully informed of the two Florida businesses and that it gave its approval to the money laundering operations. ("The Double Role of Drug Trafficking in State Terrorism and Militarized Democracy," in Democracy, Human Rights, and Militarism in the War on Drugs in Latin America, TNI, Cedib and Inforpress Centroamericana, Guatemala, April 1997) Yet despite overwhelming evidence of Peru's participation in Operation Condor, the program's links to international narcotics syndicates during General Morales' collaboration with Suárez Mason, President Alan García, a staunch U.S. ally in the "war on drugs," denounced the Italian indictments as an "affront to Peru's sovereignty." The U.S. State Department has not commented on the case.

Having waded through ten pages of mostly bile and invective, one is amazed how much heat can be generated over so philosophical a point, with so little resulting light. [Also, having read Cliff Varnell’s passionate reasoning over the “bunch” issue for about ten years now, I can only marvel at Cliff’s stamina in dealing with people who presumably have never been fitted for tailor-made clothing. It is to laugh, were one not inclined to weep.] In the interests of full disclosure, about a decade ago I was a member of Rich Della Rosa’s forum, where I had the chance to deal directly with Gary Mack. On several occasions, he provided me with some research assistance, without knowing the use to which that assistance would be put by me. I was and remain thankful for that aid, yet couldn’t help but notice that his postings at that forum served more to diminish interest in various research avenues than to pique interest in them. Gary had seemed to become a self-anointed traffic warden, pointing the interests of others in directions he alone determined to be worthy, while attempting to steer fellow Forum members away from directions he found untenable. Fair enough. Those who have done much research and have vast resources at their disposal do their fellows a great service by pointing out the dead ends, blind alleys and cul de sacs that bedevil us all. Fraudulence should be exposed, where it can be demonstrated, for the common good. Yet, it became apparent to my satisfaction – on the topic of John Armstrong’s research – that Gary Mack was alleging shoddiness and fraud where it couldn’t be demonstrated, and had no basis upon which to make certain of his allegations. When confronted on that forum with taped and filmed interviews conducted by Armstrong with various persons, Gary Mack and his then-partner Dave Perry indulged in much “woulda-coulda-mighta” reasoning to rebut Armstrong’s findings, yet without the slightest evidence. It was nothing more than mere spit-balling various ideas and conjectures to ridicule Armstrong. [Rather like the in-person smearing and sliming by Mack and Perry of people presented by Jim Marrs, about which one can read much. What an odd way for researchers to comport themselves.] I argued strongly that one needn’t accept Armstrong’s hypothesis of two Oswalds in order to learn much from the work Armstrong had done, dealing as it did with first person interviews and parsing original documents, rather than the final documentary product provided for consumption by the Commission and, hence, by us. It seemed reasonable to me that we could learn much from Armstrong’s efforts, without necessarily embracing his conclusions, and that if Armstrong had indulged in any chicanery in his work, we were clever enough - collectively - to detect it. [Full disclosure: I find Armstrong informative, but unpersuasive on his key thesis.] I always thought Gary’s responses were disproportionate to the point of being nearly hysterical. At some point about this time, Gary was promoted at the 6th Floor Exhibit [not museum, please!] and ceased to post at that forum or elsewhere. More’s the pity, because his subsequent use of proxies and surrogates hasn’t served anyone well, least of all himself. Now, to the point at hand. I cannot fathom why there has been so much umbrage over what Mack has said on this occasion. "Virtually all the hard evidence leads to Lee Harvey Oswald." Why, yes it does. In fact, I would remove the word “virtually.” Gary Mack should not be pilloried for stating the obvious, but we should leave open the option to recall him for further questioning once we’ve investigated the hard evidence. There was a weapon found in the TSBD that was uniformly and consistently identified as a Mauser – by all DPD personnel and the Dallas DA – for a full day. [News accounts of Enfields and other rifles cannot be blamed upon DPD unless we can demonstrate DPD personnel were responsible for those misstatements.] Upon FBI’s alleged discovery that Oswald had mail-ordered a Mannlicher Carcano rifle of a different caliber, it was now alleged that all DPD personnel and the Dallas DA had misidentified the weapon for a full day. This would be a remarkably stupid error for all involved to commit, given that the MC was clearly stamped, thereby alerting anyone who held it that it was not a Mauser. At this point, we have several options. One of the following must be true. 1) More than one rifle was found, but the Mauser was made to evaporate; 2) Only a Mauser was found, but a MC rifle was substituted and all subsequent evidence and testimony was tailored to support that fabrication; or, 3) everyone on the DPD payroll who came into contact with the rifle was a blind idiot. From all I’ve read of his comments, Gary Mack seems to prefer the final option and discourages people from giving too much consideration to the two prior options. If I have misstated his position, I’m sure he will dispatch a minion to clarify. [Any and all private correspondence from Mack will be reproduced here, thereby negating any “no posting” rules that presumably apply to him.] There was a partial palm print found on the rifle that could be traced to Lee Harvey Oswald. This would certainly constitute hard evidence of Oswald having at least handled the rifle, if not necessarily owned it. However, like all other “hard” evidence in this crime, it is left open to question for a variety of reasons. When the rifle was sent to FBI on the night of 11/22/63, the Bureau found no prints identifiable as Oswald’s. In fact, in the area where the partial print was allegedly discovered, FBI was unable to locate any evidence that it had been dusted or that tape had been applied to either lift or preserve the print. Since the rifle was transferred from DPD to FBI possession not long before midnight on 11/22/63, if DPD located a partial palm print on the rifle, it must have transpired at some prior point in time. The man in charge of seeking those prints was Lt. Day, who testified to the WC that he had stopped working on the rifle at about 8 pm because he’d been told to go no further by Chief Curry, and also told the FBI that he had received those orders from Curry at about midnight. Needless to say, both accounts cannot be true, but then very little of what Lt. Day had to say could be easily mistaken for what a reasonable mind would think “true.” Lt. Day was adamant that he had found partial a latent partial palm print on the underside of the rifle, had dusted the area and was about to photograph and tape it when he was ordered to stop the process. It was only once the rifle was returned to DPD, after Oswald’s death, that the partial palm print was first disclosed. And yet, Day maintained in his WC testimony that a print had been located on the night of the assassination and that he had told both Chief Curry and Captain Fritz the print belonged to Oswald. The Commission provided no clues as to how it is possible to definitively identify a print that was never lifted by comparing it to the exemplar provided by Oswald upon his arrest. Despite this astonishing development, Curry refrained from advising the press that DPD had all but put the rifle into Oswald’s hands. [Oddly, a half dozen years later Curry penned a book in which he famously claimed: "We never could place Oswald in that window with a gun in his hand." That seems to repudiate Lt. Day’s tale in its entirety.] Whilst making a number of pronouncements to the press – true and untrue – about what DPD had found, there would be no mention of the latent partial palm print until after FBI denied such a possibility, and until after Oswald was dead. In point of fact, NBC’s Dallas affiliate WBAP TV announced: "No fingerprints on it-sent to FBI here in Washington for analysis." We are confronted with a variety of possibilities. 1) That DPD found no such print on the night of the assassination, which explains why FBI found no such print nor even evidence that such a print had been sought, let alone found, on a portion of the rifle that couldn’t be tested without first disassembling it. Once Oswald was dead, facing mounting pressure to prove that the man who had just died in DPD custody was the assassin, the fingerprint evidence was manufactured. In order to bolster the bona fides of this counterfeit evidence, statements and testimony by those involved were tailored for the purpose, but nevertheless remained contradictory on key points. 2) That despite having taken FBI courses on the protocols of processing fingerprints, Lt.. Day managed to observe those protocols in all areas of processing the weapon except the area that yielded the “now you see it, now you don’t” print. 3) That DPD found a print, identified it as belonging to Oswald, yet refrained from mentioning this key salient fact to the FBI when transferring the weapon to the Bureau, and failed to mention it to the press until after Oswald was dead; yet FBI was so incompetent that it couldn’t find the print, or even any trace it had ever existed, been sought or been lifted by DPD. I do not know where Gary Mack stands on this piece of hard evidence, but given its preposterously absurd nature, I think it is safe to declare that it is moreso evidence of bungling, at a minimum, or fraud, at a maximum, than it is evidence of Oswald’s guilt, irrespective of the intentions of those involved. There were shells located in the purported sniper’s nest on the 6th floor. This would tend to indicate, but does not prove, that shots were fired from there. Unfortunately, we have two different DPD evidence manifests, identical in all respects save one: the first such manifest indicates the discovery of only two shells, whereas a subsequent manifest discloses three shells. Again, we have multiple options from which to choose. 1) Only two shells were found, but when it was subsequently determined that two shots couldn’t account for all the damage done – hence, a second gunman firing from elsewhere – the paperwork was forged to include a third shell and bolster the case against a single gunman; 2) Three shells were found, but one was retained by Captain Fritz – without advising FBI that he was doing so – in order to locate the Dallas firearms dealers who sold such ammunition; or, 3) DPD personnel were somehow incapable of telling the difference between two and three. From what I’ve read of his comments, including his own arguments to my posts over the years, Gary Mack is inclined to prefer option number 2. He contends Captain Fritz withheld the third shell in order to locate the Dallas gun dealer who sold the ammunition to Oswald. I would be friendlier to Gary’s reading of this evidence were there the slightest indication in any of the extent record that: 1) Fritz advised FBI he was withholding a third shell, which is a rather inexplicable omission from so seasoned a homicide detective; 2) Fritz and his men undertook any demonstrable effort to locate such a gun dealer, a contention for which there is no evidence; 3) There was any DPD documentation that the third shell had been dusted for prints while in DPD custody, which seems a most fundamental piece of police detection. Gary discourages people from giving too much consideration to what I find the likelier option, #1. But then, Gary’s idea of what constitutes probative evidence is remarkably elastic when it serves his purpose. There was a bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital that was tied by ballistics to the Mannlicher Carcano allegedly found at the TSBD. This piece of evidence seems remarkably probative. Unless one, again, bothers oneself to actually examine the provenance of the bullet and what is offered to explain its appearance there, and the feats ascribed to it, despite it being so inexplicably intact. To spare all here the book-length arguments that have been and could be written about this piece of evidence, let’s simply focus upon the single key item that impeaches its provenance. The bullet was handled by Parkland Hospital orderly Darrell Tomlinson and PH security chief O. P. Wright. It is often neglected in recounting the story that Wright was a former police officer and well familiar with firearms, itself a rather telling omission, for in the absence of such information, Wright might be misconstrued as just a citizen unfamiliar with such matters. The extent record includes an FBI allegation that both had been shown the bullet by the Bureau, and had acknowledged that while they couldn’t definitively identify the bullet to the exclusion of all others, it seemed to be the one they had handled on 11/22/63. Yet the Bureau agent who allegedly showed them this bullet denies having done so, or ever even having said bullet in his possession. And both men, to varying degrees, deny that the bullet in evidence is the one they handled on the day in question, with Wright – the more familiar with such matters - being the more outspoken on the topic. Given so shoddy a pedigree, and further given evidence of FBI perfidy in trying to falsely establish that pedigree, and given that any substitution that might have taken place must have transpired while the bullet was in the possession of federal government agencies, this is not evidence against Oswald so much as it is evidence of tainting the legal record to falsely implicate Oswald. [Whatever quibbles Gary Mack might have with this point should be addressed to his colleague Tink Thompson, who has been dogged in at least this aspect of the case.] And so it goes. Other equally damnable “hard evidence” includes the mail order forms for the weapons purportedly ordered by Oswald; the information and evidence which should exist, but doesn’t, regarding his use of post office box[es]; the existence and provenance of the backyard photographs; the existence and provenance of various pieces of ID that were self-defeatingly obvious forgeries, et al. Gary Mack is right to claim all the hard evidence points to Oswald. Where we are wrong by inferring incorrectly, and where Gary Mack is wrong by omitting the key detail, is this: no single piece of “hard evidence” withstands the slightest scrutiny. It cannot do so without militating more for fabrication, misinterpretation and misrepresentation of evidence, in a pattern of concerted effort to falsely accuse Oswald, than it does for Oswald’s guilt. All of this has been more than self-evident since September of 1964, if not earlier, and hasn’t been resolved by the WC, the HSCA, the ARRB or any other governmental effort. That is why we are still here. It would be helpful if Gary Mack’s pronouncements to the media were to include a caveat that, while all the hard evidence points to Oswald’s sole guilt, there is good reason to question the provenance of each such piece of hard evidence, and the motives of those who have provided it.

Like Peter Lemkin, I have read a good deal of Chomsky's work and attended one of his lectures. His best work speaks for itself, and he seems unafraid of any topic, save one: conspiracy. Peter calls this a "blind spot," which is both charitable and an overwhelming understatement. As the good man has said himself: "The JFK assassination has engendered a kind of cult-like reaction, and ordinarily rational people act in what seem to me very strange ways." Ain't it the truth, though?

Secret Service agent Floyd Boring has died at 92. Despite being absent from Dallas, Boring was among those Secret Service agents whom researcher Vince Palamara found most intriguing. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/07bor...?ref=obituaries

How very odd. I freelanced for the Toronto Star many moons ago, and the understanding was always that whatever The Star paid to print became its property in perpetuity. Perhaps things have changed, but I don't see how copyright resides with Jo Matyas, or why Matyas should be paid - twice - for something that the Star is still giving away for free [the link provided by Michael Hogan still works more than two months later, despite the Star's policy that internet content will only be available at no charge for a seven day period, after which it must be purchased.] Consequently, when Matyas states: " I make my living as a full time freelance writer and the work that I produce is not given away "for free." perhaps Matyas might explain why it is OK for the Star to still give it away "for free," but not alright for it to be used here. Perhaps Matyas has an issue to take up with The Star, rather than this Forum. This is doubly odd when one realizes that Matyas' "trip was subsidized by the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau and Texas Tourism." Just how many different ways does a writer expect to be paid for the same material? Presumably the Kingston, Ontario writer Jo Matyas is not the same person as Joe Matyas of London, Ontario who writes for Sun Media, the Toronto Star's arch rival in the Canadian newspaper wars. Neither periodical would think it cricket for the same person to write for both competitors at the same time.