Mel Ayton

Dan Moldea researched Cesar's background and interviewed him a number of times. He also got Cesar to take a polygraph (yes, I know there will be some forum members who reject polygraphs).Moldea exhonerates Cesar.Furthermore, it should also be remembered that Cesar volunteered his statement to police - he volunteered handing over his handgun to police.They ignored him.There is nothing in Cesar's background to warrant irresponsible charges against him.The statement about when he sold his .22 is a red herring.At any time during the investigation the police could have demanded to see Cesar's other guns. He had the .22 for quite some time following the assassination - a rather strange thing to do if you are involved in a conspiracy. As Kennedy was led through the pantry by Ambassador hotel maitre’d , Karl Uecker, ‘Ace’ security guard Thane Cesar was waiting at the double swing doors.Uecker led Kennedy by the right wrist through the crowd which filled the pantry passageway.Cesar held RFK’s upper right arm.Kennedy moved through the pantry shaking hands with excited supporters and hotel workers occasionally breaking loose from his guides.Uecker said, “I took the Senator behind the stage.I was going to turn left to go to the Ambassador Ballroom and somebody said, ‘No.We’re going that way.We’re going to the press room (Colonial Room)’.I said, ‘This way, Senator….’ It was a last-minute decision.I don’t know who made it…The Senator was really happy, and he stopped again and again to shake hands…I got his hand, his right hand and I said ‘Senator. Let’s go now’. (A split second later I) felt something, somebody, moving in…the next thing I heard was a shot.It sounded like a firecracker.Then I heard a second shot.Senator Kennedy’s right arm flew up and he was TURNING (emphasis added)…it looked like the Senator saw what had happened.” The shot that killed Kennedy was fired from a distance of approximately one inch. In front of Kennedy there were about 20 people.Kennedy was in the midst of about 50 people.As Cesar approached Kennedy when he came through the pantry doors people began pushing and shoving towards the Senator.Cesar began to push them away as Kennedy had difficulty moving forward. Just before Uecker, Cesar and Kennedy reached the ice machine a couple of meters from the swinging doors.Cesar took Kennedy’s right arm at the elbow as Uecker kept hold of Kennedy’s right hand.Cesar let go as Kennedy began to shake hands with kitchen workers who were standing behind the serving tables.Cesar’s account is crucial because he was certain about how Kennedy was standing at the moments shots rang out. Cesar told Dan Moldea, “A lot of people testified that (Sirhan) was standing this way (with Kennedy facing his assailant).I know for a fact (that’s wrong), because I saw him (Kennedy) reach out there (to shake hands with a busboy) and which way he turned.And I told police about that.” Although Cesar did not see Kennedy hit or fall he knew the Senator’s head had been turned away from Sirhan’s gun exposing the right rear of his head, the part of his body hit by the fatal bullet .Cesar did not draw his gun until both he and Kennedy had fallen to the floor (Cesar dropped to the floor to avoid being hit by bullets).Cesar’s gun was only out of his holster for about 30 seconds and was not drawn until he began to stand up. Cesar was in shock.He also had powder burns in his eyes.He immediately ran out of the pantry when he saw Sirhan had been struggling with Kennedy’s aides and returned immediately with other Ace guards, Jack Merrit and Albert Stowers, who had been in the Embassy Room.Merrit entered the pantry with his gun drawn. The official LAPD version of the shooting concluded that the sequence of shots were as follows: *The first shot hit Kennedy in the head *The second bullet went through Kennedy’s shoulder pad, did not harm him, and exited and hit Paul Schrade. *The third bullet entered Kennedy’s right armpit and lodged in his neck. *The fourth bullet entered Kennedy’s back and exited through his chest, traveling upwards to the ceiling where it was lost in the interspace. *The remainder of the eight shots hit the other victims, some as ricochets off the ceiling and walls. However, as Dan Moldea argued, the reliable witnesses to the shooting all said the distance from Kennedy to Sirhan’s gun was between 1 ½ to 3 feet.Boris Yaro, a photographer for the Los Angeles Times said the gun was within “a foot” of Kennedy’s head. Therefore the first bullet could not have hit Kennedy as his wounds displayed “scorch marks” which could only have resulted from the gun having been placed an inch or so from Kennedy’s head. And, as Moldea explained, “All twelve of the eyewitness’ statements about muzzle distance is based on – and only on – their view of Sirhan’s first shot.After the first shot, their eyes were diverted as panic swept through the densely populated kitchen pantry.The seventy-seven people in the crowd began to run, duck for cover, and crash into each other.” One of the most reliable witnesses, Lisa Urso, who was able to see both Kennedy and Sirhan, saw Kennedy’s hand move to his head behind his right ear.As the distance from Kennedy to the gun after the first ‘pop’ was three feet it is likely he had been simply reacting defensively to the first shot fired. Urso described Kennedy’s movements as “…(jerking) a little bit, like backwards and then forwards”.Moldea believes the backwards and forwards jerking, “….came as Kennedy had recoiled after the first shot; he was then accidently bumped forward, toward the steam table and into Sirhan’s gun where he was hit at point blank range.” Dan Moldea believes the first shot hit Paul Schrade because the Kennedy aide’s last memory was of the Senator smiling and turning toward the steam table.Furthermore, in support of his thesis that the first shot hit Schrade, Moldea quotes ‘key witness’ Edward Minasian as saying, “I saw the fellow (Schrade) behind the Senator fall, then the Senator fell.” Kennedy probably saw Schrade hit because when he himself lay dying on the floor he asked, “Is Paul alright?” If Kennedy had indeed been hit by the first shot he would not have been standing, observing Schrade.The injury to Kennedy’s head was so severe he would not have been able to observe anything once the bullet struck. Moldea’s thesis is supported by eyewitness Vincent DiPierro who told investigators, “….I stuck my hand out and he shook my hand and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Congratulations Mr Kennedy’. And I walked with him as far as I could…I stayed as close as I could to him…into what is the kitchen more or less …..and this guy,…he was in a kind of a funny position because he was kind of down…like if he were trying to protect himself from something…he tried to push the people away from his hand…and then he…swung round and he went up on his…tiptoes…and…he shot…and the first shot I don’t know where it went, but I know it was EITHER HIS SECOND OR THIRD ONE THAT HIT MR KENNEDY (emphasis added) and after that I had blood all over my face from where it hit his head, because my glasses…(Martin Patrusky) saw the blood all over my face.” Moldea’s thesis is supported by one of the key witnesses, Frank Burns, who was identified as one of the five in the group (the others were Karl Uecker, Juan Romero, Jesus Perez, Martin Patrusky) that was closest to the Senator.Although Burns insisted the gun was never less than a foot or a foot and a half from Kennedy he nevertheless described the dynamics of the shooting in such a way to make it entirely feasible that Sirhan’s gun moved to an area inches away from the Senator.Burn’s had suffered a burn on his face which he thought was caused by a bullet passing near his cheek.It was likely a ‘powder burn’ from Sirhan’s pistol.Burns said: “… I had just caught up with him (in the pantry), and he was a step or so past him.And I’d turned around facing the same way as he turned toward the busboys I was just off his right shoulder, a matter of inches behind him.” After Sirhan fired his gun Burns said, “The noise was like a string of firecrackers going off, it wasn’t in an even cadence.In the process, a bullet must have passed very close to my left cheek because I can remember the heat and a sort of burn.I remember an arm coming towards us, through the people, with a gun in it.I was putting together the burn across my cheek, the noise and the gun and I was thinking, ‘My God, it’s an assassination attempt’.I turned my head and saw the gun and quickly looked back to the Senator and realized he’d been shot because he’d thrown his hands up toward his head as if he was about to grab it at the line of his ears.He hadn’t quite done it.His arms were near his head and he was twisting to his left and falling back.And then I looked back at the gunman, and at that moment he was almost directly in front of me.He was still holding the gun and coming closer to the Senator, PURSUING THE BODY SO THAT THE ARC OF THE GUN WAS COMING DOWN TO THE FLOOR AS THE BODY WAS GOING DOWN.( Emphasis added)” Burns’ description of the shooting may be the key to an understanding of how the angles of the bullet paths in Kennedy’s body were not consistent with the LAPD’s conclusions that Sirhan’s gun was extended horizontally. Following the first shot, which hit Schrade, Kennedy was struck by bullets entering his shoulder pad as he was raising his arm to defend himself.Then two shots hit his right armpit – one bullet lodged in the back of his neck.Finally, according to coroner Thomas Noguchi in an interview with Dan Moldea, the fatal head shot occurred.Noguchi said he based part of his explanation on the fact that had Kennedy been hit in the head on the first shot he would not have been able to stand.The head shot would have taken him off his feet immediately. Noguchi told Dan Moldea, “So I believe there were four shots fired at (RFK) at least. The sequence? The shoulder pad shot as he was raising his arm, the two shots to his right armpit, in which one of the bullets lodged in the back of his neck, and , lastly, the shot to the mastoid. This was the shot that was fatal.” (Moldea p312) Noguchi told Douglas Stein in 1986, “The senator had three gunshot wounds -- a head wound behind his right ear and two through the right armpit. To reconstruct a scenario of the shooting, the gunshot wound to the head wouldn't tell us much, except how close the assailant may have been. We must remember the body is constantly moving, with arms especially changing position. When you examine a body, it's in a horizontal state, so I had to physically and mentally place his body in an upright position to interpret the wound configurations. When a bullet penetrates the skin, it generally leaves a round hole. But the wound to the senator's armpit was not round. To make it round, I had to move the arm fifteen degrees forward after raising it to ninety degrees. I had to do that to understand the relation head wound came from a back-to-front direction; the second wound was on the side, and the third was slightly shifted, indicating he was turning clockwise. ……We know that the three gunshot wounds were at close range.” Moldea places a lot of misunderstanding about the shooting on the general lack of knowledge about how crowds react during violent incidents.Both conspiracy advocates and official investigators did not understand the dynamics of crowd movement and of how crowds can rapidly change direction and positioning in an instant.This would have been especially true in the Kennedy case, after the first shot when people reacted out of fear, shock and perhaps defensively.People in the pantry were also turning their heads to look for the source of the sounds; on realizing a gun had been fired some would have stumbled, fallen and crashed into objects around them and clashed with others in the crowd.In such circumstances it is easy to see how only a few witnesses placed Sirhan’s gun within a foot or two of Kennedy’s head.It should be remembered that none of the LAPD ‘most credible’ witnesses actually saw Kennedy shot. Moldea’s conclusions about the movement of the crowd is supported by a statement made by Dr Marcus McBroom to KABC TV Los Angeles reporter Carl George, immediately following the shooting. McBroom said, “I was 5 or 6 people behind him (RFK). He was moving and then stopping. Apparently a little…if I’m not mistaken….a man who was in a work shirt, his hair was all tossled. He sort of approached the Senator from the front and he was sort of smiling and then suddenly it seemed like there was one short and then five shots in quick succession. I do know the crowd panicked and I was thrown back into the ballroom…..” Furthermore, as Dan Moldea points out, the estimates for the distance of the gun were based on when the first shot was fired.The estimates ranged from 1 ½ feet to 8 or 9 feet.In an instant, following the first shot, the whole dynamics of the crowd changed.As one LAPD detective told Dan Moldea, “…Eyewitness testimony? You talk about 77 people in a room and 12 actual eyewitnesses to the shooting.These are people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.You’re expecting accuracy in their statements? 12 different eyewitnesses will generally give you 12 different versions of a story…eyewitnesses are not trained or experienced or qualified to make judgements about what they see in such situations.” As Thomas Noguchi observed, “…I believe that the Kennedy assassination must go down in the history of forensic science as a classic example of ‘crowd psychology’, where none of the eyewitnesses saw what actually happened.” It is unlikely that second-shooters in an elaborate conspiracy would have remained undetected.In addition, conspirators could not have known which route Kennedy was to take when he left the Embassy ballroom stage and entered the kitchen pantry.He was directed along that route by an aide.A number of other routes could have been taken.Conspiracy advocates find this fact irrelevant.They believe that multiple assassins may have been waiting at various locations on the possibility that RFK chose another route.However, there is a central weakness in their thesis.There has simply been no evidence which would have supported it. Mel Ayton http://crimemagazine.com/05/robertkennedy,0508-5.htm

Pat, I agree - you may be interested on my 'take' on the accident. http://crimemagazine.com/05/tedkennedy,1017-5.htm

FYI Pavane for Princess: No Poison for Marilyn, Shakespearean Dream BY RON ROSENBAUM What does it mean that our culture entertains two conflicting narratives of Marilyn Monroe’s death? Two conflicting versions of the Marilyn Monroe myth, actually. Suicide blonde, driven to take her life by the fevers of sexual hypocrisy, by the drugs she used to numb the pain of being a victim of Power, of Hollywood, of us? Or a murder victim killed by sinister forces who used a “poisoned enema” to silence her. That’s the alternative raised by the surprising publication, in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 5, of no less than three pieces that relate to Monroe’s death, one of which (I’m not making this up) suggests that her death was the result of murder by poisoned enema. Yes, that’s the Los Angeles Times, that big daily on the left coast (not Weekly World News), that appeared to some to give credibility to an enema-related conspiracy theory of Marilyn Monroe’s death. The first document was the supposed “transcript” or “notes” of a tape Marilyn made for her psychiatrist. This document got the most attention—mainly, I think, because it discussed Marilyn’s orgasms. But far more sensational is the “personal account” of John W. Miner, the former head of the medical-legal section of the L.A. district attorney’s office, who observed Marilyn’s autopsy, analyzed the medical forensics of her death and supplied his “transcript” of the now-lost Marilyn tape. Mr. Miner’s account concludes with a ringing call to remove Marilyn from her “water-impenetrable crypt” and have her re-autopsied. The Miner “tape transcripts” (let’s call them M1)—his purported notes on a now-lost, long, rambling Marilyn Monroe monologue, based on a tape said to be once in the possession of her psychoanalyst—have been whispered about for years, as well as referred to by journalists such as Seymour Hersh and quoted or paraphrased in a number of books. Mr. Miner presents these notes as evidence against the official verdict on Monroe’s death in August 1962, which the county coroner called a “probable suicide.” Mr. Miner says the tape demonstrated that Marilyn was not suicidal, but rather excited about her plans for the future, including the “Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival” (more anon). But Mr. Miner’s theory of how she actually died—the “poisoned enema” conspiracy and what you might call the “Clue of the Purple Colon,” which appears in the second document, Mr. Miner’s “personal account” of his investigation (let’s call this document M2)—is new to me. I guess I hadn’t been paying attention to the cottage industry of M.M. conspiracy theories, which has become an industrial-strength publishing phenomenon. The mainstreaming of a document which concludes that Marilyn Monroe was killed by a “poisoned enema” is, to say the least, a startling development in contemporary culture; it suggests we’ve reached a point where the once-marginal Marilyn-was-murdered conspiracy theories have become almost as credible in the popular imagination (and the mainstream media) as the original narrative. A Conspiracy Taxonomy So I think it’s time to construct a taxonomy of Marilyn Monroe conspiracy theories and examine how the L.A. Times’ startling publication of the Miner documents will inevitably feed into a fevered subculture of uncorroborated theories that do a disservice to the person who once was Marilyn Monroe, a person now increasingly buried by myth and mystification. I’m not suggesting the L.A. Times was wrong to publish them—and there was an accompanying article (M3) that raised some questions about them—but the weight of M1 and M2 is to make a virtual prosecution case for murder. I’d suggest that it’s probably too late to find out the truth with any certitude—there have been so many conflicting and changing stories about what went on the night she died—but I’m interested in what the two narratives tell us about Marilyn and about ourselves, why we choose to believe one or the other. Consider the implications to be found in a compressed version of the suicide narrative (let’s call it N1) that is to be found on the back cover of the paperback of one of the more mainstream Marilyn biographies, the one by Barbara Leaming: “You will come away filled with new respect for Marilyn’s incredible courage, dignity, and loyalty, and an overwhelming sense of tragedy after witnessing Marilyn, powerless to overcome her demons, move inexorably to her own final, terrible betrayal of herself.” Note that it’s “her demons,” “her … terrible betrayal of herself.” Bad as we are, bad as our culture is, she did it, she’s to blame: that “terrible betrayal” of yourself is precisely something you choose and must bear responsibility for, demons or no demons. So that’s N1(TB): suicide by terrible betrayal. Which takes its place alongside the other suicide narrative, N1(WS), suicide because We Suck as a culture in our sick lust for celebrity sex symbols that drives them crazy. “We,” American culture, drove her to it. N1 also has a relatively innocent Kennedy version (as opposed to the ones where they have her snuffed)—let’s call it N1K—a connection not necessarily linked to her death. I think that after the J.F.K./Rat Pack sex-addict stories surfaced, most people who believe in N1 assumed it’s been proven that Marilyn had an affair with J.F.K. The narrative within the narrative of a J.F.K. affair usually pictures the Kennedys afraid that revelation of the affair would scandalize the nation and taint the Presidency. And it seems to be a fact, according to even mainstream N1 biographers, that Marilyn spent nights under the same roof as J.F.K. And although there’s no proof they spent nights under the same sheets, it’s certainly not in the extreme, “poisoned enema” realm of conspiracy-theory possibility to believe they did. I tend to credit the J.F.K. rumors—was there any actress in Hollywood he didn’t sleep with? But with R.F.K. (N1K2), all you have is a Rashomon of versions. Some say they were confidantes, some they were lovers, some that she was obsessed, some that he was obsessed—there are scattered sightings together, he was reported present in L.A. by some the day she died. But no real evidence of anything more than public appearances and private dinners has surfaced. Which brings us to the Marilyn Murder Narrative (N2). I have been mostly skeptical about the many variations of these. I remember when I gently poked fun in print at Norman Mailer when he first nudged it out of the shadows back in the 70’s at a press conference to accompany his attempted metaphysical inflation of the Marilyn myth in a lavishly hollow book that was not his best work. (Mailer later told 60 Minutes he’d changed his mind—that he now thought it was “10 to 1” against conspiracy, but at the time he communicated his irritation with me for doubting the possibility of murder.) But over the years, my resistance to the possibility has been weakened by revelations of just how down and dirty the Kennedy-Teamster war was, by a torrent of books by writers who couldn’t resist the temptation to link Marilyn’s death to the mob, the Kennedys, the alleged wiretap blackmail tapes, sinister psychoanalysts, you name it. And the L.A. Times documents, particularly Mr. Miner’s “personal account” of his investigation (M2), had me going for a while with its firsthand detail. I’m indebted for resisting the temptation to one of the few scrupulously skeptical analyses of Marilyn conspiracy theories you can find on the Web: “The ‘Assassination’ of Marilyn Monroe,” by Mel Ayton, originally published by Crime magazine, July 24, 2005. Still, let’s look at where the L.A. Times documents fit into the second narrative, N2, the murder narrative. Once you start down the N2 road, you find several key branching paths to follow. Initially, one branch—let’s call it N2A—had Marilyn murdered by the Kennedys to silence her about either (N2Asub1) their sexual affairs, or (N2Asub2) secrets she’d learned about the Kennedys’ Castro assassination plots from pillow talk. (Hey, I’m just reporting on what’s out there in the culture; think of me as an anthropologist, your Claude Levi-Strauss of conspiracy-theory studies.) But recently—largely, it seems, through the indefatigable efforts of British Marilyn-conspiracy theorist Matthew Smith—a competing subnarrative has emerged (N2B): Marilyn wasn’t killed by the Kennedys, she was killed by enemies of the Kennedys. (The enema of my enemies is my friend?) Enemies who wanted to embarrass the Kennedys by the torrent of bad publicity that would come out when Marilyn’s death uncovered her illicit relationship with J.F.K. and/or R.F.K. And when this didn’t ensue, Mr. Smith contends, these same Marilyn-murdering conspirators (the usual suspects: renegade C.I.A. guys, along with assets from the military-industrial complex, the Mafia, etc.) went on to kill J.F.K., then R.F.K., and also to ruin Teddy’s political career at Chappaquiddick. In Mr. Smith’s view, Marilyn’s murder is the key fulcrum to the entire history of the past half-century. She was the J.F.K. assassination before the J.F.K. assassination. The Clue of the Purple Colon So much history dependent on an enema, huh? What’s interesting about the Miner memo of his investigation, M2 (which for a time had been made unavailable on the L.A. Times Web site, but try Googling “Miner’s Account of Monroe’s Death”), is that he was there in the morgue on August 1962. He begins, Raymond Chandler style: “For me it began when I looked at the naked body of a 36 year old woman. She was dead. She was beautiful. She was Marilyn Monroe, awaiting her autopsy.” He describes how he and Deputy Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi “searched her entire body surface and orifices with magnifying glasses to look for any traces of needle injections. He then took smears from her … ”—T.M.I. alert! Then he takes us through his case that Marilyn was murdered by a “poisoned enema.” First, he attempts to disprove the standard N1 theory “that Miss Monroe swallowed a large amount of Nembutal capsules.” She died of a Nembutal overdose, he says, but “without leaving any traces of the drug in her stomach or duodenum …. Even though the stomach contents disappeared [!] … we can conclude this from the fact that, had she taken so many capsules orally, [because of] the yellow coloring of the capsules … there should have been yellow dye stains in the stomach or duodenum. There were no such stains.” So she didn’t swallow the Nembutal, and she wasn’t injected. The only way she could have as much Nembutal as she did in her system, he argues, was through its administration by enema (not suppository—this seems a major forensic point for Mr. Miner). The fact that she had a fatal Nembutal-dosed enema is proven by the Clue of the Purple Colon (he didn’t call it that; I did): the purplish discoloration proving, according to him, that the drugs in the enema had irritated the lining of the colon. His final conclusion: Nembutal capsules were broken open, their contents dissolved in water, and the infusion added to the enema, causing a fatal overdose. “It must be concluded from the medical evidence alone,” Mr. Miner declares in the L.A. Times, “that Marilyn Monroe was killed by person(s) unknown.” Mr. Miner doesn’t join in the speculation about who those unknown person(s) were. In fact, he discounts speculation about the alleged J.F.K. and R.F.K. liaisons being an important factor, citing the “tape transcripts” in which she declares she’d never embarrass the President and that she wasn’t obsessed with R.F.K. But he does suggest the intervention of people with power when he points to “a very strange circumstance: the disappearance of much of the specimen materials that had been submitted for examination. The stomach contents, the organ samples, the smear material somehow all vanished! I know of no other such instance.” Now Mr. Miner’s a serious guy. Back in 1962, in addition to being the D.A.’s medical-forensics liaison to the chief medical examiner, he was an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at U.S.C. Medical School. But he does seem to omit a crucial possibility in his conclusion: accidental overdose (N3subAOD). Marilyn had been taking too many pills for too long, and when that happens and tolerance builds up, the line between maintenance dose and overdose is dangerously thin. As a reporter, I’ve investigated cases in which people died that way. And for all we know, Marilyn—who expresses a fondness for the health benefits of enemas in the “tape transcripts”—may have infused her own enema with pills and miscalculated. And there’s the possibility that the other drug found in her system had a synergistic effect with whatever amount of Nembutal she’d taken. That was chloral hydrate, which Mr. Miner describes somewhat pejoratively as “a knock-out drug popularly referred to as a ‘Mickey Finn.’ It is infrequently prescribed for insomnia.” “Infrequently prescribed” means it sometimes was prescribed for insomnia, not always given with homicidal intent. It seems possible to me that she didn’t necessarily have the intent to commit suicide, although building up a near-fatal barbiturate tolerance is certainly a cry for help. Nor is it necessary to believe that someone “poisoned” her enema by (as M2 describes it) breaking open a lot of Nembutal capsules, dissolving them in water and adding them to the enema infusion. So Mr. Miner omits the accidental-overdose possibility (N3subAOD), which would throw both N1 and N2 into doubt. But he does rather pointedly, if you read M1 and M2 closely, add in a fourth possibility: The maid did it (N2TMDI). In M1 (are you following this? That’s the so-called “tape notes”), Marilyn talks about wanting to fire her housekeeper. And in M2 (his “personal account”), Mr. Miner tells us the maid admitted to mysteriously doing a load in the washing machine at Marilyn’s place at midnight on the night of the death—behavior, Mr. Miner implies, that might be connected with laundering away the “poisoned enema” evidence. If the N1 narrative (Marilyn driven to suicide) can be used to blame Monroe herself, to blame society, to blame us, the N2 narratives (Marilyn was murdered) tell a different story. In effect, they exculpate us, our culture, our stupid values, and place the blame for the tragedy on a few sinister powerful individuals. We’re good, Marilyn was good, our culture isn’t that bad. And they—the unknown assassins of Marilyn—are the locus of evil in our world. Farewell, Cleopatra I don’t know what to make of M1, the supposed “tape transcript” or notes. (Mr. Miner said that Marilyn’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, played the tape for him in 1962 to prove she wasn’t suicidal. Mr. Miner says he’s releasing his transcript now to counter conspiracy theories that Greenson was involved in her murder.) The document that the L.A. Times published is what Mr. Miner (now 86) claims were his notes off those tapes, taken not while they were being played, but from memory afterward, although how long afterward he was vague about when repeatedly questioned about the timing of his “note taking” on MSNBC’s Dan Abrams show. Yet there are a number of features of the “transcript” that sound intimate or goofy enough to be real. In particular, Monroe’s meditations on literature: her claim, for instance, that Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in Ulysses gave her the idea of making this confessional free-association tape. Yes, there’s a lot of talk about movie stars: Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, her ex-husbands—all pretty boring to me. There’s ambiguous talk which could be interpreted as her promising to be discreet about an affair with J.F.K., and some emotional attachment she claimed that R.F.K. had for her, almost all of which has the slightly shopworn ring of book-proposal material (the tour of the husbands, what Arthur Miller was like in bed). But then there’s her purported Shakespeare fantasy, which is naïve, endearing, earnest and slightly daffy—the appealing qualities that made Marilyn Monroe seem more than a blonde bombshell. Apparently, according to Mr. Miner’s notes of Marilyn “free associating,” she badgered Laurence Olivier to agree to give her Shakespeare lessons if she would first spend a year studying Shakespearean “basics” with acting guru Lee Strasberg. But Mr. Miner’s notes at this point seem to capture something hard to make up: After she claims to have “thrown all [her] pills in the toilet,” she tells Greenson on this purported tape (which has disappeared or been destroyed), “I’ve read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines. I won’t have to worry about the scripts. I’ll have the greatest script writer who ever lived working for me and I don’t have to pay him.” She goes on to entertain the absurd notion that she could play 14-year-old Juliet at her age, 36. (“Don’t laugh,” she wisely admonishes.) But adds: “I’ve some wonderful ideas for Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude”—somewhat more plausible roles. She tells us she plans to “produce and act in the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival.” There’s a touching earnestness to it that’s hard to fake. Actually, she was probably born to play Cleopatra, world-renowned sex symbol. Indeed, in a way, she did “play Cleopatra” in the popular imagination (and both women died of poison). In Shakespeare, Cleopatra is the iconic sexual distraction from affairs of state that led to the downfall of one of the three pillars of the world—in Cleopatra’s case, Mark Antony; in Marilyn conspiracy theory, it’s J.F.K. There’s a further Shakespearean resonance of another kind to all of this. I’m just finishing revising a chapter of my book on Shakespeare scholarly controversies, a chapter that deals with the “revision” question in King Lear. (I’m sure you all read my detailed treatment of the “revisions” in Hamlet in the May 13, 2002, New Yorker.) The Lear chapter focuses on the two endings of Lear, or more precisely the two versions we have of Lear’s last words. One school of scholars argues that the 1608 Quarto version of Lear, which ends with Lear crying out “Break, heart, I prithee break”—usually interpreted as a cry for self-annihilation—is a more explicitly suicidal version of Lear’s end than the 1623 Folio version. That version, beloved of readers, actors and directors, is more ambiguous, giving us a Lear who dies—perhaps—thinking he has seen signs that his beloved daughter Cordelia still has breath in her: “Look on her! Look her lips, / Look there, look there!” If the first ending implies suicide, the second implies a delusion or fantasy of renewed life. The problem is that the scholarly controversy over whether Shakespeare revised Hamlet and Lear—and what changes can be proven to be his and not that of contemporary interlopers, compositors, theater managers, actors, etc.—is still an unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, debate (as certain Shakespearean biographers fail to acknowledge). And so we are left in doubt about the two versions of Lear’s last words. Two different endings, two possible narratives. Here, as with Marilyn Monroe’s death, we must entertain what Keats called, in reference to Shakespeare, “negative capability”: entertaining two or more conflicting possibilities in the absence of certainty. I doubt Marilyn was murdered. I’m not even sure she intended to commit suicide. I don’t know if her body should be disinterred for re-autopsy, but I think her persona should be disinterred from uncorroborated conspiracy theory. And I wish she’d had the chance to play Cleopatra. Just sub a poisoned enema for the asp. You may reach Ron Rosenbaum via email at: rrosenbaum@observer.com .This column ran on page 1 in the 8/29/2005 edition of The New York Observer.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Norman, It was a clip-on necktie.

John, I have not got a clue what you mean by hearing about Pepper's finances 'from the horse's mouth' - I assume you have been in private correspondence with him.You need to provide further information about what you mean. Yes, I think it would be best if you read the DOJ report first before any more postings.You also seem not to have read either my book or Gerold Posner's.If you limit your reading to 'conspiracy books' you will be intellectually 'trapped'.For my part I set out trying to destroy Posner's theories.I was unable to do it.I would have enjoyed nothing better than to provide impeachable evidence that Posner was wrong. Oliver Stone never intended making a picture about one man's finding small pieces of evidence.Why you state that from what I wrote in my post is beyond me.A lot of people involved with Pepper and Jowers did believe they would benefit from the movie.I believe I have given you good reason why. As per the article I posted - if you cannot accept the reasoning of these scholars then there is nothing more to be said.Nothing, apparently, will persuade you otherwise.Please don't take the comments about Roswell out of context- the writer is making a point about the ridiculous nature of events which have come about because of the way in which conspiracists have distorted this story. The 'evidence' about JEH is nowhere to be found - can you quote the sources?If not, you simply cannot keep on guessing about his role in the assassination.I can come up with endless amounts of speculation about particular events in American History but I will be laughed out of town if I do not provide factual evidence.This is simply not the way history is written.You can guess all you like until the cows come home but that's all it is - guesswork. John, I do not wish to be disrespectful but you have provided nothing in the way of evidence, apart from speculation, which can support your intimations that MLK was murdered by either the FBI or some form of government cabal. Pepper's book, 'Orders To Kill, as you will be aware, sets out in detail Grabow's story which she told to Pepper.By reading the DOJ report you will also learn about the DOJ team's research into this woman's claims.

John, I cannot agree with your characterisation of Pepper's role.He cannot have it both ways - is his work a brief for the defense of Ray or is it a history of the assassination ? - either way, his work fails to convince. If we accept your description of him as a 'prosecutor' then his work has to be seen as extremely biased. How could MLK 'trust' Pepper if he only had a slight acquaintance with him?MLK saw Pepper's article about Vietnamese refugees but they never carried on a long friendship. I also fail to see how you can conclude Pepper was not in it for the money.Do you have any information about Pepper's financial gains or losses with respect to his life-long MLK investigation? Personally, I don't know what his motives are.It may be because he really believes in his 'quest'.I do know there was considerable money changing hands for the C4 'Trial' in the early 90s.Pepper also stood to benefit in a number of ways, including the now abandoned Oliver Stone movie and his book sales as well as payments he receives from the lecture circuit. Did you read Posner's expose of Pepper's money-making scheme before he established himself in the UK? Please do not confuse the life of Dr King with his family who have come under severe criticism of late because of their obvious greed. The articles which chronicle this can be found by a simple google search. Andrew Ross and Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow (Bearing The Cross) also give testimony to the ways in which this family have had the wool pulled over their eyes. SPITTING ON HIS FATHER'S GRAVE Is Martin Luther King Jr.'s son a fool or a knave? Answer: He's both. BY ANDREW ROSS in an op-ed piece in Wednesday's New York Times, David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., takes King's son to task for declaring that James Earl Ray did not assassinate his father on this day 29 years ago. Garrow wrote that Dexter King's "conduct is so misinformed and irresponsible that it threatens to betray his father's legacy." Threatens? Dexter King could not have done more to betray that legacy if he had dug up his father's bones, pulverized them into dust and spat on his grave. His action brought home just how intellectually and morally bankrupt the civil rights movement has become. In a bizarre episode last week, a nattily dressed Dexter King marched into the Nashville prison where James Earl Ray is serving a life sentence, shook the hand of his father's assassin and told him, "I believe you and my family believes you." Describing their meeting as a "spiritual experience," King accepted the lowlife bank robber's protestations of innocence, claims he has periodically proffered ever since voluntarily pleading guilty 28 years ago. How all the white supremacists in the land must have laughed. Numerous investigations, including the House Assassinations Committee in 1978, have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that Ray pulled the trigger on that fateful day, April 4, 1968. Dexter King has not one iota of evidence to contradict the official investigation's findings. What he does have, he told a Nashville news conference, is "My instincts ... that there are those forces out there that don't want what has been in darkness to come to light." That, and Ray's attorney, who has been leading the King family on a merry chase after unnamed "conspirators" who are supposedly the real killers of King. Oh yes, and a movie deal with myth-maker extraordinaire Oliver Stone, who cannot wait to unspool another vile distortion of American history, this time on the King case. Dexter King might be dismissed as a hustler, or a vaguely potty relative of a political leader, like Roger Clinton or Billy Carter. But as president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta, he's the official inheritor and spokesman for King's movement. As such, he's all too symptomatic of how badly corroded that movement, and its leaders, have become -- blame-mongers with little more to offer America's besieged black community than vague references to "forces out there" like the "CIA" and "white racism." "In a strange sort of way, we're both victims," Dexter King told James Earl Ray, giving the victim pathology a sick new twist. But King is not alone in embracing people who sorely lack that moral character about which his father spoke so eloquently. In recent months, black churches have greeted O.J. Simpson like a long-lost brother; the Congressional Black Caucus feted Johnnie Cochran, who played the race card to get his client off; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson paid bedside homage to the late Tupac Shakur, whose "gangsta" role model sets such a constructive example to black youth. In such a moral vacuum it is no surprise that the most listened-to black leader these days is Louis Farrakhan, a racist whose belief in blue-eyed devils, numerology and space ships differs only in degree from the conspiratorial worldview offered by more "moderate" leaders like Dexter King. With the heirs of the two greatest black leaders of our era -- King and Malcolm X -- converging in irrational paranoia, a civil rights movement rooted in rational democratic values has been officially snuffed out. Meanwhile, racists and loons of various hues can now join hands and rewrite history at will. James Earl Ray didn't kill Martin Luther King Jr. The bigot Byron De La Beckwith didn't shoot Medgar Evers in 1963. The Ku Klux Klan didn't blow up four little girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church. It wasn't a gang of good 'ol boys, in an attempt to stop the gospel that Dexter King's father was spreading, who dumped the bodies of Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney in the red earth of Mississippi in 1964. It was all the work of the "dark forces" -- the CIA, the FBI, the ATF, the Zionist Occupied Government -- the same people who brought AIDS and crack to the black community, killed Martin, Malcolm, Bobby, JFK, Marilyn Monroe, the 168 people in Oklahoma City, Vincent Foster, the passengers on TWA 800, the extra-terrestrials who landed in Roswell, N.M., and -- we're sure to find -- members of Heaven's Gate. In the end, it won't be the penny-ante thugs and racists like James Earl Ray who destroy the hopes and aspirations, still denied, of black Americans. It will be the mind-set perpetrated by the likes of Dexter King, leaders who have abdicated their intellectual and moral responsibilities and embraced myth, paranoia and helplessness -- everything that his father fought against. April 4, 1997 Also David Garrow's take on the King family: http://archive.salon.com/news/1998/04/28news2.html With regard to your comments about J Edgar Hoover - the FBI's hatred of King and his COINTELPRO activities does not establish any proof that JEH was involved in MLK's murder - in fact there is no proof whatsoever. If you have any credible evidence I would like to see it. Don Wilson's 'motive' becomes irrelevant and if his allegations are untrue - which I believe them to be.Your guess about his motives is as good as mine but I don't think it too far-fetched to believe his failing business had something to do with it as the DOJ investigators implied. Please read my post about Wilson again. I don't know what you mean by the 'hypnotised' comments.Grabow was a fantasist as I stated in my last post.Do you believe she was correct about the JFK assassination and Jack Valenti's purpoted role as a 'pornographer'?

John, For some years Pepper described Carthew as a ‘British Nationalist’ – to his American readers this would mean nothing more than the man was patriotic.When Pepper’s deception was revealed he then cited Carthew’s real political affiliation.Even then, within the context of his writing, most American readers would not have known what the BNP stood for.Carthew had no fear he would be charged with perjury – there was simply no way of verifying whether or not his statement was true. This is the way Pepper works.He introduces a fact then when it is exposed as untrue (eg:The Mustang’s radio) he adds a slight change.He uses clever ‘lawyerly’ language which appears to fool many people.He omits many facts about the credibility of his witnesses re:Olivia Catling who gave testimony at the Jowers’ trial she had observed a man running away from the scene of the crime. Catling had apparently managed to keep her conspiracy story secret for over 25 years.She lived a short distance from the Lorraine Motel and had planned to walk down the street on April 4th in the hope of seeing Dr King.She testified at the Jowers trial that when she heard the shot a little after 6pm she ran with her two children and a neighbour’s child to the corner of Mulberry and Huling streets and saw a man running out of the alley beside a building across the street from the Lorraine.The man jumped into a green 1965 Chevrolet just as a police car drove up behind him.He gunned the Chevrolet around the corner and up Mulberry past Catling’s house.She said the police ignored the man and blocked off the street leaving his car free to go the opposite way.She said the man she saw was not James Earl Ray.She also said that she heard a fireman on Mulberry street call to a police officer that the shot came from the bushes. However, during an interview with Department of Justice investigators, during their 1998-2000 investigation, she contradicted her original story told at the Jowers’ trial.She insisted she had seen a man on Huling Avenue before the police arrived at the intersection, not after they set up their road block.She also told the investigators that she was accompanied by her 11 year old daughter and a neighbour’s 12 year old girl.The investigators interviewed the police officers who had made the road block.They denied anything happened as related by Catling.More importantly, Catling’s daughter contradicted her mother’s version of the events.According to the 2000 Report, “Catling’s daughter, Cheryl Morgan, told us that she was outside her front door and noticed police activity around the Lorraine but heard nothing before her mother came out of the house and said that Dr King had been shot.She understood that her mother had heard the news on the radio and television.Morgan further advised that she then went toward the Lorraine, but not with her mother.She did not see a car speeding away from the area.Rosetta Allen (the neighbour’s daughter) also told us that she did not go to Huling and Mulberry with Catling.Rather, she recalls that she never left her own yard.” Pepper’s rebuttal to the DOJ Report in his 2003 book totally ignores the statement made by Catling’s daughter to the DOJ investigators. With respect to your comments about Pepper changing his story about ‘the shooter’, most historians would find this a pretty irresponsible way of conducting an investigation – naming innocent people then excusing himself by saying he had been misled.In fact Pepper has been so gullible in his acceptance of ‘witnesses’ it has led to the propagation of a scenario that is actually ridiculous.The simple fact of the matter is that Jowers and his friends manipulated many people in this affair for financial gain. Jowers’ own family members told DOJ investigators that Jowers and his friends were in it for the money. You can find the transcript of the telephone call in ‘An Act of State’. Your comments about Wilson – if someone has lied about events they were allegedly involved in then it is easy to surmise they will lie about ‘sinister’ phone calls.In fact stories about ‘threatening phone calls’ to JFK-linked characters is frequently used in conspiracy literature – it provides drama and intrigue.There is no proof that Wilson received these calls apart from his own words.In fact the DOJ investigators gave Wilson every opportunity to tell his side of the story.He never mentioned threatening phone calls. I am aware of how the CIA works from the perspective of an academic interest – there are some excellent books out there which counteract the sometimes ridiculous image of the CIA which is propagated by conspiracy advocates – Evan Thomas’s ‘The Very Best Men’, Thomas Powers’ ‘Intelligence Wars’ and Peter Grose’s ‘Gentleman Spy’ among many. My book does not centre around exposing the conspiracy advocates but, instead, is a narrative of the story using the most up to date information – information that was not available when Posner wrote ‘Killing The Dream’.The book is sold worldwide through most booksellers and online.It was reviewed by JFK assassination expert Max Holland – and I recommend his book published by Random House, ‘The Kennedy Assassination Tapes’.

My book was published by a University Press, not a Vanity Press.(I thought you were the mature member who advised his forum members to avoid insults, sneers etc?) Practically every book I have read has at least one small factual error in it.My book was 'passed' after reviews from another two Universities.If you are implying that every book containing a factual error is not worthy of publication you are mistaken.The list is endless.It is when a book makes numerous factual errors that cause for concern is justified - ergo Matthew Smith's 'Conspiracy' (2005).I have listed 10 factual errors and numerous 'errors of omission'. And, Yes, I do admit an error for the number of shots, an oversight on my behalf when covering a related subject in my book which did not take priority within the chapter.I researched the story using secondary sources, including a newspaper report which was obviously in error.I did use Nina Burleigh's book which gives the correct description of the murder.Unfortunately, I stuck to the original report. As far as the modus operandi for the murderer is concerned - to imply it was a 'contract hit' without proof is pure conjecture.Guesswork simply doesn't cut it, you may as well allege Oswald's shooting Tippit in the head was a 'contract hit'.Are you implying that every victim shot in the head can be judged to be a contract hit ? Two experienced investigative journalists, Philip Nobile and Ron Rosenbaum, who interviewed Angleton and Detective Crooke, came to the conclusion that 'no one has ever pointed to a better suspect than Ray Crump.'Roberta Hornig of the Washington Evening Star knew more about the case than the jury was allowed to hear and was also convinced of Crump's guilt.She knew that Crump made many contradictory comments.She was convinced the prosecutor had 'blown the trial'.(And lack of gun residue can be readily explained by Crump's jumping into the canal.) This is not a racist statement but it reflects Nina Burleigh's view that race played a part in the trial.I take it you haven't read her book (A Very Private Woman)? Perhaps you can write to her publisher and accuse her of being 'racist'. If you limit your reading to books which continually take the conspiracy angle you will miss out.Please read Nina Burleigh, inform your readers about her conclusions in order to to give a balanced view, then carry on speculating.

John, Here's a couple of links which I suppose you've already accessed: http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/truecrime/damore.html http://www.sevenstories.com/book/index.cfm...1430&fa=reviews As to the Mary Meyer murder :here's an excerpt from my book "Questions Of Controversy" (2001) Mary Meyer The preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that Kennedy had an affair with Mary Meyer, sister-in-law of ‘Washington Post’ editor, Ben Bradlee. Meyer was an artist who lived in Georgetown in Washington D.C.. Her affair with the President lasted two years. In 1964, a year after the President’s assassination, she was murdered as she walked along a tow-path next to the Potomac river. Meyer’s killer, according to police reports, grabbed her from behind and in broad daylight shot the 42 year old just once under the cheekbone. Her killer escaped and Meyer died instantly. A number of authors have tried to tie the murder in with attempts by government agencies to keep the affair with President Kennedy secret. They have also attempted to explain her death as an effort to silence her because she purportedly knew about a conspiracy to murder the President. The story gained some credence through the investigation of the case by best-selling author, Leo Damore, and JFK conspiracy author, John H. Davis. They suggest that Mary Meyer had been told by JFK shortly before his death that there was a conspiracy to assassinate him. Kennedy also purportedly told Meyer that the conspirators were people who were close to him. The conspirators allegedly decided Meyer had to be silenced before she could reveal what she knew about JFK’s assassination. The ‘Meyer Conspiracy’ proponents, Damore and Davis, researched the story in the early 1990s. Damore said he persuaded many government officials to talk for the first time about the case and they agreed that Mary Meyer was murdered because she knew too much. They said that some very powerful people feared that Meyer knew the ‘real secret’ of the JFK assassination. One of Damore’s sources was a retired police detective who had worked on the case in 1964. (10) He said that the murder was the work of a professional assassin and that the federal government was involved. The federal government, apparently, had put pressure on the police department to close the case quickly. The simple facts of the case are quite different. (11) An African-American male, Raymond Crump, was spotted near the murder scene, and was arrested and charged with Meyer’s murder. The evidence against Crump was strong. Witnesses near the scene of the attempted rape or mugging heard shots; one of them, Henry Wiggins, identified Crump as the man who stood over Meyer’s body shortly after the shots had been fired. Crump had been arrested approximately ¾ of an hour after Mary Meyer had been killed. He had been hiding in some bushes near the scene of the crime. He lied to police officers and had fresh cuts and bruises on his body. However, a jury acquitted Crump in the face of overwhelming circumstantial evidence due mainly to an inept prosecutor. The case came down to a choice between believing Crump who appeared to be a quiet and reverent soul, and witness Wiggins who had been a war veteran and former military policeman. It would appear that the trial had been a precursor to O. J. Simpson’s; race had played an important part in the proceedings. Mary Meyer, who was single at the time of her affair with the President, had been married to CIA officer, Cord Meyer. They divorced in 1956. Ben Bradlee, who was married to Mary’s sister Toni, did not know at the time that his sister-in-law was having an affair with his friend John Kennedy. In his autobiography, Ben Bradlee (1995) relates the story from his viewpoint. On the night of the murder he got a call at his home from Anne Truitt, Mary’s artist friend and then wife of James Truitt, ‘Newsweek’s’ Tokyo correspondent. Mary had told Anne to retrieve her diary in which she documented her affair with the President, in case anything happened to her. The next morning Ben and Toni went to Mary’s house and once inside they discovered CIA counter-espionage chief, James Angleton, was there. No diary was found. But later in the day the Bradlees found it at Mary’s art studio which was directly across a dead-end driveway from the Bradlee’s house. They again discovered Angleton who was picking the lock of the studio. Embarrassed, Angleton walked off. Toni found the diary an hour later. The diary confirmed that Mary had been having an affair with JFK even though his name was never mentioned. The diary was given to James Angleton under the assumption it would be destroyed. However the diary was not destroyed until some years later. (12) There have been contradictory accounts of how the diary was found but there is no credible evidence to support the theory that Mary Meyer had been murdered to silence her. If ‘government agents’ had indeed killed her then why would they leave a witness at the scene to identify the real culprits? Would the killers not have been afraid that the man arrested for the murder might reveal their true identities? The Meyer diary has been used by other authors, notably Nelly Bly (1996) in her book ‘The Kennedy men’, to support one story or another which seeks to label Kennedy as a drug user. In a ‘National Enquirer’ article in 1976, James Truitt stated that Mary Meyer had revealed her affair with Kennedy to him. He went further and stated that Meyer and Kennedy had smoked marijuana. Timothy Leary (1983) enhanced this story in his book ‘Flashbacks’. Leary embellished it by contending that Mary Meyer was consulting him in 1962 about how to conduct LSD sessions. Meyer had, purportedly, told Leary that she had a friend who was a ‘very important man’ who also wanted to try the drug. Leary maintained that after the assassination, Meyer talked of people who were upset about a ‘peace-loving’ president, who were turned on by drugs, and who had been done away with because they could not control him any longer. However, Leary admitted to author, Nina Burleigh, that he had no proof that Meyer had introduced the President to LSD and said he was not sure whether it was true or not. He did claim to have introduced Marilyn Monroe to the drug. (13) There is a central problem with Leary’s story. Leary did not mention Meyer in any of his books until ‘Flashbacks’ more than 20 years after he had supposedly met her. Leary was a lifelong radical who took every opportunity to challenge the establishment. It stretches the imagination to assume he would not have revealed scandalous events about the American government. Furthermore, many of his books are autobiographical. Given the astounding nature of his revelations, it is simply incredulous that he did not write about these events long before 1983. In short Leary’s retroactive storytelling is simply not credible. There are other reasons why Leary’s claims should be rejected. Kennedy’s lifestyle throughout his 46 years has been well chronicled by numerous sources, including family friends and others who knew him well. Kennedy did not smoke and was only a social drinker. If Kennedy had taken LSD and smoked marijuana in the White House it would have been totally out of character. On the other hand there is strong evidence that President Kennedy took amphetamines but it is unlikely he did so knowingly. (14) It was the medical malpractice of the day and not at all unusual. These drugs were perfectly legal in 1963 and steroids were not known to be carcinogenic. According to J. Edgar Hoover biographer, Richard Gid Powers (1987), the FBI Director may have received ‘vitamin shots’ laced with amphetamines. (15) Dr Max Jacobson, along with others like Dr Janet Travell, was hired by Kennedy to treat his ailing back. Jacobson had invented an elixir and injected his patients with ‘vitamin shots’. The shots boosted the patient’s energy and confidence and in general filled them with a sense of well-being. The concoction, which was sent by Robert Kennedy for laboratory testing turned out to be a mixture of vitamins, steroids and amphetamines. Max Jacobson travelled with President Kennedy to the first summit meeting with Kruschev in Vienna in June 1961. At this time Kennedy was having severe pain in his back. He had strained it whilst planting a tree in Ottawa the previous May. When told by his brother that the mixture was dangerous, Kennedy said that he did not care if it was ‘horse’s piss’ as long as it relieved his back pain with no obvious side effects. (16) After years of ineffectual treatment for his back it is no wonder that he insisted on the treatment continuing up to the time of his death in November 1963. And there is compelling evidence from Jacobson’s family that the doctor supplied the ‘elixir’ to Jacqueline Kennedy long after she left the White House. (17)

Hello John, A response to your post - I hope we can keep this civil – I left the JFK discussion as I will not engage in petty and personalised exchanges.You were correct in saying the article left out a number of issues.In the nature of these things articles which have to be succinct cannot cover all grounds.You will find fuller descriptions/answers in my book.And my article (or book) is not ‘a rehash of what Posner has written in the past’ as you claim.Posner’s book was published in 1998.He could not write about the DOJ 1998-2000 investigation, the 1999 Jowers’ Trial or the new evidence about Army personnel – nor did he have access to the original Scotland Yard file which delineated Ray’s activities in London. William Pepper The way in which Pepper selects his facts to prove the existence of a conspiracy can be no better highlighted than by his description of Jowers’ trial witness Sid Carthew who you refer to as ‘a British man’.Carthew was important to Pepper as the ex-British merchant seaman recalled meeting a gunrunner by the name of ‘Raul’ in Montreal in 1967.During the trial and in his book, Pepper described Carthew as a ‘British Nationalist’ probably aware that most Americans would think nothing of this except he was simply a patriotic Englishman.Pepper does not, however, inform his readers of Carthew’s real political activities in Britain.For many years Carthew has been a committed racist from West Yorkshire, an activist who supported the racist British National Party, a political organisation which has established close links to neo-fascist terror groups like ‘Combat 18’.If the Jowers’ jury had been informed about Carthew’s past they may have concluded the UK racist had given his support to Ray for ideological reasons.I believe he has no value as a witness.Whether you agree with this or not is your choice but his story has no corroboration whatsoever. Pepper’s criticisms of the DOJ investigation are supported in part by the unreliable statements of other witnesses who appeared at the Jowers conspiracy trial .(The list is endless and I must refer you to my book). Their recollections of the event were never closely scrutinised during the trial and are laden with conjecture and speculation.(Remember the trial was not a real trial at all – the ‘defense’ and ‘prosecution’ were in league with one another and agreed on most of the issues raised.Jowers’ lawyer never challenged Pepper’s conspiracy claims.) Playing a highly selective ‘shell game’ Pepper changes the assassination scenarios to suit his purposes.Over time his accusations of who the alleged shooter really was has changed, transferring guilt to people who have died during the course of his enquiries.He also manipulates facts to suit new realities.For example, Ray always maintained he had heard the news about the assassination from the Mustang’s radio.The DOJ investigation discovered the car radio did not actually work.Therefore Pepper in his 2003 book wrote, “He headed south through Mississippi to Atlanta.On the way, he heard on his car or some other radio when he stopped (emphasis added) that Dr King had been shot and they were looking for a white man in a white Mustang.” As to his attacks on Gerald Posner a clue may be found in Posner’s book ‘Killing The Dream’ which exposes Pepper’s past life.Posner wrote, “….Pepper had moved to England in 1980 claiming in ‘Orders To Kill’ that he was forced to move because the mafia in New England had made him a ‘marked man’ after he led a successful effort at reorganizing a school system ‘rife with corruption’.Actually, a company of which Pepper was the president had received more than $200,000 from the state of Rhode Island to run a foster-care program for troubled youths.On July 6, 1978, Pepper was charged with four felony counts of transporting two teenage boys ‘to engage in lewd and indecent activities.’The local police also learned that in 1969 a US Senate subcommittee heard statements from two young boys who said Pepper had sexual contact with them when they were eight.No charges were filed against him then.Shortly after his arrest a state audit charged that more than half of the money given to Pepper’s firm could not be accounted for.His legal problems worsened when a real estate company sued him civilly, claiming he had reneged on a deal to sell his $350,000 Westchester, New York, home.Eventually the felony morals charges were dropped to misdemeanor charges.he left for England, and finally in 1990 the morals charges were dismissed for lack of prosecution.Pepper denied the charges and claimed that his legal problems were part of a conspiracy to punish him for his anti-Vietnam stance in the late 1960’s and his friendship with King.”. Pepper never challenged these allegations in his 2003 book, ‘An Act Of State’. Glenda Grabow Grabow was a former Houston waitress who, after being hypnotised, said a customer she knew as ‘Dago’ claimed responsibility for orchestrating the King murder .He also confessed to assassinating President Kennedy.Amongst her many highly dramatic claims were; she had known Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald; she had an intimate relationship with Ruby; and she had a close relationship with former Johnson Administration official, Jack Valenti.. Glenda Grabow maligned the character of Valenti by describing him as a ‘pornographer’.Instead of showing her the door Pepper enlisted her as a Jowers Trial witness.Valenti said the allegation was ‘pure fantasy’ and ‘utterly false’.Do you believe for one moment that a man whose character has never been questioned throughout his life should be attacked in this way without any evidence to corroborate it whatsoever? Grabow claimed that in the two weeks prior to President Kennedy’s assassination she saw ‘Dago’ receive some uniforms from Jack Ruby and was to give them to Lee Harvey Oswald.On the day President Kennedy went to Houston, before his trip to Dallas, she had observed ‘Dago’ standing on the roof of a car near the presidential motorcade armed with a rifle.Grabow claimed to have spoken to ‘Dago’ following the assassination of President Kennedy and Dago had confessed to shooting Kennedy.Do you believe these claims ? – if so, you are one of the very few JFK assassination researchers who do. Grabow said the Raoul she knew had been involved in gun smuggling in the port of Houston.According to Grabow, ‘Raoul’ would spend a lot of time in Houston with a relative and her association with Raoul would last over ten years until the mid-1970’s.Many years later William Pepper and his investigators showed Grabow a photo spread and she identified ‘Raoul’ as the person she had known. Both Jack Saltman, a British television producer, and William Pepper, working on independent investigations, located ‘Raul’ in 1995.He was living quietly in the north-eastern United States.It was there in 1997 that journalist Barbara Reis of the ‘Lisbon Publico’ working on a story about Raoul, spoke with a member of ‘Raul’s’ family.Reis testified at the Jowers’ trial that she had spoken in Portuguese to a woman in Raul’s family who said, ‘they’ had visited Raul - indicating US government agents had been protecting the alleged conspirator.Raul was identified by Grabow and, as a result of Grabow’s claims, Pepper added ‘Raul’ as a defendent in the Jowers civil trial.Pepper had changed the name of Ray’s mysterious ‘Raoul’ to ‘R-A-U-L’ to accommodate the new realities. William S. Gibbons, the Shelby County District Attorney sent investigators to interview Raul’s family members.The picture that emerged was of a family man who worked for 30 years for the same company, “raised a family, had friends and lived a normal life.” The investigators discovered Raul had never been absent for long periods in 1963, 1968 or at any other time in the 1970’s.Raul had no relatives in Houston and had never visited there.Investigators looked at Raul’s employment records, medical records, bank records, and land transfer information.They took a detailed statement from him, and interviewed family friends and acquaintences.The report concluded, “All this information reinforced the conclusion that ‘Raoul’ was never involved in the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King,Jr.” Grabow’s story was also investigated by Justice Department officials in 1998-2000 (Remember, Reno chose them as they had no links to the FBI).They looked into Raul’s background from the time he arrived in the United States from Portugal in 1961. Raul fully cooperated with the inquiry.He provided investigators with a sworn affidavit denying any involvement in the King killing. Shown the photograph of ‘Raul’ which had been obtained from immigration files, James Earl Ray identified him as ‘Raoul’.The photo was shown to Grabow and her brother Rayce Wilburn.During the Jowers’ trial, no one questioned how Wilburn, who had been six years old at the time, was able to identify Raul.Furthermore, Justice Department investigators discovered that the photo used was extremely suspect. “The contrast in ‘Raul’s’ picture is so pronounced,” the report said, “that the facial features are indistinct, large areas are entirely washed out and all details are obscured.Thus the representation of ‘Raul’ appears more like a block print than a photograph and stands out markedly from the others (photos in the identification group used by Pepper)”. According to Ray he had been able to communicate well with ‘Raoul’.But Pepper’s ‘Raul’ had such a poor command of English during the 1960’s it was impossible for him to speak words other than hello, goodbye etc. Raul had lived in a close Portuguese community in New York state since arriving in the United States and friends, relatives and employers who were contacted by the Justice Department investigators confirmed there was no evidence to support the allegations that he had any connection to criminal activities or government work.They also learned that Raul received formal education in the English language until 1975.The Justice Department also investigated Raul’s employment records and found that Grabow’s claims that Raul was in Houston during a crucial period were contradicted. The telephone call that you refer to was nothing more than the responses of a confused man with little command of the English language and who wanted to be civil to a caller he wasn’t sure he knew.Read the transcript again and you will find nothing incriminating. The idea that Grabow worked for Percy Foreman is pure invention.Foreman was dead by the time her story surfaced and there is nothing to indicate she was telling the truth.In light of the other fantasies she created it is likely she added this part of her story for effect. Don Wilson One paper allegedly recovered by Wilson was a torn page from a 1963 Dallas phone book with a number written on it that belonged to Jack Ruby’s Vegas Club.The slip of paper also had the name ‘Raul’ written on it.The second piece of paper also had ‘Raul’ written on it along with some words and figures that looked like dollar amounts because they had a decimal point followed by two zeroes.One of the words was ‘Canada’, the place where Ray fled to following the assassination. Although Wilson’s claims were immediately seized upon by conspiracy advocates as ‘proof’ that King had been murdered by a group of conspirators which included Raoul, the response to Wilson’s allegations was not universally applauded.Former FBI officials immediately labelled the claims a lie. Retired FBI agent Jack T. Beverstein, who helped search Ray’s abandoned car said the claims were untrue.Retired agent Carl E. Claiborne said, “There was no Don Wilson that I heard of.” It soon became clear that Wilson’s claims were suspect. The document with Raoul’s telephone number written on it was conveniently torn.Only part of the telephone number could be seen.Wilson was obviously aware that if the document had shown the full number it could be checked and verified. FBI records revealed that Wilson had not been in the group of agents who had been sent to examine the abandoned Mustang.Special Agent James Joseph Dolan accompanied the vehicle when it was towed from a parking lot at Atlanta Capitol Homes public housing project to the FBI garage in downtown Atlanta.The car was examined by agents Beverstein, Claiborne, Jack B. Simpson, Richard H. Davis and Alden F. Miller.The examination lasted 5 hours and only Claiborne and Miller inspected the car’s trunk and interior.Evidence which included fibres, clothing bed linens and soil scrapings were then sent to the FBI laboratories in Washington D.C.Wilson did not participate in the search of the car , although FBI files confirm the probationary agent was involved in examining copies of money orders in the investigation to find King’s assassin. Apparently Wilson wove his story around real evidence which had actually been discovered during the search of the car.There were indeed scraps of paper found in the abandoned car but they did not make reference to ‘Raoul’ or ‘Jack Ruby’. In October 1968 the FBI handed over the evidence found in the Mustang to the Memphis prosecutor Phil Canale. An FBI memo dated 25.10.68 states, “Items From 1966 Ford Mustang, (From FBI, Atlanta)....A piece of Kleenex box bearing letters ‘At pool’ on one side and names ‘Ginger Day and Anita Katzwinkle, 1535 Serrano, Apt 6, on the other side....One air release shutter in original package...sunglasses with case...Two pieces of cardboard from trunk...Scraps of paper from glove compartment...Scraps of paper from under rear seat.....”. Justice Department investigators discovered that Wilson’s statements about the documents were inconsistent.At first Wilson said he had 4 documents which he then amended to five. He claimed he looked at the documents when he arrived home the night the car was discovered.Later he said he looked at the documents at the scene of the abandoned Mustang. Further inconsistencies were discovered by Justice Department investigators.Wilson said he did not realise the significance of the documents until 1993.Then he said he realised their significance at the time he found them.He gave differing rationales for hiding the documents, including career considerations and a fear of the FBI, and he was inconsistent about their location.Wilson also said he ‘lost’ two of them. With regard to Wilson’s claims, the Justice Report concluded; “....there appears to be no reasonable explanation for Wilson’s lack of candor in his first public statements about the documents.A person genuinely interested in an accurate, complete, and honest disclosure of information after 30 years of concealment does not withold some of the evidence, particularly that portion which is potentially most significant.Consequently, Wilson’s belated revelation, if true, raises serious questions about the credibility of his other comments about the documents including where he got them........If Wilson sought discovery of the truth he would have disclosed the existence of the documents long before 1998.” The Justice Department investigators concluded that Wilson’s claims of finding documents in the Mustang were not believable.They also concluded his claims to have searched Ray’s apartment in Atlanta were untrue. Government records were scrutinised and showed Wilson had not been at the place where the Mustang had been found; photographs taken at the time do not show Wilson at the scene; and witnesses, both government and civilian, reported that Wilson had not participated in the recovery or the search of the vehicle.Nor was the ‘door ajar’, as Wilson claimed.Photographs taken at the scene of the abandoned car prove the car doors were closed and locked. Furthermore, scientific experts were asked to examine the documents.They concluded that it would have been easy to fabricate notations on them, particularly the page from an old 1963 Dallas telephone directory.The experts concluded that, “Scientific testing established that ‘Raul 214-‘, indicating a portion of a telephone number, was written on the scrap of paper AFTER it was torn from the telephone directory.Thus, contrary to the impression the document creates, the pre-torn, whole page from the telephone directory NEVER contained the remainder of Raul’s telephone number.” The report thus concluded, “The content of the writing and its position on the torn page from the Dallas telephone directory...suggest(s) that the document was designed to create the false impression that the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr King are connected and that James Earl Ray once had Raul’s complete telephone number.” The Justice Department investigators, under the direction of Attorney General Janet Reno, did not solicit FBI assistance in their investigation, aware of allegations of FBI involvement in the murder.It is also clear that claims Justice Department officials had no interest in finding the truth about the King murder, is at odds with political realities.President Clinton had high regard for the King family and was given overwhelming political support from African-Americans during the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections.Furthermore, as the report concluded, “..we find it compelling that James Earl Ray failed to identify the documents.He should have recalled them had they been in his car, and he had a strong motive to claim them, regardless of their authenticity.” WARREN ‘Warren’ is a pseudonym. Agents Jimmie Locke, William Perry, Thomas Harris and James Green confirmed to reporters they were the only members of the MIG group left in Memphis on April 4th.They were neither in the vicinity of the assassination at the time King was killed nor were they involved in the murder. In the late 1990’s Justice Department Investigators interviewed Stephen Tompkins who had first alleged that the military had been somehow involved in the King killing.Tompkins said he did not believe his source, Jacob Brenner, who had told him that the 902nd Military Intelligence Group undertook surveillance on King.Brenner had asked for increasing amounts of money for photographs, purportedly taken of the assassination.Tompkins said the story was just like “numerous false stories he had heard from conspiracy buffs asking for money”. Tompkins also doubted the credibility of two more of his sources who had told him they were sent to Memphis with the 20th Special Forces group of the Alabama National Guard, met a policeman and a CIA agent and witnessed the assassination. The Justice Department examined military records for the 902nd and the 111th and found no written record of any surveillance of the Lorraine Motel from any unit. However, Carthel Weeden, captain of fire Station 2 in 1968, testified at the Jowers trial that he had been on duty the morning of April 4th when two Army officers approached him.The officers said they wanted a lookout for the Lorraine Motel.Weeden said they carried briefcases and indicated they had cameras.The soldiers were allowed on the roof. Although Captain Weeden confirmed to the Justice Department investigators that his memory may have been inexact when he testified at the Jowers trial, the Justice Department investigators found no reason to doubt the essential elements of his story. There was a plausible reason why Weeden had not been deliberately lying when he said he had escorted Army personnel to the roof of the Fire Station on the day of the assassination.Sergeant James Green of the 111th MIG, told investigators that he had gone to the roof of the Fire Station with another agent on the day King’s advance party arrived in Memphis, perhaps March 31st. Green said he went to scout for locations to take photographs of persons visiting the King party at the Lorraine.He said someone from the Fire Station may have shown them to the roof.Green and his partner remained there for 30 to 45 minutes before concluding the area was too exposed to take photographs.According to the 2000 Justice Department report “Green stated he never returned to the roof or the vicinity of the Lorraine and never conducted surveillance of or photographed Dr King.He also advised that he never heard that any other military personnel were in the area of the Lorraine on the day of the assassination or conducted surveillance of Dr King.” The DOJ Report concluded, “In addition to reviewing records, we located and interviewed five surviving members of the 111th MIG who were in Memphis on April 4, 1968.They all claimed they were not aware that military personnel from any other unit, including the 902d MIG, were in Memphis around the time of the assassination.....Additionally, no one from the 111th MIG had firsthand knowledge that any military personnel were in the vicinity of the Lorraine on the day of the assassination or that military personnel ever conducted surveillance of Dr King.Steve McCall, then a Sergeant and investigator with the 111th MIG, did remember, however, somehow hearing that agents from his unit were being dispatched to the Lorraine on the day of the assassination to watch Dr King and his party.” Former purported CIA operative Jack Terrell testified at the Jowers Trial by videotape that his best friend J.D. Hill had confessed to him, shortly before Hill’s death, that he had been a member of an army sniper team assigned to shoot an unknown target but their mission had been suddenly cancelled.Hill claimed to have been with the 20th SFG and that he had been specifically trained to participate in a military sniper mission to assassinate Dr King.However, according to Justice Department investigators records clearly establish that Hill was not even in the military during the period of King’s assassination. It had been quite evident that William Pepper had accepted uncorroborated allegations from many sources whose credibility was unsound.Pepper’s worst mistake was to name a former soldier as one of the assassination back-up team without verifying if the facts were true.As Pepper told it, the commando of the sniper team, Billy Eidson, was then killed off to keep the plot secret.However, not only was the military cablegram Pepper produced declared a forgery but Green Beret. Eidson, was found to be alive and well and furious at the allegations that he was involved in the assassination.He was supported by General William Yarborough, the father of the Green Berets and his chief aide, Rudi Gresham.Members of the ‘team’ were invited to meet Pepper during the filming of an ABC television documentary.When they refused to shake Pepper’s hand the lawyer became visibly shaken.The former army personnel showed contempt for Pepper.Eidson said, “I just want to look at you”. Eidson brought a $15 million lawsuit against Pepper and his publishers and received an out of court settlement and a published retraction.Carrol and Graf, said, “Some statements by the author about Billy Ray Eidson were not accurate.Carroll and Graf regrets that Mr Eidson was identified as the leader of a military team of snipers assigned as back-up for the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.In view of the information received since publication, Carroll and Graf no longer believes that Mr Eidson was involved in any such assassination team.” Pepper’s allegations were further damaged when former General Henry Cobb, who had been the commanding officer of the 20th Special Forces Group, a National Guard Unit, told UK television reporters, “There is no way it could ever happen without my knowledge and I had no knowledge of it and if I had had knowledge of it they wouldn’t have been there in the first place because I wouldn’t have sent them.That’s not a mission....you can’t order people to murder.” Investigative journalist Marc Perrusquia interviewed military historians, former high-ranking Pentagon civilians and high-ranking intelligence officers.He concluded there was no evidence to support the allegations the Army watched King day to day.He did however, believe army agents occassionally watched the Civil Rights leader at public rallies. The Justice Department’s investigation confirmed there was no military involvement in King’ assassination.They found no evidence, witnesses, documents or photographs to confirm the hearsay evidence presented at the Jowers trial.The Report stated, “...we found nothing to indicate that surveillance at any time had any connection with the assassination.” The Justice Department Report said that there was no credible evidence to suggest any participation by government agencies in the crime and that the only credible witnesses (Police Officers James Smith, Eli Arkin and Firefighter Carthel Weeden) pointing to government involvement referred only to King’s surveillance and not his murder. Ray’s aliases. There was nothing unusual about one of Ray’s aliases having had a ‘security clearance’.Hundreds of thousands of people work for the ‘military-industrial’ complex and have such backgrounds.I had one many years ago – but there’s nothing suspicious in that. Authors who claim otherwise have woven a web which can be repeated endlessly by juxtapositioning biographical details. As far as your comments about the article as ‘not being evidence based’ - this is not a format that Crime Magazine uses - my book is fully sourced.

Alan Healy's comments are probably one of the reasons why some supporters of the lone assassin conclusions 'do not stick around', as John Simkin put it. His use of ridicule, sneers and unfounded accusations reveal exactly what frame of mind he is in - nothing I say or do will have an effect on him, I'm convinced, even if I post numerous rebuttals to the points he makes. I don’t know why people would behave like this – for the most part such comments are immature, not very humorous and pretty insulting. What mature person would want to 'stick around'? Alan said I should be coming back with something worth debating.This implies that the previous exchanges between myself and Pat Speer were worthless. And, as I intimated earlier, I will not always be in the position to post immediately, because of work demands. Thanks to those members who have been polite, rational and civil – I appreciate your previous comments.

Mel, I'm sorry if my comments seemed hostile. I have nothing but respect for the way you've handled yourself on this forum. Here's a link to Ford's testimony before the HSCA where he makes it clear he did not know of the attempts on Castro while he was on the WC. it's page 570 of vol. 3 if the link fails. http://historymatters.com/archive/jfk/hsca..._Vol3_0287b.htm I agree that Life was pushing a conspiracy angle for a period in 1966, but it is my understanding that Dick Billings became disconcerted with Garrison when he began to focus on the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans, rather than Castro, and that he turned around and gave his notes on Garrison to Clay Shaw's attorneys. If I'm mixing him up with one of the others who turned on Garrison...please set me straight. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks Pat, I appreciate your response. Do you have a copy of Patricia Lambert's book on the Garrison fiasco? - False Witness - she describes Billings role.I'll try and respond to the other issues when I get time.Thanks for your patience. Mel http://www.melayton.co.uk

Steve, 'Crazed psychotic' is a literary term for descriptive purposes when an act of madness is committed, which is what I believe happened.He was certainly a highly unstable individual - he tried to kill General Walker, he killed JFK and he also killed JD Tippit - is that not the actions of a 'crazed psychotic' ? - non-medical terminology used, of course.I think Diane Holloway's The Mind of Oswald may satisfy you as to Oswald's level of mental illness.

Pat, Thanks for the input. Your criticisms are, for the most part, valid, even if acerbic. My response - · “…virtually no one makes a living off of the assassination….” There are …limousine rides, tours, bogus witnesses like Ed Hoffman and Beverly Oliver ‘selling’ their autographs. I’m sure the conspiracy writers who haven’t ‘sold many books’ would like that situation to change. · I stand by my statement about ‘détente’ – I believe most historians would agree with me. · I agree with your statement about George Joannides. An open letter in the NYT signed by lone assassin and conspiracy writers, including Gerald Posner, is something I support. This info should be released. · Ford ‘knew’ – see Max Holland’s research – simple google search – please cite HSCA’s referenece to ‘prove’ he lied. · If Life magazine was promoting the Lone Assassin position why did the mag devote a cover story, in 1966, to John Connally and the Zapruder film which seemed, at the time, to negate the WR’s conclusions re: single-bullet conclusion? · Bobby Kennedy asked an aide to read the Warren Report for him. He also initiated his own investigation, I believe it was Chicago based, and came up with nothing. · Doubts expressed by Cyril Wecht et al.Wecht was part of the HSCA forenesic pathology panel – I believe 9 members – he was the only member to dissent from the report’s conclusions. · Computer simulations – Dale Myers – his work has been critically acclaimed by many leading computer experts, too many to name, but a simple google search ‘Dale Myers’ will probably suffice. · Head shot – Ken Rahn has, in my opinion, provided an excellent explanation. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html Readers can judge for themselves. · ‘Witnesses’ – readers will have to make their own minds up about this – to examine each one will make this forum book-length. I stand by my statement that Howard Brennan was a good eyewitness. · Your description of Brennan is misleading. He reported his sightings to a police officer at the time of the shooting and gave a good description of the shooter. Later that evening he identified Oswald but said he could not be sure. As we know now he was definitely sure but was afraid the assassination involved others and this is the reason he balked. He was, in fact, guarded by FBI agents for three weeks. His memoirs leave no doubt that he positively saw Oswald shoot from the 6th floor window of the BD. · There are many excellent books which cover the murders of Sam Giancana – murdered by the mob (probably Accardo) to prevent his return to rule. I believe the evidence presented by author Charles Brandt has solved the Jimmy Hoffa murder. Check his excellent book on Amazon. · Dallas police officer Billy Combest, in the ambulance with Oswald as the assassin lay dying. He said it was a ‘definite clenched fist salute’. · Your use of words like ‘indoctrination’ is demeaning to those in the research community who accept the Lone Assassin conclusions. · Readers should know that the HSCA only reached their conspiracy conclusion for one reason and one reason only – the acoustics evidence which has now been proven to be false (see Ken Rahn JFK Academic website above). The sounds of ‘shots’ eminated from a motor cycle which was nowhere near Dealey Plaza. Furthermore, the sounds eminated from a ‘three-wheeler’ motor cycle. Last point – I will only participate in this forum if members avoid sarcasm and ridicule. My appreciation to Tim, John, Stephen and Mike for their support. I realise I have stumbled into a 'viper's nest' but debates like these can only be for the good. I'm not sure how much time I can devote to the site. I am, after all, trying to research and write. However, I'll try my best. One small point to make which I'll mention just to prove I do not take facts eminating from Government bodies uncritically. I have been researching the 1973 murder of Bermuda's Governor for the past year and I believe I have uncovered a conspiracy.

By way of introduction to this forum I have added the following article which sets out my take on the JFK assassination. 40 Years On—Who Killed Kennedy? By Mel Ayton This essay first appeared in History Ireland, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter issue, 2003) In 1964 the Warren Commission investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination concluded that he had been killed by a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the findings were accepted by the majority of the American public. However, a significant minority greeted the findings with instant skepticism. A public opinion poll immediately afterwards revealed that 56% accepted the Commission's conclusions. By the beginning of the new century, however, skepticism had turned to incredulity. Opinion polls were now showing around 10% or 11% of Americans believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. The assassination of JFK has held a fascination for three generations of Americans. 40 years on, it has become the “Great Whodunnit” of the 20th Century. And the plots have become labyrinthine in their complexity. The Mafia, the CIA, the military-industrial complex, Texas oilmen, pro-Castro Cubans, anti-Castro Cubans, the KGB, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Lyndon Johnson, southern racists, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff all come under suspicion. However, no credible evidence has surfaced to support these theories. The enduring popularity of conspiracies makes them a highly lucrative enterprise and vested interests keep the myths alive. Six million visitors a year visit the JFK assassination site, where “researchers” peddle books, autopsy pictures and signed “grassy knoll witness” photos. The visitor can experience a virtual “Disneyland” of assassination themes, from limousine rides which trace JFK’s route from Love Field to Dealey Plaza to bus trips which follow Oswald’s escape route. It is a multimillion-dollar industry promoting books, videos, CD-ROMs, T-Shirts, and even board games. Conspiracy theories have brought the assassination into the world of entertainment. So how did we arrive at this position? From the start, the fact that a crazed psychotic could have changed the world in a single moment staggered belief. The American public simply could not believe such a monumental crime could be committed by such a pathetic individual. The cause—Oswald as a self-appointed champion of Castro—seemed so disproportionate to the consequences. Another answer lies in how the investigation of Kennedy’s murder was handled by the American government. In the hours following the assassination, America’s leaders feared that a public hysteria would demand revenge for the death of the president. At the very least their hopes for détente with the Soviet Union would be dashed. Some believed a world war would be imminent if evidence had been found that the Soviets or Cubans were behind the murder. Although intelligence agencies, using sophisticated methods, confirmed that Khrushchev and Castro were not involved, President Johnson was fearful that suspicions alone could lead to conflict. The government therefore decided they must convince the public that the president’s death was the work of a lone madman, not of some vast Communist conspiracy. In the context of the time this strategy was well intentioned, but many leads pointing to Oswald’s peripheral connections with foreign agencies were ignored or swept under the carpet. The actions of succeeding American administrations can also explain why the American public became open to persuasion by conspiracy advocates. The American people faced a litany of lies, distortions and half-truths by government agencies during the administrations of Johnson (Vietnam war), Nixon (Watergate) and Reagan (Iran-Contra); therefore allegations of a cover-up did not appear unusual or outrageous. The start of the assassination myths, however, began with the Warren Commission. Had the Commission carried out a more thorough investigation and demanded complete cooperation from the FBI and CIA, questions about Oswald and his nefarious activities in the weeks leading up to the assassination might have been immediately answered. If the FBI and CIA had been more forthcoming with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reinvestigated the crime in the 1970s, some of the “mysteries” might never have taken hold. Had the information they held on Oswald been released to investigatory bodies, there would have been little room left for the conspiracy theorists to maneuver. Blame for the way suspicions were engendered can be shared. The Dallas Police were careless with Oswald, a carelessness that led to the assassin’s murder by Jack Ruby, but they were not conspiratorially involved. The FBI failed in their duty to protect the president and failed to keep Oswald under observation during the presidential visit. They had a file on Oswald which traced his movements back to his time in the Soviet Union. Two weeks before the assassination, Oswald marched into the local FBI office in Dallas and created a scene, complaining about the harassment his wife was receiving from its agents who were trying to keep track of the ex-Marine Russian defector. And former CIA Director Allen Dulles, a Warren Commission member, failed to tell his colleagues on the commission or staff investigators about the assassination attempts against Castro. This knowledge could have given investigators an important lead on Oswald’s time in Mexico City in the short period before the assassination. In this sense, the "cover-up" is a historical truth. The CIA had their reasons for withholding files from the Warren Commission and the House Assassinations Committee. During the Cold War, information concerning the electronic bugging and surveillance of the Russian and Cuban embassies in Mexico City was deemed sensitive (as it is to this day). The National Security Agency’s capabilities and the methodology of its electronic intercepts are the most highly guarded of secrets. Information gleaned from bugging is protected on the grounds that it may inevitably lead to the discovery of intelligence-gathering methodology or the placement of undercover agents. Even though the CIA files were (and are) central to proving that Oswald was not the agent of a foreign power (or an agent of the CIA, for that matter), they have remained partially classified for these reasons. Commission members Richard Russell and Gerald Ford also knew about the Castro assassination plots. However, if no link existed between Oswald and the Soviet or Cuban governments, they reasoned, there was no reason to inform their staff investigators who wrote the Commission’s report. Initially, the Warren Commission Report was well received. However, as time passed, a series of proconspiracy books and newspaper revelations began to chip away at the commission’s lone-assassin conclusions. The Zapruder film apparently revealed how Kennedy had been shot from the right front; new witnesses spoke of how Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby, had known one another; independent researchers and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison alleged that Oswald had been tied in with anti-Castro Cuban groups. Some researchers believed that shots had been fired from the “Grassy Knoll.” “Eyewitness” after “eyewitness” came forward to report they had recovered their memories and were “now ready to talk.” Their tales were rightly treated with skepticism by government investigators, but they convinced many a conspiracy author as well as the American public. The media can also take some responsibility for fanning the flames of conspiracy thinking. Following the assassination, every witness, no matter how remote from first-hand knowledge, became a “newsmaker.” The spotlight confused many of them—seldom did any respond with a “don't know” answer to media questions. The result was a flood of distortion and misinformation. As Patricia Lambert wrote, "(In 1966 LIFE magazine) ... may have played a greater role in turning the majority of Americans away from the conclusions of the Warren Report than any book written. In those days most of the country still relied heavily on the print media for its news. LIFE was an honored part of the American scene. For an institution as conservative and important to endorse such an idea seemed, in itself, to validate the notion of conspiracy." Thousands of new documents released following the enactment of the JFK Records Act in 1992 also show how the Kennedys may have inadvertently fed the conspiracy machine. Jacqueline Kennedy and the president's brother Robert Kennedy asked many of those present at the autopsy to promise not to talk about the procedure for 25 years. They feared that JFK’s health problems, which he lied about to get elected, may have been revealed. Conspiracy theorists pointed to this wall of silence as “proof” of a continuing cover-up, when in fact the doctors and staff were merely adhering to the wishes of the family. Beyond the autopsy, Robert Kennedy may have worried that the Warren Commission might stumble onto the government’s plots to kill Castro. He did not want the Warren Commission investigating Cuba even though the plots had nothing to do with the assassination. Even though assassination conspiracy theories have been successfully challenged time after time and found to be without merit, they have remained very appealing. Conspiracy theories are powerfully seductive, offering mystery and intrigue to the reader. Additionally, a conspiracy with a valid aim suggests control; the psychotic actions of a lone individual suggest chaos. And people are always looking for simple and straightforward answers. Furthermore, conspiracy theories are like the legendary Hydra—cut off one of its heads and a score of others will replace it. Conspiracies, imagined or otherwise, are part of the culture of American society. Far-reaching and complex conspiracy themes have been the staple diet of Hollywood, with movies like “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Conspiracy Theory,” “The Parallax View,” “Total Recall,” and “JFK.” Even television and the Internet have joined forces to promote sinister and antilibertarian motives of the United States government. Conspiracy theories have in the past been promoted by ideologues left and right alike. During the 1950s and 1960s, conspiracy theorists were generally right-wingers like Joseph McCarthy, who saw an America subverted by Communists. From the late ‘60s to the present, it has been the idealists of the left, who tended to see America subverted by right-wing conspiracies. JFK conspiracies have undergone a similar shift. Early targets were the Russians or the Cubans. Since the late 1960s it has been popular to suggest that the president’s death was the result of clandestine groups or agencies which had a natural right-wing bias, like the CIA, the Pentagon, or right-wing Texas oilmen. While the Soviet Union and Castro’s Cuba were busy subverting democracies in Latin America, conspiracy theorists in the United States began to look inward to the subversion of democratic institutions by faceless and powerful groups dedicated to the advancement of American corporations and the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower spoke of. Conspiracy advocates have promoted the JFK conspiracy myth by adopting changing tactics in their desire to keep the issue alive. When named conspiracists were discovered to have been innocent, or no evidence could be provided to support various allegations, conspiracy theorists accused the government and suggested scenarios which were impossible to discredit—a very powerful group of individuals inside officialdom killed the president, a group powerful enough to engage vast legions of workers to cover up the conspiracy. These circumstances led Professor Jacob Cohen to criticize “the platoons of conspiracists (who) concertedly scavenged the record, floating their appalling and thrilling ‘might-have-beens,’ unfazed by the contradictions and absurdities in their own wantonly selective accounts, often consciously, cunningly deceitful.” Scientific and historical research throughout the 1990s, together with the release of government files, has now established the true circumstances surrounding the assassination, despite the protestations of the conspiracy-minded. All the major issues of the case, which center around the existence of single or multiple assassins, have been successfully addressed by America’s leading scientific and legal experts. Even though conspiracy advocates continue to insist that a conspiracy killed JFK, the evidence does not support their arguments. No “smoking gun” from the JFK assassination files has been unearthed. Sophisticated reenactments of the assassination using state of the art technology (computer models and laser-assisted weaponry) have shown that three shots were fired, all from behind and from the direction of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where eyewitness Howard Brennan placed Oswald at the time of the shooting. The rifle and the pistol were traced directly to Oswald. Spectrographic analysis of photographs purporting to show gunmen on the “Grassy Knoll” reveal only light and shadows. Neutron-activation analyses of bullet fragments support the single bullet theory, which was central to the single-assassin conclusion. A computer- enhanced version of the Zapruder film has confirmed that Oswald could have fired the three shots in the time sequence required. Ballistics experts have testified that Oswald’s rifle was more than adequate for the job. Forensic pathologists and physicists have proven that the backward snap of Kennedy's head is consistent with a shot from the rear. Incontrovertible evidence links Oswald with the murder weapon. And credible eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence establishes that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots which killed President Kennedy. His fleeing the scene of the crime established his “consciousness of guilt.” Incontrovertible evidence establishes that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered Police Officer Tippit within an hour of shooting President Kennedy. Researcher Don Thomas’s acoustics research, published in 2001 and alleging that more than three shots had been fired, has now been rejected by the National Academy of Sciences and other acoustics/ballistics experts(http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html) who concluded his research was flawed. Reports of Oswald’s alleged contacts with anti-Castro Cubans, KGB agents, rogue elements of the CIA, and Castro’s intelligence agents have been researched fully and found to be the product of guilt by association and gross speculation. The Jim Garrison investigation, made famous by Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” in which the New Orleans District Attorney claimed to have uncovered the conspiracy behind the assassination, was found to be politically inspired and bogus when his files were opened for scrutiny by the Assassination Records Review Board, which reported the results of its five-year investigation of Government files in 1998. Books by Gerald Posner and Patricia Lambert revealed how conspiracy advocates, fueled by a public hooked on conspiracy theories, have continually abused the evidential record. These authors have shown how conspiracy theorists misrepresented the facts of the case through selective use of witnesses, presentation of crude scientific opinion about the physical evidence, and by accusing government officials of involvement without providing concrete proof. Furthermore, over a period of 40 years, documents connected to the case have been proven to be forged, “conspiracy witnesses” have provided no corroborative evidence, and conspiracy authors have accused innocent individuals of involvement in the crime. Conspiracy advocates have never been able to address many logical aspects of the crime which decisively argue against conspiracy. For example, how could a conspiracy, which would have to involve hundreds if not thousands of people, remain a secret in an age when “whistle-blowers” have succeeded in everything from revealing corruption in government to initiating the impeachment of presidents? Confusion about motive was at the heart of the Kennedy murder. The Warren Commission failed to decisively conclude that Oswald was anything but a deranged assassin, which left open many avenues for speculation. Yet there was definitely a political motive for Oswald’s actions. He had spent his adolescence and early manhood pursuing a Communist dream and searching for some kind of involvement in revolutionary activities. Disillusioned with his time spent in the Soviet Union, the young Oswald returned home searching for a new cause. He found it in his hero, Fidel Castro, and began planning a way to help the revolution. As his wife Marina said, “I only know that his basic desire was to get to Cuba by any means, and all the rest of it was window dressing for that purpose.” His friend Michael Paine said Oswald wanted to be an active guerrilla in the effort to bring about a new world order. During the time he spent in New Orleans he set himself up as an agent provocateur for the cause and imagined himself as a hero of the revolution. In New Orleans it was common knowledge that anti-Castro exiles had been planning another invasion of Cuba and had been attempting to kill Castro with the assistance of the CIA. As an avid reader of political magazines and newspapers, Oswald could not have failed to see a September 1963 New Orleans newspaper article in which Castro threatened retaliation for attempts on his life. It is plausible Oswald had been inspired by this article. Oswald’s political ideals remained with him up to the moment of his death at the hands of a Dallas self-appointed vigilante, Jack Ruby. It was inevitable that someone as politically motivated as Oswald would wish to reveal his political sympathies to the world following his arrest for the murder of the president and a Dallas police officer. However, he did not accomplish this by confessing, but instead by parading around the Dallas police department giving a clenched-fist salute. Most conspiracy advocates had assumed Oswald had been merely showing his manacled hands to reporters. But two photographs taken that tragic weekend show clearly Oswald’s left-wing salute. His actions were confirmed by Dallas police officer Billy Combest, who accompanied Oswald in the ambulance as he lay dying. According to Combest, Oswald “made a definite clenched-fist salute.” However, conspiracy advocates continue to muddy the waters with the release of new books to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the assassination. Engaging in indiscriminate presentations of “fact” and applying fractured logic, they continue to construct false theories. The end result is a narrative of half-truths and speculation “proving” that President Johnson and a mixed bag of intelligence agents, military officers, gangsters, and police officials conspired to eliminate a “dangerous” president. Even the most erudite reader would have to spend a considerable amount of time to filter the information they present, eventually becoming overwhelmed by the masses of esoteric and highly technical data, most of it the work of self-proclaimed “experts” who have been ridiculed by the scientific community. Conspiracists are at an advantage in that their use of facts and evidence that supposedly support their theories is not easily falsifiable. Conversely, books which rightly reject the conspiracy solution to the Kennedy assassination have been relatively unsuccessful because there are no really dramatic discoveries. The true facts cannot now be established with absolute precision. Too many false leads have been sown, too many witnesses have died, and the volume of material pertaining to the case can be misinterpreted by anyone who wishes to construct a false story. And time has a way of eroding the truth. However, after 40 years of speculation we can now say, for the purposes of historical accuracy, that no evidence has been produced which can decisively point a conspiratorial finger, nor has any evidence negated the argument for Oswald’s guilt. Mel Ayton http://www.melayton.co.uk

Shepard, May I suggest you access these sites http://karws.gso.uri.edu/noncons/ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html

Harvey, may I recommend the following websites? http://karws.gso.uri.edu/noncons/ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html

Robert, You may be interested in the following JFK assassination websites: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/noncons/ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html

[Mel, I read the Moldea book, and while I think it's possible he's right about a lot of stuff, he doesn't come close to explaining how Sirhan could shoot Kennedy point blank from BEHIND in front of numerous witnesses, and have no one see it. He also makes an ENORMOUS leap at the end of the book; once he concludes that Sirhan is a xxxx, he jumps to the conclusion that Sirhan acted alone, ignoring the equal or greater likelihood that Sirhan was lying in order to protect himself or his family. After all, at this point, Sirhan's quickest route to getting released would be to admit he acted alone for political reasons, claim he now sees the error of his ways, and become the poster boy for mid-east peace. That he hasn't done this, and has been kept isolated as a possible terrorist since 9/11, is indicative that either he IS a current supporter of terrorism, or that he simply doesn't remember what happened. While it's pefectly possible the guy just got drunk one night and decided to kill someone famous, it's equally likely someone put him up to it. Your efforts to stifle dissent sound suspiciously like the workings of a well-intentioned, but ultimately wrong individual, a la former WC counsel David Belin. Your choosing to accept the words of Serrano after she came under pressure from the detectives over Serrano's original words or her words once she escaped the pressure of the detectives, reveals your bias. There's just a stank about both Kennedy assassinations that isn't there in most homicides. Even with a lack of absolute proof, which rarely comes in a homicide of this size and scope, it's reasonable and correct to suspect a conspiracy. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thank you, Pat.I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. You are correct in stating that Moldea did not satisfactorily explain how Sirhan shot RFK when witnesses placed the gunman no less than 3 feet from Kennedy.However, I believe I have provided an answer (in my forthcoming book)after wading through the LAPD Summary report and witness statements - a number of witnesses have been overlooked, not only by Moldea, but also conspiracy advocates. In a post like this one I cannot set out all the complex scenario facts about positioning in the pantry etc. but what I can say, in a succint way, is that a close witness "saw" Sirhan's gun hand make an "arc" placing the weapon at Kennedy's head.As you are probably aware writers do not want to reveal everything about their work as publishers do become upset when they find they have nothing to release to the press when the book is published.What I can say is that the witness confirmed what he saw thirty years after the event and was "certain". Place this evidence alongside what Moldea correctly explained - ie the shooting occurred in a few short moments in a pantry full of people (I believe 77 or so) - and it is logical to assume witnesses who were a short distance from RFK did not see the same things as the witnesses who were right next to Kennedy.(Ask any police officer and he will tell you that witness statements are notoriously unreliable unless they are considered alongside physical evidence). In my forthcoming book I also explain WHY Sirhan lied and I give a different but plausible explanation to that provided by Moldea - although I do not disagree with him. There is no evidence whatsoever to say Sirhan had been lying to protect others and therefore I cannot agree with you there was an " equal or greater likelihood Sirhan was lying to protect himself or his family".In fact I do not fully understand why you would say this.There is a wealth of evidence which I partly present in my article which proves Sirhan did indeed remember shooting Kennedy.He actually told two people who he knew well - conspiracy advocates, whether it be JFK, MLK or RFK always try to destroy their credibility as happened with Michael McCowan - they would rather believe Sirhan.When McCowan passed his polygraph conspiracy advocates then changed tack and started on about the unreliability of such investigative tools.Conspiracy advocates have a mind-set.When the facts don't fit they blame everyone - which is why conspiracists always arrive at the charge which cannot be challenged - the government did it, therefore we will never find out what really happened....Ergo - Mark Lane, William Pepper, etc. As far as the point about Sirhan's accepting guilt as his 'quickest' route to release - he has been manipulated and trapped by conspiracy advocates (including Moldea at one time) who have persuaded him to stick to his story as a way towards a new trial and a possible acquital. He must also have been aware of the public loathing for him and each LA DA's attempts to make sure he stayed inside, even if he did admit guilt.I'm sure he has been aware over the years that even if he admitted guilt the horrendous nature of his crime would not ensure his release in the same way a 'normal' murderer gets parole after 7, 8 or 9 years. It was part of Sirhan's make-up not to show remorse and, as each DA has explained to the parole board, the assassin has vented his hatred for his victim many times since the assassination - despite his post-trial television interview in which he expressed a 'love' for RFK and a wish that it hadn't happened. You say it is "equally likely someone put him up to it" - Who? How? Why? When? A crime of this magnitude results in the following: * Unstable individuals will always 'confess', present themselves as 'witnesses' who have observed nefaroius undertakings, and see it as a way to gain notoriety. ie Jerry Owen - who failed a polygraph and was discredited by many people who knew him.In other words people are willing to lie for their own ends. *As Vincent Bugliosi has observed, there are always mistakes in the collation and collection of evidence. *Because of the amount of material in these cases it is extremely difficult challenge charges resulting from a mispeak, mistake etc.Reporters have neither the time nor the energy to wade through the masses of material to find out whether or not a writer has got his facts right. You say david Belin was wrong but you don't say why.David Belin was not wrong. Everything he set out in his book was correct except his speculation about Oswald's motives, an area that no-one can be sure of.It is evident you say belin was wrong because you believe a conspiracy killed JFK - neitjher my book 'The JFK Assassination- Dispelling The Myths' nor anything else is unlikely to dissuade you of this.With all due respect, unless you demonstrate why Belin was wrong you cannot make such a sweeping statement. As to the point about Serrano - a Fire Inspector swore Serrano was not on the outside stairs at the Ambassador at the time she stated - please don't say he was part of the conspiracy! Although the LAPD maintained Serrano retracted her story under intense questioning conspiracy theorists said she had been bullied into saying her story was false.Serrano had been given a polygraph test by Sergeant Hernandez on June 20th 1968.Asked if she sat down on the stairway at the time of the shooting she replied, “Yeah, I think I did…people messed me up…stupid people…just in all the commotion and everything…I was supposed to know more than I knew…I told (DA staffer John Ambrose) I heard the people say ‘We shot him’ or ‘They shot him’ or something.And I remember telling him that I had seen these people on the …on the stairway.” According to the LAPD Summary Report, “Polygraph examination disclosed that Serrano has never seen Sirhan Sirhan in person;further, that Miss Serrano fabricated, for some unknown reason, the story about the girl in the polka dot dress.Responses to relevant questions indicate that no one made statements to Miss Serrano telling her that they had shot Kennedy or that she heard any gunshots during the late evening of June 4 or early morning of June 5, 1968.Miss Serrano was informed of the results of the polygraph examination.” With regard to your comments about the JFK assassination may I direct you to Ken Rahn's JFK 'Academic' site and a group, including myself , 'Non Conspiracists United'. http://karws.gso.uri.edu/noncons/ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/JFK.html

Stephen, Jesse Unruh - Newsweek 17th June 1968 - it is not clear yet whether Unruh actually retracted his statement - the allegations come from a conspiracy advocate and I will check.However from memory I believe the statement was used by Unruh during the trial. The doctor was Dr Marcus McBroom cited in UPI Archives (www.upi.com) I will read the previous posts.So far I have just skimmed - but I spotted one mistake already - Sandra Serrano did not stick to her story all these years - in fact she retracted her story shortly after the assassination and admitted to Pena and Hernandez (who , by the way, do not have a sinister role in this whole affair - Anyone who claims otherwise is simply repeating the malevolent intent of Cts who have tried, but failed, to demonize them ) she had 'made stuff up'.It was only later when CT's got hold of her she retreated back to her original story.I can retrieve the full quotes from my files if you wish but this might take a day or two.I use some of these quotes in my manuscript but again I am trying to get something off to you as quickly as possible. Conspiracy Theorists are able to twist any statement to their advantage as I have discovered over the years - including the inevitable confused reports which occur when an event so momentous takes place. Will get back to you with further statements about previous posts.

Thank you Stephen,and thank you for the kind comments about my article.There is a longer version on : http://www.middleeastfacts.com/guests/ayton_25mar05a.php I see we are not too distant from each other, by American standards, of course Durham and Cambridge.Yes, Sirhan did indeed proclaim that he did it for his 'country' ie Palestine.Jesse Unruh first reported this but later denied it.However, a psychiatrist who was nearby confirmed this is what Sirhan shouted following the shooting.My research has concentrated on many aspects of the case but I give credit to Dan Moldea who, I believe, has satisfied me as to the crime scene anomalies.His book is excellent.I have concentrated on Sirhan's background, his motive and the possibility of a conspiracy.

I cover the EMK tragedy in my book "Questions of Controversy" (2001) University of Sunderland Press). There is no credible evidence whatsoever that the incident was teid to some kind of conspiracy. Mel Ayton www.melayton.co.uk

My article on the RFK assassination was published on History News Network last month.It provoked a reply from Peter Evans as you can see.There are numerous other issues to consider about this case as I see from your forum posts- 'polka dot girl', ballistics etc and I am willing to discuss them all. DID THE PLO MURDER ROBERT KENNEDY? BY MEL AYTON (www.melayton.co.uk) The issue of a possible conspiracy in the murder of Senator Robert F Kennedy in 1968 has once again been resurrected with the publication of Peter Evans’ book ‘Nemesis’ and the recent calls from Hollywood celebrities and magazine writers to re-open the case - (see John Hiscock’s ‘Was Robert Kennedy Killed By A Real Manchurian Candidate Style Assassin?’, The Independent, January 18th 2005 and Dominick Dunne’s article in Vanity Fair, December 2004 issue) The principal discrepancy which led to charges of conspiracy turned on the number of shots fired. Conspiracy researchers alleged they were more than the number of bullets Sirhan’s gun could hold. However, in 1995 investigative reporter Dan Moldea, a former conspiracy advocate, published the results of his investigation into the murder of Robert Kennedy in “The Killing Of Robert Kennedy - An Investigation into Motive, Means and Opportunity” (1995). Moldea poured over the mountain of evidence in the case. He studied the forensic and ballistic reports and interviewed scores of witnesses, including many of the police officers involved who had never been interviewed previously. What he found suggested a botched investigation involving the mishandling of physical evidence in the case, the failure to correctly interview some witnesses, the premature (but non-sinister) destruction of key pieces of physical evidence and the lack of proper procedures in securing and investigating the crime scene. Moldea successfully addressed the issues of alleged bullet holes in door frames (too small to be made by bullets) and the number of shots fired (8, not 10 as conspiracy advocates allege). Amongst conspiracy advocates, only Peter Evans supported the argument that Sirhan likely fired the gun that killed Kennedy. Yet his allegation that Aristotle Onassis ordered the assassination is flawed. Evans alleged that Sirhan had been ordered to kill RFK by PLO official Mahmoud Hamshari. He claims to have unearthed evidence that Aristotle Onassis had given Hamshari money to direct his PLO terrorists away from his Olympic Airways airlines at a time when planes were being hijacked and that some of the money was used to hire Sirhan to kill RFK. Evans claimed that Onassis was aware of the plot and, indeed, wanted RFK eliminated so the New York Senator would not stand in the way of his marrying JFK’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. In fact there many inconsistencies in Evans’ theory. Although the author accepts the statements made by Onassis’ friends and relatives that the shipping tycoon admitted he had been responsible for RFK’s murder, he contradicts himself by quoting close Onassis aides as having had trouble sorting out their bosses’ “exaggerations, half-truths and lies”. Central to Evans’ thesis are entries in Sirhan’s notebooks which purportedly connected Aristotle Onassis to the assassin. Evans alleges Sirhan’s notebooks make reference to Alexander Onassis’s girlfriend Fiona who his father detested and Stavros Niarchos, his shipping rival whom he also hated.However, Evans’ juxtaposition of names to prove Sirhan wrote about killing Onassis’ ‘enemies’ is misleading. Sirhan had placed the name FIONA in a list of racehorse names – Fiona, Jet-Spec, Kings Abbey and Prince Khaled. The Arabic script consists of one sentence “He should be killed” (not “They should be killed” as Evans alleges) and does not refer to either ‘Niarkos’ or ‘Fiona’. The diary entry ‘Niarkos’ remains unexplained, as do many other entries in Sirhan’s notebooks, but there is no indication it refers to anyone on a ‘Sirhan Death List’. The words in Sirhan’s notebooks were the result of simple ‘stream-of-consciousness’ ramblings he learned from Rosicrucian literature as ways to improve his life. The notebooks are filled with names of people Sirhan knew – Bert Altfillisch, Peggy Osterkamp and Gwen Gum for example, and people he didn’t know like Garner Ted Armstrong. The entries which refer to ‘$100,000’ were simply Sirhan’s obsessions about wealth and appear a number of times in the notebooks. Central to Evans’ thesis was the implication that Sirhan had spent a ‘three month’ period before the assassination being trained by terrorists or undergoing hypnotic indoctrination. Evans was wrong in stating Sirhan’s movements were unaccounted for, or ‘a blanket of white fog’ as he put it. Sirhan’s movements in the year prior to the assassination leave no unaccountable period allegedly spent ‘terrorist training’ or ‘hypnotically indoctrinated’. The LAPD investigative team, SUS, gave no credence to the idea that Sirhan had been ‘missing’ during any period from June 1967 to June 1968 despite the comments of an Evans source, LAPD Officer Jordan. In the year prior to the assassination he was seen frequently in Pasadena’s Hi-Life bar by waitress Marilyn Hunt.He was also observed in Shap’s Bar during this time.In July 1967 Sirhan filed a disability complaint for workmen’s compensation. Between July and September 1967 Sirhan’s mother and brother Munir said Sirhan went often to the Pasadena library.Library records confirm he borrowed books during this period. Sirhan’s mother said her son ‘..stayed at home for over a year (sic) with no job’(October 1966 to September 1967). Also during this period Sirhan, by his mother’s account, often drove her to work. On 9th September 1967 Sirhan began work at John Weidner’s health food store.Weidner reported no long periods of absence up to the time Sirhan left his employ in March 1968. So how did Sirhan ‘emerge(ed) from this ‘white fog’ in March 1968, (and) joined the (Rosicrucians)’ as Evans states? (Author’s note: Sirhan actually joined the Rosicrucians in June 1966.). The three month period immediately prior to the assassination was also examined and left no unaccounted time when the assassin could have participated in terrorist training or hynosis indoctrination. On March 7th Sirhan left his job at a Pasadena health food store. Following Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4th 1968, he discussed the murder with Alvin Clark, a Pasadena garbage collector. Sirhan’s friend, Walter Crowe, met him in Pasadena on the night of May 2nd 1968 when they discussed politics. The last time he saw Sirhan was on the Pasadena college campus on May 23rd 1968. He was in Denny’s restaurant when Sirhan entered with a group of friends. This leaves only a two week period not accounted for. But Sirhan refers to local newspaper and local radio reports throughout the month of May which he could not have accessed if he had been out of the country. Besides, Sirhan was living at 696 E. Howard Street, Pasadena. Family and friends have never suggested he was missing during this period. Conspiracy advocates, including Evans, who want to see the case re-examined allege that Sirhan’s staring at a teletype machine on the night of the murder is proof that he had been ‘hypnotised’. Yet Sirhan frequently became entranced by things around him. This was part of his make-up. In fact, this would not be the first time Sirhan had experienced ‘trance-like states’. He experienced them as a boy growing up in Jerusalem, according to his mother. A majority of hypnosis and mind-control experts within the scientific community dismiss the notion that subjects can be hypnotised to commit murder.They maintain that such a possibility of programming an unwitting and unwilling subject is not possible. Furthermore, there would be no guarantee of success for a ‘robotic assassin’; it is an erratic tool.A hypnotist can plant a suggestion in the subject’s mind and ask him to forget that suggestion but there is no foolproof way of preventing another hypnotist coming along and recovering that memory. Additionally, there is evidence, not presented at the trial, which proves that Sirhan had been feigning amnesia. Sirhan has always proclaimed that he could not remember writing in his notebooks, “RFK must die” nor could he remember shooting Kennedy. There is , however, compelling evidence that Sirhan knew what he had done. He confessed to ACLU lawyer Abraham Lincoln Wirin that he “…did it, I shot him”. And he also told defence investigator Michael McCowan that he remembered shooting Kennedy. Michael McCowan was a private detective who assisted Sirhan lawyers. In the pre-trial period McCowan had been talking to Sirhan about the shooting. Sirhan had responded to a question asked by McCowan. McCowan had been startled to hear how Sirhan’s eyes had met Kennedy’s in the moment just before he shot him and before Kennedy had fully turned to his left at the time he was shaking hands with the Ambassador Hotel kitchen staff. McCowan asked Sirhan, “Then why, Sirhan, didn’t you shoot him between the eyes?” Without hesitating, Sirhan replied, “Because that son-of-a-bitch turned his head at the last second”. If Sirhan had been lying then how was the ‘hypnotic defense’ and Sirhan’s ‘amnesia defense’ constructed in the first place? Sirhan claimed his lawyers had first put forward the idea that he had been in a ‘hypnotic trance-like’ state when he shot Kennedy. But there is evidence that Sirhan had foreknowledge of ‘amnesiac and disassociative states’ before he committed the murder. Sirhan had read Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”, a book about the multiple murders of a Kansas farmer, his wife and two teenage children. The murders were committed by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock in 1959 and Capote’s book of the murder, manhunt , trial and executions of the murderers was published in 1965. Sirhan identified with the short and stocky Perry Smith. He felt great empathy for Smith. Smith, a small statured man who had suffered a deprived childhood, had bouts of shivering and trance-like states and he believed in mysticism and fate. According to Capote, Perry Smith, “….had many methods of passing (time)….among them, MIRROR GAZING…EVERY TIME (HE SAW) A MIRROR (HE WOULD) GO INTO A TRANCE” (emphasis added) At the conclusion of Capote’s book the author quotes a team of psychiatrists who found a number of similarities in their subjects; “(The murderers) were puzzled as to why they killed their victims, who were relatively unknown to them, and in each instance the murderer appears to have lapsed into a DREAMLIKE DISSASSOCIATIVE TRANCE (Emphasis added) from which he awakened to suddenly discover himself assaulting the victim…..Two of the men reported severe disassociative trancelike states during which violent and bizarre behaviour was seen, while the other two reported less severe and perhaps less well-organised, AMNESIAC EPISODES (emphasis added)….”. It is therefore likely Sirhan had used his knowledge of how murderers behave to construct a possible ‘diminished capacity’ defense. Intriguing as Evans’ thesis is, there is no credible evidence that a ‘hypnotised’ Sirhan had been directed to kill Kennedy by the PLO - apart from hearsay and second-hand accounts by a number of individuals who were close to Onassis. The record indicates that Sirhan was indeed motivated by political considerations but he was an ‘unaffiliated terrorist’ rather than someone who had plotted with a terrorist group. Sirhan may have been mentally unstable and angry at a society that had relegated him to the bottom of the heap but there is sufficient evidence, originating years before the shooting, that Sirhan clearly saw himself, like today’s suicide bombers, as an Arab hero. The PLO and most Palestinians certainly judged him this way. And Sirhan’s lack of remorse is entirely in keeping with the terrorist way of rationalising political murder. Sirhan and his brothers could not, or would not, assimilate into American society. They abhorred US culture, disliked the mores of the American people and, most importantly, hated the support Americans gave to the state of Israel. The family felt they were part of a minority group ‘alienated’ and ‘misunderstood’ within the larger community. As most Americans were unaware of the Palestinian issue in 1968 very few journalists examined Sirhan’s background as a Palestinian Arab in an attempt to explain the tragedy. Instead, commentators wrote Sirhan off as yet another ‘misfit’ with a gun who stalks and then murders a leading public official with no apparent motive except his own demons. The Palestinian/Arab cause is the sine que non of the assassination. As a poor working class immigrant Sirhan identified with his downtrodden people living as refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. The period 1967-68, the year following the Six Day War, became a crucial time in Sirhan’s life because it was the time when Israel became dominant in the region having successfully defended itself against Arab aggression. Having failed to eject the Jews from Israel/Palestine, Arabs throughout the world felt powerless and weak and Arab pride had been severely damaged. Their condition exaggerated Sirhan’s feelings of inadequacy even though he lived thousands of miles away from the conflict. Many ‘exiled’ Palestinians, like Sirhan, sought retribution and began to formulate plans to kill innocent civilians and hi-jack planes. Sirhan’s answer to these problems took the form of killing a major American politician who advocated support for Israel. Sirhan said, “…this momentum just took hold of me and by June 5th 1968 (The first anniversary of the Six day War) I couldn’t control it (anger) anymore.” To the Western mind terrorists are ‘deranged’ and ‘evil’. However, their acts are not the product of ‘insanity’ but possess a logic all their own. Terrorists have ‘rational’, if sometimes bizarre, motives. It is also true that many terrorists (like Al Qaeda’s Ramzi Youssef) display symptoms of a psychopathic nature – they are cold blooded and carry out their acts of terror unremorseful. But their acts are not the products of ‘delusional’ or ‘irrational’ minds. Nor was Sirhan’s. He did indeed crave attention and success. He was depressed that society had relegated him to the bottom of the heap.He felt an allegiance and empathy with assassins of the past. And he dreamed of infamy. But without his sense of ‘Arabness’ and without his hatred towards Jews that had their roots in his childhood indoctrination, it is unlikely Sirhan would have assassinated Robert Kennedy. All the hatred that spewed forth from Sirhan’s gun can ultimately be traced back to three sources – Anti-Americanism, Palestinian nationalism and anti-Semitism. And this may have been the first act in an international political drama that culminated in 9/11. [Peter Evans Responds (#58060) by Editor on April 4, 2005 at 8:55 PM Editor's Note: HNN received this email on 4-4-05: As the author of Nemesis, the story of Aristotle Onassis's complicity in Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in 1968, I read Mel Ayton's article (Did the PLO Kill RFK?) with interest and surprise at his distortion of the facts so carefully set out in my book. Since he has gone to such lengths to point out what he believes are fatal flaws in my investigation, permit me to correct just one of the more flagrant inaccuracies upon which he has constructed his criticism of my book, and the more than ten years of research that went into it. At the heart of Mr. Ayton's criticism is his perverse and totally untrue statement that I claim that Sirhan Sirhan left the United States "in the months prior to the assassination ... to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training." This, he declares, is "central to Evans's thesis." Yet I make no such claim. Indeed, I do not suggest even the possibility that Sirhan left California, let alone the United States, during this or any other time in the twelve years he lived in Pasadena after fleeing with his family from West Jerusalem in 1956. But based on his extraordinary fabrication, Mr. Ayton continues to make points — e.g. Sirhan referring to "local newspaper and radio reports throughout the month of May which he could not have accessed if he had been out of the country" — that he claims demolish the credibility of my book. Since he is plain flat-out wrong about matters so fundamental to his criticism of Nemesis, I will not waste readers' time deconstructing the rest of his arguments, which similarly collapse like a house of cards. Of course, the truth about the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the degree of Aristotle Onassis's villainy are not neutral subjects. Although I have no idea where Mr. Ayton is coming from, his skewed attack on my book sounds very similar to the vociferous lobby that continues to argue that the CIA masterminded Senator Kennedy's killing — a conviction it finds hard to reconcile with the facts I reveal in Nemesis — and dismisses me as a Company dupe. Peter Evans [ Reply ] Re: Peter Evans Responds (#58190) by Mel Ayton on April 7, 2005 at 11:35 AM Mr Evans does not demonstrate that my argument ‘collapses like a house of cards’.He merely states it. As he should be aware, accusation without confirmation is worthless. Mr Evans accepts that, in a three month period in the year before the assassination, Sirhan had been wrapped in a ‘blanket of white fog’.The implication is clear – Sirhan had been manipulated by terrorists to murder Robert Kennedy.Although Evans makes no claims that Sirhan had been spirited away to the Middle East for terrorist training it is logical for his readers to assume Sirhan was somewhere during his period of ‘indoctrination’. It is also logical for his readers to assume Sirhan had to be somewhere other than his home in Pasadena – either within the United States at a terrorist ‘safe house’ or at a terrorist training camp in the Middle East. Where else could he be if he was undergoing ‘hypnotic indoctrination’ and/or terrorist training? I did not state that Evans claimed Sirhan had been in the Middle East for terrorist training. I wrote, “Central to Evans’s thesis was the implication that Sirhan had spent a three month period before the assassination being trained by terrorists or undergoing hypnotic indoctrination.” Later in the paragraph I wrote that, “Sirhan’s movements in the months prior to the assassination leave no unaccountable period when the assassin could have left the country to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training or have spent a considerable amount of time being ‘hypnotically indoctrinated’”. These are clearly my words and conclusions - an attempt to show the reader that there was no mystery in Sirhan’s movements in the three month so-called ‘mystery’ period prior to the assassination. However, I omitted to explain there was also no mystery about Sirhan’s movements in the year prior to the assassination. Furthermore, I did not say that Evans claimed “Sirhan Sirhan left the United States in the months prior to the assassination…to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training”. This is a juxtaposition of phrases designed to mislead. Why did Evans claim Sirhan was, effectively, missing during this period? If he has no proof of Sirhan’s whereabouts why speculate the assassin may have been undergoing hypnotic indoctrination or terrorist training? In fact this is symptomatic of Evans’s methods – raising issues with a question then directing the reader to a conclusion that suggests a sinister interpretation. The ‘heart’ of my criticism is not the spurious allegation that I believed Evans claimed Sirhan was in the Middle East .The heart of my criticism lies in the fact that Evans has used speculation and innuendo to claim that Sirhan had been in a ‘blanket of white fog’ undergoing some kind of ‘training’. Simply stated, Evans is wrong. The LAPD investigative team, SUS, gave no credence to the idea that Sirhan had been ‘missing’ during any period from June 1967 to June 1968 despite the comments of LAPD Officer Jordan.In the year preceding the assassination he was seen frequently in the Hi-Life bar in Pasadena by waitress Marilyn Hunt.He was also seen in Shap’s Bar during this period. In July 1967 Sirhan filed a disability complaint for workmen’s compensation. Between July and September 1967 Sirhan’s mother and brother Munir said Sirhan went often to the Pasadena library.Library records confirm he borrowed books during the so-called 'white fog' period. Sirhan’s mother said her son ‘..stayed at home for over a year (sic) with no job’(October 1966 to September 1967). Sirhan, by his mother’s account, often drove her to work during the time he was unemployed. On 9th September 1967 Sirhan began work at John Weidner’s health food store.Weidner reported no long periods of absence up to the time Sirhan left his employ in March 1968. So how did Sirhan ‘emerge(ed) from this ‘white fog’ in March 1968, (and) joined the (Rosicrucians)’ as Evans states? (Author’s note: Sirhan actually joined the Rosicrucians in June 1966.) And, as I point out in my article, Sirhan’s movements in the three month period before the assassination leave no time unaccounted for. Evans’s speculations do not end with Sirhan’s ‘white fog’. He also goes to great lengths to imply that Sirhan was likely hypnotised to kill RFK. He gives credence to the claims of conspiracy advocates that William Bryan was Sirhan’s ‘controller’. Bryan was famous for having hypnotised the ‘Boston Strangler’, Albert DeSalvo. Bryan also claimed he had worked for the CIA and bragged to two prostitutes he had hypnotised Sirhan to kill Kennedy. Bryan’s credibility was damaged, however, when it was discovered he had a history of ‘bragging’, consorted with prostitutes and used unethical practices including having sexual relationships with some of his patients. He was described by one associate as a ‘sexual pervert’. And there is no credible evidence whatsoever to support Bryan’s claims he was Sirhan’s ‘controller’ or the claims of one of Evans’s ‘unnamed’ sources that Bryan had worked for the CIA’s hypnosis expert Sidney Gottlieb. This is not the only occasion Evans accepts the statements of unreliable sources. He gives credence to the gossip that RFK had sexual relationships with his martyred brother’s widow, Jackie, and Marilyn Monroe.The majority of RFK biographers reject these conclusions. Evans quotes from John Marks’s book “The Search For The Manchurian Candidate” and cites the experiments conducted by CIA scientist Morse Allen who conspiracy advocates allege was ‘successful’ in programming an assassin. Allen hypnotised his secretary, who had a fear and loathing of guns, to pick up a pistol and ‘shoot’ another secretary.The gun, of course, was unloaded. After Allen brought the secretary out of the trance she had no memory of what she had done. However, conspiracy advocates, including Evans, who promote this episode as proof the CIA were successful in developing ‘programmed assassins’ fail to mention that Allen did not give much credibility to his own experiment. Allen believed that all that happened was that an impressionable young woman volunteer had accepted orders from a legitimate ‘authority’ figure to carry out an order she likely knew would not end in tragedy. Allen also believed there were too many variables in hypnosis for it to be a reliable ‘weapon’. And all the participants in such trials knew they were involved in a scientific experiment. There was always an ‘authority figure’ present to remind the subject or some part of the subject’s mind that it was only an experiment. Evans’ scenario is fundamentally implausible. How could plotters, for example, be sure that Sirhan would not suddenly ‘remember’ his contacts, following his arrest, turned ‘state’s evidence’ and kept in a ‘safe house’ by the District Attorney? And if the plotters believed Sirhan would be killed by Kennedy’s security it had to have been the least thought-out plot conceivable. Furthermore, had Sirhan suddenly ‘remembered’ he would not have thrown away the chance to save his own life by telling investigators of his ‘involvement’ with Hamshari. His lawyers could also have built a strong case around the ‘paid assassin’ theory arguing against the imposition of the death penalty which was eventually handed down. Evans’s thesis can also be clearly shown to be flawed when he addresses the issue of why Sirhan targeted RFK. Evans wrote, “And why had he (Sirhan) turned his rage on Robert Kennedy when other candidates….had been far more outspoken in their support for Israel?” If Evans had researched the statements made by Sirhan he would have discovered why RFK became the target. Initially, Sirhan would likely have been satisfied with any opportunity to kill a leading American politician. At one point he even had UN Ambassador Goldberg in his sights. Sirhan said he first considered killing Vice President Hubert Humphrey, “It might not even have been just Kennedy”, Sirhan told Robert Kaiser, “ ….. Somebody who was big, tough, somebody who was – it wasn’t necessarily Kennedy – it could have been somebody else but someone who would still represent American policy that was pro-Israel. In fact, it – for example - might have been Humphrey. Because Humphrey was a person you didn’t particularly like either.” However, in the years between 1963 and 1968 American political culture had been dominated by the idea of a ‘Kennedy Dynasty’ and myths surrounding JFK’s assassination. Year after year books, movies, television documentaries and political news stories gave a cult-like status to JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Sirhan, too, desired fame. Killing any of the other candidates would certainly have given him status throughout the Arab world. But his true target had an even greater symbolism attached to it. Sirhan would become the ‘Second Kennedy Assassin’. He knew that killing RFK would give him greater world exposure the other candidates could not provide. It was no accident that Sirhan set his sights on the candidate who was the brother of the martyred president. It was no accident that Sirhan chose the candidate who was most likely to become the next president. Evans disingenuously implies that my criticism is aligned with that of conspiracy advocates who claim the CIA was behind the murder. Evans wrote, “Although I have no idea where Mr Ayton is coming from, his skewed attack on my book sounds very similar to the vociferous lobby that continues to argue that the CIA masterminded Senator Kennedy’s killing….and dismisses me as a Company Dupe.” If Evans had taken the time to carry out a simple ‘Google search’ he would have realised that my previous books expose most conspiracy advocates as nothing more than charlatans and profiteers who have falsely accused the CIA and others in the intelligence community of participating in the murders of JFK and MLK. If Evans is so dismissive of conspiracy advocates who claim the CIA was behind the murder then why does he accept, without criticism, the claims made by conspiracists Philip Melanson, Jonn Christian and William Turner which he uses in his book to construct his theory? All three conspiracy advocates have, at one point or another, alleged involvement of the US Intelligence community in the murder of RFK. Mel Ayton www.melayton.co.uk [ Reply ]

Mel Ayton lives in Durham, England, with his wife Sheila and has two grown children, Laura and Tim. He has a B.A. Honours degree in Politics and History and an M.A. from Durham University where he specialised in historiography and the teaching of history in American schools and colleges. In 1988 he was selected as a Fulbright Teacher and taught in schools in Michigan, USA. He also worked in Bermuda and taught in Zambia. He retired as a School Deputy Principal in 1999 to write full time. Mel Ayton’s first book, Questions of Conspiracy, was an examination of the claims made by JFK conspiracy theorists. He decided to write the book following a conversation in 1988 with US Senator Arlen Specter in which Specter expressed his dismay at the way the JFK consipiracists had misused the evidence in the case. The book was updated and revised and was published in 2002 as The JFK Assassination: Dispelling The Myths. Dispelling The Myths was reviewed by The Nation magazine contributing editor and leading JFK historian and author, Max Holland, who described it as outstanding. Kwickee.com nominated the book as one of the two best books written about the subject. The book carries a forward written by JFK researcher Larry A. Sneed whose book No More Silence - An Oral History of The Assassination Of President Kennedy was universally acclaimed throughout the United States. In 2001 the University of Sunderland Press published Mr Ayton’s book Questions of Controversy: The Kennedy Brothers, which examined the controversial stories about John, Robert and Edward Kennedy. He was the first researcher to prove that JFK mistress Judith Campbell Exner had deliberately embellished her stories and lied about her role as a conduit between mobster Sam Giancana and JFK. Former JFK adviser and Kennedy White House historian, Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., described his research about RFK and the Vietnam War as “persuasive”. In 2003 Mr Ayton acted as the historical adviser for the BBC’s television documentary, The Kennedy Dynasty, which was broadcast in the UK in November 2003. He has also written for Ireland’s leading history magazine, History Ireland. Mel Ayton’s book about the murder of Martin Luther King was published by ArcheBooks in the USA in February 2005. He has recently completed his research about the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and is presently researching the 1973 murder of Bermuda’s Governor Sir Richard Sharples. He has been given access to the Scotland Yard Bermuda murders files housed at the Metropolitan Police Archives in London before their transmission to the National Archives. http://www.melayton.co.uk/