Josiah Thompson
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Posts posted by Josiah Thompson
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I think any answer to this sort of question has to be speculative and my speculations are no better than yours. I was working fairly closely with Steve Rivele for several years on what became the Marseille mafia story. He could not confirm the location of the alleged shooters on November 22nd and the whole theory crashed and burned with the French government's announcement that one was in jail and the other on a French warship on November 22nd. So I guess we can believe whatever we want to believe. It's all speculative.
Mr Thompson,I believe that the French mafia was hired to assassinate john F. Kennedy because the american Mafia could not be relied upon --having failed to assassinate castro.
Is there any truth here:
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Thanks for this extremely acute post. The point just cannot be made with greater precision and power.
Most interesting, Tim. Always good to hear from you. Are you watching the show on "The Discovery Channel" that is on now?I was watching the Magic Bullet show with interest. I enjoyed what seemed sincere attempts replicate the magic bullet's seven wounds through comparable tissue and emergence in a "pristine" state. Nevermind that the target was stationary. The graphic re-creations, the same ones used in Peter Jennings's special, were/are still maddenly disingenuous. With a nod to subjectivity I will strongly assert that Kennedy and Connally were not first hit by the same bullet. Even if the magic bullet did everything the program strived to prove, there was still the throat wound or some other impact on Kennedy to which Jackie can be seen reacting prior to JFK emerging from behind the Stemmons sign on the Zapruder film and Connally being hit.
Now back to the topic of this thread. I have been accused of many things on JFK forums, particularly including being a disinfo agent. I have been privately questioned about why I am supportive of Tim Gratz's expression of his Castro-done-it position. I have been informed that Josiah Thompson is a disinfo agent, that Mary Ferrell was actually CIA, and I have read High Treason II, in which Livingston goes on at length pathetically accusing his own co-author, Bob Groden, of the previous High Treason book to be deliberately promoting misunderstanding of the assassination. It's like a dysfunctional family having a bad turkey dinner on a drunken Thanksgiving. As of this moment, there is not a single forum participant I have ever seen on any site whom I consider to be a professional intelligence agent governmentally paid to interfere with forum discussion.
Ironically, disinformation may be one of the last potentially fruitful areas of investigation. As with Watergate, it's the cover-up that provides evidence to perpetrators. The provision of false autopsy photos, if proven and traced, is an example of such deliberate misinformation. The false reports out of Mexico City from an associate of David Phillips are significant evidence that it was not a Castro plot, but rather that it was an anti-Castro plot intended to look pro-Castro. The behavior of Joannides during the HSCA period, including the unusual fact that his background should have precluded that job in the first place, is indicative (a current issue unifying such diverse people as Blakey and Posner) of deliberate cover-up. Disinfo is an important area of investigation, but when applied as a forum name-calling tactic, comes off like the small-minded red-baiting of the McCarthy era.
Tim
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Thanks for your question, Mr. Purvis.
I haven't examined or held CE 399 in my hands since 1966. At that time, I wasn't looking for initials. Hence, from my own examination I can't tell you anything. From testimony, we would expect that Elmer Lee Todd's and Robert Frazier's initials should be on the bullet. If memory serves, Frazier even identified his mark on the bullet during testimony before the Warren Commission.
David Mantik was kind enough to send me a photocopy of the notes he took while examinint CE 399 at the Archives in 1995. He found the letter "Q" but could not discern whether it read "Q1." He also found the initials "RF" (for Robert Frazier) and "CK" (for Chuck Killion). Mantik associates a third odd mark with Elmer Lee Todd. This mark is composed of an upright capital "J" joined to a vertica slash on its left by a horizontal mark midway up the "J." I have no idea why Mantik believes this is the mark of Elmer Lee Todd. However, he may be familiar with Todd's mark from other contexts.
I know of no photo or photos of sufficiently high resolution of CE 399 to resolve the question of the marks. Do you? If none exist, someone might be able to resolve this by going to the Archives.
I am aware of Frazier's testimony in which he states that the bullet has his "mark".
Other than that, little has been presented as regards chain of custody markings by others who reportedly may have had possession of this bullet.
Among those marking which would appear to be missing would be that of FBI Agent Gallagher who also supposedly had access to this bullet for the original NAA work.
Gallagher personally informed me some years ago that the copper jacket base portion of CE399 was no different than any other WCC 6.5mm Carcano bullet when he examined it.
From this, I would have to deduce that Gallagher had full access to the bullet.
Perhaps the bullet was in the custody of Frazier who also went to Oak Ridge during the NAA work???
Tom
I agree heartily. Surely, Elmer Todd is an important transfer agent here. He got the bullet from Rowley (head of the secret service) and took it to the FBI Lab where, supposedly, both he and Robert Frazier marked it. Then in June 1964, Todd took the bullet back to Rowley who told him he could not identify it.
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Thanks for your question, Mr. Purvis.
I haven't examined or held CE 399 in my hands since 1966. At that time, I wasn't looking for initials. Hence, from my own examination I can't tell you anything. From testimony, we would expect that Elmer Lee Todd's and Robert Frazier's initials should be on the bullet. If memory serves, Frazier even identified his mark on the bullet during testimony before the Warren Commission.
David Mantik was kind enough to send me a photocopy of the notes he took while examinint CE 399 at the Archives in 1995. He found the letter "Q" but could not discern whether it read "Q1." He also found the initials "RF" (for Robert Frazier) and "CK" (for Chuck Killion). Mantik associates a third odd mark with Elmer Lee Todd. This mark is composed of an upright capital "J" joined to a vertica slash on its left by a horizontal mark midway up the "J." I have no idea why Mantik believes this is the mark of Elmer Lee Todd. However, he may be familiar with Todd's mark from other contexts.
I know of no photo or photos of sufficiently high resolution of CE 399 to resolve the question of the marks. Do you? If none exist, someone might be able to resolve this by going to the Archives.
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My replies are in bold-face.
LIFE was very unhappy about our use of the Zapruder film. They believed we were infringing their copyright on the film. That's why they sued us all. That unhappiness had nothing to do with the assassination in general or with Billings in particular.I was hired by LIFE as a consultant in October 1966. From then until the late winter of 1966-67 I worked with Ed Kern and Dick Billings on LIFE. We put together the November 1966 article entitled "Grounds for Reasonable Doubt." Later, I could draw on the material and interviews arranged by LIFE for use in "Six Seconds."
LIFE tried to stop it and, for several hours, persuaded Random House not to distribute it. Dick Salant of CBS News contacted the President of Haverford, John Coleman, in an attempt to soften what I said about CBS News. We have documents obtained from the FBI under FOIA which showed how closely Hoover was tracking the reception of the book but I have no direct evidence that the FBI carried out any efforts to discourage the reception of the book.
What did you make of Dick Billings? As you probably know, he appears several times in this story.
When I worked with Billings in 1966 and 1967, he has chief of investigative reporting for LIFE. He struck me as a very smart and aggressive journalist... a real pro.
He took part in Operation Tilt in June 1963 with William Pawley, John Martino, Eddie Bayo, David Morales, Rip Robertson and Terry Spencer.
In November, 1963, Billings was a member of the Life Magazine team in Dallas that purchased the Zapruder Film. I rather doubt this. It thought the team that purchased the Zapruder film was Dick Stolley, Tommy Thompson and Patsy Swank. I didn't know that Billings was in Dallas on the 22nd.
In November 1966 Billings and Life offered to help Jim Garrison with his investigation. According to Garrison "The magazine would be able to provide me with technical assistance, and we could develop a mutual exchange of information". Actually, I told Billings about the Garrison investigation. I had heard of it on the grapevine and passed along the information not in November but in December 1966 or January 1967.
Garrison agreed to this deal and Billings was introduced to staff member, Tom Bethal. In his diary Bethal reported: "In general, I feel that Billings and I share a similar position about the Warren Report. He does not believe that there was a conspiracy on the part of the government, the Warren Commission or the FBI to conceal the truth, but that a probability exists that they simply did not uncover the whole truth." Given what I know of Billings' views, this does not surprise me.
Billings managed to persuade Bethal that Clay Shaw was innocent. Later it was revealed by W. Penn Jones that "Bethal made the entire trial plan, a complete list of State's witnesses and their expected testimony and other materials available to the Shaw defense team."
In September, 1967, Billings told Jim Garrison that Life Magazine was no longer willing to work with him in the investigation. Billings claimed that this was because he had come to the conclusion that he had links to organized crime. Soon afterwards, Life began a smear campaign against Garrison. It was reported that Garrison had been given money by an unnamed "New Orleans mobster".
The House Select Committee on Assassinations was established in September 1976. Billings was recruited by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel, as editorial director. Later Billings and Blakey were the co-authors of The Plot to Kill the President (1981). In the book Billings and Blakey argue that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. Billings claims that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved but believes that there was at least one gunman firing from the Grassy Knoll. Billings comes to the conclusion that the Mafia boss, Carlos Marcello, organized the assassination.
It seems to me that Billings was working for the CIA during these events. That's all very nice. But where does this sort of discussion go? I say, 'No, it doesn't seem to me he was working for the CIA during these events.' You say the opposite. Do we then continue to gossip back and forth? I just don't think these sort of discussions are productive.
Do you think that was the case with your investigation. No.
Did he seem very interested in blaming the assassination on Oswald and the Mafia? No. Circa 1966/67 the Mafia never came up in our discussions. He was certainly not an exponent of Oswald the lone nut. Most of our talks were quite specific in terms of how to interpret particular pieces of evidence and how to take our investigation further.
Why did Life try to get you from publishing Six Seconds in Dallas? Did it have anything to do with Billings?
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Interesting questions. Thank you. My replies are in bold-face.
(1) If you were writing another book on the Kennedy Assassination today, what areas would you focus on? What characters need more research? In other words, who do you think organized, carried out and paid for the assassination of JFK.It has seemed to me from the beginning that three questions had a kind of logical order: (1) What happened? (2) Who did it? (3) Why did they do it? I don't think that (2) or (3) can be satisfactorily answered before (1) is answere. I'm still working on (1). If I were to write another book on the Kennedy assassination, I guess I would try to write "Six Seconds" all over again based on everything we know at the present. That, in itself, is a big order.
(2) On another thread it has been stated that you received considerable help from Life Magazine with your investigation? Is that true.
Yes, of course. I was hired by LIFE as a consultant in October 1966. From then until the late winter of 1966-67 I worked with Ed Kern and Dick Billings on LIFE. We put together the November 1966 article entitled "Grounds for Reasonable Doubt." Later, I could draw on the material and interviews arranged by LIFE for use in "Six Seconds."
(3) In Bill Turner’s excellent book, Rearview Mirror, he refers to a CIA campaign entitled Operation Nightingale (Countering Criticism of the Warren Report). He adds that “Nightingale was a companion piece to the older Operation Mockingbird, which proselytized journalists, writers and broadcasters to act as covert assets manipulating public opinion.”
It seems that the way the CIA and FBI controlled the media response to the JFK assassination was extremely important in the cover-up.
People in Europe saw the assassination of JFK very differently to those in America. Our press was allowed to report the event based on the evidence available. It is no coincidence that the first books that appeared suggesting a conspiracy were published in Europe and not the United States: Thomas G. Buchanan’s Who Killed Kennedy? (1964) and Joachim Joesten’s Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy? (1964). It is also relevant that the American media portrayed Buchanan and Joesten as communists working on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Were you aware of any attempts by the CIA to stop your book, Six Seconds in Dallas, being published?
No. LIFE tried to stop it and, for several hours, persuaded Random House not to distribute it. Dick Salant of CBS News contacted the President of Haverford, John Coleman, in an attempt to soften what I said about CBS News. We have documents obtained from the FBI under FOIA which showed how closely Hoover was tracking the reception of the book but I have no direct evidence that the FBI carried out any efforts to discourage the reception of the book.
Prior to the assassination, the CIA tried to hire me in Europe because of my knowledge of beach reconnaissance. But this had to do with my earlier training and service in Underwater Demolition Team 21. If the CIA was working to trash the book, I probably would never have learned of it anyway.
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"Mr Fetzer, I challenge you to put your hypothesis to any recognised organisation of professional pilots and publish their unedited reply here."
This keeps happening again and again to the Professor.
Two years ago on the "debunk Fetzer" board a retired Air Force Colonel named Bill Rees somehow found his way to it. Rather quickly he cleaned Fetzer's clock. I remember with a smile only one part of it. Fetzer had been maintaining that the Wellstone plane had been in communication with "the Eveleth tower." Rees pointed out that Eveleth had no tower! This slowed down the Great Wind for only a short time.
Now you show up here and do pretty much the same thing. Since all evidence indicates the Wellstone plane was on a normal VOR approach, Fetzer's dim claims about GPS fiddling become immediately irrelevant. Since "flight idle" is a normal setting in an approach, the Professor's arm waving about "lack of thrust" is also exposed.
Apparently, the best Fetzer can do in the way of aviation knowledge is to cite the hop he took in a military aircraft during college with a real pilot at the controls. I'm surprised he didn't cite the time when he was eleven and the Eastern Airlines pilot gave him a pair of tin wings for flying Eastern from LA to New York! Neither Fetzer, nor Four Arrows nor the high school teacher from Australia know anything about aviation, so they continue to make the errors you point out. Fetzer then waves a wand and makes them "experts." It's sort of like that tabloid sheet, the Globe, which waves a wand and makes some dufus with a degree in divinity an expert in molecular biology.
All of us who have watched the Professor's conceptual acrobatics in the past cannot help but enjoy what happens when knowledgeable people like yourself arrive to debate him.
Thanks for coming.
Explanations Fetzer has given as to why agents from Minneapolis simply didn't fly to Eveleth if they were in such a hurry.
0 The airport was temporarily closed, which is standard practice, in case something about the airport had contributed to the crash. Not point in setting up a situation where those investigating the crash also crash!
According to you Ulman took the Fire Chief up after the crash was discovered. TB was no evidence that the airport had caused the crash. You might have a point But I think if the FBI said it was an emergency they would have been allowed to land. Worst come to worst they could have diverted to near By Hibbing.
YOU SEEM TO THINK YOUR UNSUPPORTED SPECULATIONS ARE A BASIS FOR REBUTTING POINTS THAT I HAVE SUBSTANTIATED WITH EVIDENCE. THAT IS NOT THE SIGN OF A RATIONAL MIND, UNLESS YOUR PURPOSE IS TO BE DECEPTIVE. THEY FLEW INTO DULUTH AND RENTED A CAR TO DRIVE UP TO EVELETH, AS I HAVE EXPLAINED IN THE BOOK. IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA TO READ IT! PAUL MCCABE'S STATEMENT--THAT THEY HAD ONLY ARRIVED AT 3:30--WAS CONTRA-
DICTED BY THE ST. LOUIS COUNTY SHERIFF AND THE AIRPORT ASST MANAGER.
The airport was closed because a crash investigation was taking place. No-one (not even the FBI) would be allowed to land there unless they declared an emergency. Declaring an emergency is not ‘I have to land there because I am part of the investigation team’ but rather ‘I have an aircraft emergency and have to land immediately for the safety of those aboard’.
In this respect, Mr Fetzer has it right; until they ascertained the cause of the crash – or at least could clear the airport to resume normal operations – it would be closed to all traffic.
0 The NTSB spent hours questioning pilots from Charter Aviation about the possibility that the pilots were making a GPS rather than a VOR approach, which suggests that even the NTSB was taking the possibility seriously.
1] I read many But not all the interviews [some are not available on-line] I don't remember reading that. Please Briefly summarize these interviews and provide links if they are on-line. If not please attach them to a post B or put them up on your site. All pilots I have asked said your fly VOR or GPS not both
2] I thought that it was you position that the NTSB was trying to cover-up the case. WB they investigating all possibilities or covering up?
3] The assassins would have no way of knowing in advance if they would use GPS [Not that I think they were]. What would the killers have done if they only used VOR.
EGAD! NONE OF THIS MADE IT INTO THE NTSB REPORT, IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF "PLAN A", "PLAN B", ETC.? I THINK IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN VARIOUS PLANS DEPENDING UPON HOW EVENTS ACTUALLY UNFOLDED. (I WILL SEE ABOUT PROVIDING A LINK.)
It’s obvious that they considered the possibility that the aircraft tried to fly a GPS approach. They requested a VOR approach, were cleared for a VOR approach, were vectored to join a VOR approach, and never indicated that they were flying anything else but a VOR approach. That’s why the NTSB didn’t take it any further.
The EVM GPS RWY 27 approach takes them along a completely different track which would have been apparent on radar. The ATCO would have questioned them as to which approach they were flying.
You continually hang on this GPS business when there is absolutely no evidence in any way, shape, or form that they flew a GPS approach.
The late-model plane had an advanced avionics package, including a GPS system. The problem is to explain why the plane was heading for landing on the wrong gamut, 268 rather than 276. The Waukegan pilot's odd GPS experience, which occurred at the same time, suggests that GPS data may have been manipulated to lead the plane into the "kill zone" and kill it.
It's wrong heading has been explained ad infinitum But I'll explain it, just for your Benefit one more time. The plane had been off course since the first overshoot of the approach.
IF THE PLANE WAS IN WORKING ORDER, AS YOU MAINTAIN, THEN THE CDI AND ALTIMITER AND AIRSPEED INDICATOR AND STALL WARNING SYSTEM ARE ALL FUNCTIONING PROPERLY. THAT MAKES IT VERY DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE HOW TWO QUALIFIED PILOTS--ONE EXCEPTIONAL--SHOULD HAVE LOST TRACK OF THEIR AIR SPEED, THEIR ALTITUDE, THEIR DIRECTION, AND A LOUD WARNING.
THIS IS ONE OF THE STRONGEST INDICATIONS THAT YOU ARE NOT TAKING THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE PLANE WAS NO LONGER UNDER THEIR CONTROL SERIOUSLY. IN FACT YOU ADMIT AS MUCH ELSEWHERE IN THIS SPECIFIC POST. SO APPARENTLY NOTHING IS GOING TO CONVINCE YOU OTHERWISE, INCLUDING THE SMOKE, THE FIRE, THE MELTED ICE CLOUD, THE CELL PHONE ANOMALY, ETC.
You have said that one pilot was “exceptional” – just how do you qualify that? Both crew were qualified and current for the flight. Having an ATPL is NOT exceptional – there are thousands of pilots in the US alone with that rating. The pilot holding the ATPL was in no way exceptional. He did not have an exceptional number of flight hours logged. He had not flown an exceptional number of aircraft types. He did not have an exceptional range of experience. he did not hold any exceptional endorsements. He was not a senior captain or instructor pilot. He was not a maintenance test pilot. He was not an experimental test pilot. He was not regarded amongst his peers or any professional organisation as an exceptional pilot. He was NOT ‘exceptional’. One pilot held an ATPL, the other a CPL. Let’s test your knowledge here. Why did one hold an ATPL, and not just a CPL?
If you find it difficult to believe that a qualified and current crew can ignore warnings and simply fly their aircraft into a dangerous situation, then you have not bothered to read the multitude of reports from around the world demonstrating that qualified and current flight crew can do just that.
0 This is a new phenomenon, of course, but that is part of the ingenuity of the plan. Use a weapon of which the public is largely unaware, but which can do the job. ...
Another words "Zero". Your speculation B is even more untenable than regards EM weapons. That the US and other countries have been working on them for years is not in dispute. Show me one article from a reliable source saying that someone is working of this type of technology or explaining how in theory this might be done. Specifically how one GPS unit could be targeted
JUST AS IT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN PART OF THE PLAN TO USE A WEAPON THE EXISTENCE OF WHICH IS LARGELY UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC, THE MANIPULATION OF GPS DATA WOULD BE A PERFECT WAY TO INDUCE THE PILOTS INTO THINKING EVERYTHING WAS FINE WHILE THEY WERE BEING LED INTO A "KILL ZONE". ISN'T IT REMARKABLE THAT THE WAUKEGAN PILOT WAS HAVING HIS EXPERIENCE AT THE SAME TIME THE WELLSTONE PLANE WAS OFF COURSE BY A SIMILAR DIRECTION AND A SIMILAR MAGNITUDE? WHEN HE TAXIED UP TO THE AIRPORT, THE TIME WAS 10:22 ON 25 OCTOBER 2005. HE WAS THE ONE WHO WAS ALARMED AT THE PROSPECT THAT BOTH EVENTS MIGHT BE RELATED. IF THEY ARE NOT RELATED, THAT WOULD BE AN ASTOUNDING COINCIDENCE.
More of the GPS – a subject which you would appear to know nothing about. Time for you to put up or shut up about this matter.
1. Explain how the GPS works, specifically with relation to an aircraft and conducting a GPS approach.
2. Explain how the GPS could have been disrupted without triggering the various error-sensing systems built into a GPS receiver.
THEY WERE HEADED SOUTH, MORE THAN TWO MILES SOUTH OF THE AIRPORT. SINCE THE SIMULATIONS WITH A WEAKER ENGINE AND FLYING AT ABORMALLY SLOW SPEEDS WERE UNABLE TO BRING THE PLANE DOWN, IF IT WAS UNDER THEIR CONTROL, THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO POWER UP AND CIRCLE FOR ANOTHER TRY. THE QUESTION IS WHY. YOU SUGGEST INCOMPETENCE, BUT THERE WERE TWO OF THEM, THEY HAD A GREAT PLANE, THEY CARRIED SIX PASSENGERS, INCLUDING A US SENATOR, THEY WERE NOT DEAF, ONE OF THEM HAD AN AIR TRANSPORT PILOT'S CERTIFICATION AND HAD PASSED HIS FAA "FLIGHT CHECK" JUST TWO DAYS BEFORE THE FATAL FLIGHT, MAKING IT IS OVERWHELMINGLY MORE PROBABLE THAT THEY DIDN'T RECOVER BECAUSE THE PLANE WAS NO LONGER UNDER THEIR CONTROL THAN THAT THEY SIMPLY IGNORED THEIR AIRSPEED, ALTITUDE, CDI AND ALARM, ALLOWING A CRASH.
Once again, for all those reading (because Mr Fetzer will obviously ignore this), the simulation showed that it was possible to fly out of the situation; it did NOT show that it was unable to ‘bring the aircraft down’. Anyone could ‘bring the aircraft down’ – simply fly into the ground!
Tell me, Mr Fetzer, what is the typical reaction of a twin-engined, low-wing, turbine powered aircraft when it enters a low speed stall at low power setting?
Incompetence and inattention are more likely explanation
THIS REMARK DEMONSTRATES THAT YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT ANY OF THIS.
And that remark simply shows you are unwilling to consider the possibility you are wrong!
THERE IS MORE THAN ONE POSSIBILITY REGARDING THE DETAILS OF EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END. ONE IS THAT THEY WERE INCAPACITATED AT THIS POINT; THE OTHER IS THAT THEY WERE NOT.
Correct. The NTSB report is the most probable, though.
THIS IS THE "BEST CASE" SCENARIO ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THEY WERE DOING THEIR BEST WHEN THE PLANE WAS LOSING POWER TO MINIMIZE THE IMPACT OF THE CRASH.
False assumptions. There is NO evidence whatsoever that the aircraft was ‘losing power’. The flight crew had reduced power in order to regain the correct descent profile.
I WISH WE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. EITHER WAY, THE PLANE HAD NO FORWARD THRUST BECAUSE SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED, WHICH APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY AN ENERGY SURGE THAT SET THE PROPS ON IDLE.
Again, false assumption based on absolutely no evidence. ‘Flight idle’ is a normal setting for an approach.
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Great post, Thompson. You make me homesick for a place I've only seen in postcards.
Thanks Pat. I've enjoyed our exchange. It takes me back to things I haven't thought about for years. Unfortunately, I've got to go out-of-town on a case later this morning.... back the middle of next week.
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I don't know if you remember but the Media FBI office was broken into on the evening of March 21, 1971 and all their files stolen by persons unknown. These files were then copied and released selectively to the press over the next six or eight months. The documents obtained and then released to the press contained the first clear, indisputable evidence of the existence of the COINTELPRO program. They also showed that many members of the Swarthmore College administration were reporting regularly to the FBI on the political activities of students and faculty. Ditto for the athletic trainer at Haverford College.
I believe some of these documents evidenced a continuing interest in me and "Six Seconds" by the FBI and Hoover. I have been sent various FBI documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests which evidence an intense interest on the part of Hoover and the FBI concerning me and "Six Seconds." These largely come from the late 1960s and show the FBI closely following the reception the book received and how it fared under the onslaught from Time Incorporated.
Back then did I believe that any other critics were agents? No. Some I judged to be thoughtful and careful. Others I judged to be harebrained. But I never thought any were agents. Maybe some were. I never thought much about it.
Good answer. Your 1 million is in the mail. Keep your fingers-crossed that that pesky ghost of Angleton doesn't get it.
Seriously. Do you have any inside knowledge of the Media break-in? Here the FBI was totally exposed, totally humiliated, and yet not one person was arrested. This is astounding. Since the White House was trying to get rid of Hoover at this very same moment in time, and since Colson was hiring Hunt at this very same time, I'd harbored a suspicion that this was an early adventure of the "plumbers". A few months back, however, I can't remember where, I was reading a book on sixties radicals, and one of the journalists interviewed, who'd been one of the recipients of the stolen files, claimed he knew the members of the "Committee to Investigate the FBI" or whatever they called themselves, and said they were local radicals?
Do you know whether they were, in fact, members of the left? Did you know them? I think the statute of limitations is up. Were you one of them? Maybe if you "out" yourself, Salandria can be swayed on your bona fides.
On the other hand, everyone knows the spooks hate the feebies...
Federal prosecutors are very adept at finding ways around any statute of limitations... for example, a continuing conspiracy to aid and abet the first conspiracy, various overt acts on behalf of keeping the first conspiracy secret. In terms of answering your questions, the best I can do is quote from a book I published in 1988 called Gumshoe. It is non-fiction, a kind of memoir describing the change from being a college professor to being a PI:
At the outset everything had gone on in an atmosphere of earnest respectability. Nancy and I had come early to the antiwar movement, organizing marches and vigils in 1965 and 1966. I'd been arrested in the usual well-mannered ways in Philadelphia and Washington. Consistently polite to the authorities, we'd even permitted members of the Philadelphia police civil-disobedience squad to attend our premarch meetings. There'd been little violence; it had all been a battle of words.
When had things changed?
It was probably in 1970. We'd spent that academic year in Denmark, where I'd read the Danish papers for news of Cambodia and Kent State. We'd returned to Haverford in the late summer and you didn't have to be an Eric Sevareid to recognize that the balance had shifted. Resistance had replaced dissent; criminal conspiracy had taken the place of political organizing. On the one hand, there were draft-board raids and sabotage missions: in March 1971 the files of the Media FBI office were elegantly stolen and selectively released to the press. On the other hand, there was the ever-present danger of government phone taps and penetration by informers. For a brief moment, respectably middle-class citizens could function as criminals, backed not only by moral purpose but by the vocal enthusiasm of the intellectual community.
The wheeling columns of uniform-clad young men performing their maneuvers "for God, for Country and for Yale" had receded into the past. The society was no longer integral or obviously worthwhile. Our attention turned to the "good Germans," the Circle of the Rose, or, alternatively, to Camus and Sartre and their compatriots in the French resistance. My Navy training in commando and demolition raids could be used to advantage. It was a time of secret meetings and secret plans, of coded phone messages and watching one's rear-view mirror. When Haverford's president announced he might honor the FBI's request to examine the college's Xerox machines, I helped shift the offending roll to the president's personal machine. When Hoover's short-haired undercover operatives appeared in Powelton Village, a neighborhood warning system of hand-held sirens alerted the troops. It was David against Goliath. We were the best of our generation, we told ourselves, ready to take risks and do things others only thought about.
Had I been happy? Yes. It was an engrossing "story."
Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1988) pages 72-73.
The line above about us thinking "we were the best of our generation" just caught my eye as I typed it. What incredible hubris! None of us had ever seen the inside of a federal prison. In some sense, we may have believed we were untouchable. After all, we were intellectuals of various stripes. The government wouldn't dare touch us.... Or would it? It was.... to use Sartre's own concept... a time of incredible "bad faith," a time of massive self-delusion, of wading deep into the stream of ideology. And now... unbelievably... one pops one's head up and recognizes it was all over thirty years ago.
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I have to ask myself why your continual posing and log-rolling for your books irritates me so much. I guess it's because I remember a time when Sylvia Meagher, Vince Salandria, Ray Marcus, Paul Hoch and I, etc. etc, were all working on the case together. Just reading over Sylvia and M.S. Arnoni's correspondence to day makes feel all this keenly. They were so bright and so honest. The kind of antics you continually carry out would have been laughed at uproariously from the beginning. No one was trying to log roll anything. "Rain sensors" as "listening devices?"... Sylvia would have eaten you for breakfast on that one alone. I'm not talking about any particular theses. I'm talking about how points are argued, what rigor is brought to the claim and evidence presented, how one's interlocutor is treated in discussion. Research in this case started out in a very different way to the tabloid farce your latest books reduce it to. I guess, in truth, that is why you and your antics irritate me so.
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So, Josiah, the 1 million dollar question... Since you were there darned near the beginning, asking questions that really unnerved the people in power (I've read where Dr. Russell Fisher of the Clark Panel admitted the Panel was formed to refute your book), at a time when questioning those in power about the assassination may actually have been dangerous, did YOU ever suspect someone in the research community of being an agent of some kind? Was there anyone digging through your trash? Trying to encourage you to tone down your theories? Spreading lies about you to discredit you in the community? Did the FBI have a COINTEL-PRO for the research community? Did anyone besides Salandria start thinking other researchers were spooks? How widespread was paranoia at a time when it may have actually been justified?
I don't know if you remember but the Media FBI office was broken into on the evening of March 21, 1971 and all their files stolen by persons unknown. These files were then copied and released selectively to the press over the next six or eight months. The documents obtained and then released to the press contained the first clear, indisputable evidence of the existence of the COINTELPRO program. They also showed that many members of the Swarthmore College administration were reporting regularly to the FBI on the political activities of students and faculty. Ditto for the athletic trainer at Haverford College.
I believe some of these documents evidenced a continuing interest in me and "Six Seconds" by the FBI and Hoover. I have been sent various FBI documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests which evidence an intense interest on the part of Hoover and the FBI concerning me and "Six Seconds." These largely come from the late 1960s and show the FBI closely following the reception the book received and how it fared under the onslaught from Time Incorporated.
Back then did I believe that any other critics were agents? No. Some I judged to be thoughtful and careful. Others I judged to be harebrained. But I never thought any were agents. Maybe some were. I never thought much about it.
-
"Now that we have sung the praise of Josiah Thompson, here's an overview of a
book published in 1998, some 30 years later, that presents new discoveries in
the case--findings of the first importance!...."
This is hilarious... now that someone, somewhere has said something positive about Thompson, you ask people to look at Fetzer. "Look at me," you shout. "Look at me, NOW!"
You just don't get it, Professor.
Your problem is not that you and I are competing. Your problem is that we are not competing and that, like Rodney Dangerfield, you just aren't getting the respect you think you deserve. That lack of respect does not spring from anything I do or say. It comes from people reading your progressively shrill and tabloidesque books and remarking on the similarities of your style and scruples to that of reporters for the Globe writing on three-headed twins! Your problem is that the latest books on the Zapruder film properly debunk your own persistent obsession with proving a non-fact. It's not me. It's the readers who write into Amazon. It's the scholars who write books in your field. It's the reviewers who pan your work when it comes out.
The solution.... edit better books. Don't publish garbage. Don't devote ten pages of a book to the ravings of an Australian crony who comes to the U.S. and claims that "listening devices" have been placed in Dealey Plaze when they were just "rain sensors" to control the sprinklers.
I have to ask myself why your continual posing and log-rolling for your books irritates me so much. I guess it's because I remember a time when Sylvia Meagher, Vince Salandria, Ray Marcus, Paul Hoch and I, etc. etc, were all working on the case together. Just reading over Sylvia and M.S. Arnoni's correspondence today makes me feel all this more keenly. They were so bright and so honest! The kind of antics you continually carry out would have been laughed at uproariously from the beginning. No one was trying to log roll anything or sell any books. "Rain sensors" as "listening devices?"... Sylvia would have eaten you for breakfast on that one alone. I'm not talking about any particular theses. I'm talking about how points are argued, what rigor is brought to the claim and evidence presented, how one's interlocutor is treated in discussion. Research in this case started out in a very different way to the tabloid farce your latest books reduce it to. I guess, in truth, that is why you and your antics irritate me so.
Your latest antics with respect to Wellstone's plane, non-existent electronic death rays and the like, make me wish that almost fifteen years ago we all had dashed sufficient cold water on your brilliant idea that Bill Greer had shot the President with a shiny pistol, that you would have left the Kennedy assassination alone and gone out to cherry-pick a new conspiracy du jour.
Instead, we still have you around, whining about people not giving you enough respect.
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Here's the most I can remember about this, Pat.
In the summer of 1966, Salandria may have been working on a book himself. I'm not sure. John Kelin sent me a copy of my own letter to Salandria dated July 9, 1966. In that letter, I ask him in a handwritten PS: "Do you have a publisher for your book on the assassination? I know a senior editor at Lippincott who might be of some assistance." It's important that I refer to "your book" not "our book." In spite of what Salandria says, there never was any "our book. Vince and I were not working on a book. We were simply working together on a joint article to publish in some national circulation journal like the Atlantic, Harper's or the New Yorker.
I liked to write but Salandria didn't. It was summertime and I wasn't teaching. There never was any question of our doing a book together as I'd have to return to teaching in the fall. The only project between us was this article.
Over some time that summer, we had more and more instances of disagreement. What a surprise! Finally, it was just simpler for me to proceed on my own and I did.
As to what control Salandria would have had over the article. I presume he would control it as he had already written on the assassination, was a lawyer for the Philadelphia School Board, significantly older than I was and someone of consequence in Philadelphia. I was nobody. A young guy with a wife and kid trying to make it as a college professor.
I was never offering Salandria "mass exposure for his ideas." I was going to be simply a gofur who could write and was smart enough to analyze the material in front of him. When our ideas no longer matched up in terms of the interpretation of evidence I moved to finish up what I had already written. If recollection serves, he never wrote anything with regard to our joint article. However, clearly the way the article interpreted the case grew out of our work together.
By the way, I never did find out why he was claiming I was a CIA agent. I still don't have a clue. I suspect it still has to do with differences in the way we interpret evidence in the case. Over the years, I never have criticized Vince Salandria. I think many of his ideas are indeed pretty loopy. But I've never attacked back because of his paranoid claims. Even though we're both in our seventies now, I still see him as one of the true heroes of the critical examination of the Warren Report. He may be wrong but he's not venal or self-aggrandizing like Fetzer. Most importantly, his early research was really good!
I'll be honest. Those Salandria letters scare the crap out of me. Not because of the possibility Thompson was an agent. But because people actually follow Salandria's reasoning on this.Let me see:
Thompson was offering Salandria mass exposure for his ideas.
Thompson had a few ideas of his own that Salandria couldn't stomach.
The ideas in dispute could be used potentially somewhere down the road to refute the central theory of Salandria's work.
So, THEREFORE, this man who has befriended Salandria and offered to help him expose his ideas, Thompson, is most likely a disinformation agent intent upon diluting and discrediting Salandria's work.
To me, these seem like the thoughts of a sick mind, an obvious paranoid! A rational mind would have saw the glass as ninety percent full and jumped at the opportunity to expose his ideas to a mass audience, without significant worry he was being co-opted by "them." The only way I can understand Salandria's fear of Thompson is if Thompson insisted on complete editorial control of the book. If that is the case, then Salandria's fear might be justified.
What about it, Tink? Would Salandria have been allowed to disagree with your neck wound theory in the book, and make a case for alternative scenarios, including the CT-approved but otherwise unproven shot from the knoll? Or did you make it clear to him it was your book and that you alone would decide its direction?
Was it entirely your opinions that drove Salandria to suspect you? Or did your behavior have anything to do with it? If so, was it just a misunderstanding?
-
Professor Fetzer has been waving the Salandria correspondence around the internet for some time now. The use of such smear material is characteristic of Fetzer. I am delighted to be able to reply to it finally.
Disagreements over evidence have been endemic in the community of Kennedy assassination researchers since the beginning. Now and then it spills over into charges that “X is an agent of the CIA” or that “Y is a disinformation agent.” Fetzer published a whole template of disinformation with a place for each person on his enemies list.
Sadly, Vince Salandria started along a similar course in the winter of 1967-68. From the correspondence used by Fetzer as part of his smear, it would appear that Salandria is still at it in his seventies. What Fetzer does not tell you is that Salandria’s correspondence shows that he thinks Paul Hoch, John Newman, Bill Turner, the Nation magazine and the Philadelphia branch of ACLU all may have been functioning as intelligence agency assets at one or another time. I guess I should be proud to be linked with that group.
Let me tell you exactly what happened.
Back in February or March 1966, I was teaching at Haverford College as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Years before I’d commanded the UDT-21 detachment that did the combat reconnaissances of Blue and Yellow Beaches north of Beirut during the U.S landings there in July 1958. This experience turned me around politically and by 1965 I had become part of a vociferous Vietnam anti-war movement first in New Haven and then in Philadelphia. The sheriff of Media, Pennsylvania over near Swarthmore had announced publicly, “If any of them damn peaceniks come into my district, I’m gonna bust them.” A young physics professor named Bill Davidon and I heard of this, gathered up some innocuous leaflets from the American Friends Service Committee, and went over to Media on a Saturday morning. The cops watched us for awhile and then arrested us for “littering.” This was illegal because we had never let a leaflet hit the ground. But no matter. We were hauled off in squad cars to the Delaware County jail. Bill and I were held there for a few hours while the jailers made unpleasant remarks: “We better delouse those cells after we get those peacenik fags out of there.”
Bill and I had no real idea how we were going to get out. I guess we figured that either his wife, Ann, or my wife, Nancy, would show up in awhile with some cash to bail us out. We were surprised when a lawyer in a necktie showed up to get us out. He was from the local branch of the ACLU and his name was Vince Salandria.
At that time, I was pretty naive concerning law enforcement procedures but I knew enough to know that the lawyer had pulled off a primo job of bluffing. After we were brought out into the squad room, Salandria started talking to us in the presence of the cops gathered around. In substance, he said: “The ACLU has been in touch with Attorney General Katzenbach. Now when the FBI agents arrive in a few minutes (looking at his watch)... I want you to tell them that not only have your civil rights been violated but that you are suing for false arrest Captain so-and-so, Lieutenant so-and-so, Sergeant so-and-so and Patrolman so-and-so.” We were out of there in less than five minutes with no charges lodged. Either that day or days later I asked Salandria about it and he admitted that no one had ever called Attorney General Katzenbach.
Salandria’s memory fails him on this. There was no “group of peace people” to be gotten out of jail... just Bill Davidon and me. Davidon and I had no idea that the ACLU would attempt to get us out of jail although we were delighted that they had... and had managed it with no charges filed. Neither of us knew that Vince Salandria had anything to do with the ACLU.
I had read Salandria’s articles in Liberation magazine and The Minority of One in 1965. They were excellent. I told him that I liked them and we talked further about the assassination. This led to us traveling together to Washington in the summer of 1966 to do research at the National Archives. Together, we began work on a long joint article on the case. Salandria says we were working on a book. This is just untrue. It was to be a long article that might run in a national magazine. That was the plan. At a certain point in July or August, I think, we began to disagree over the interpretation of evidence. Salandria says it had to do with the nature of the throat wound. It may have been. I just don’t remember. I continued on my own and in September went up to New York to meet with Willie Morris at Harper’s. When he couldn’t see me for five or six hours, I decided to kill the time by visiting with a friend of a friend at Bernard Geis Associates. That’s how Six Seconds came to be.
In the winter of 1966-67, I heard rumors that Vince Salandria and Ray Marcus were claiming I was a CIA agent. I didn’t pay much attention to them but ultimately they got to Sylvia Meagher and M.S. Arnoni, the publisher of Salandria’s articles in The Minority of One. John Kelin was kind enough to make available to me correspondence from this time. On December 18 and 20, 1967, Arnoni sent a letter to both Salandria and Marcus which contains the following excerpts:
I am, of course, referring to the idea, conveyed to me by Vince in your and his own name, of Thompson being a CIA agent. I have listened to Vince carefully, and, for the first time ever, taken precise notes of our conversation to be able to refer back to them upon rethinking the matter.
In my considered judgment, the whole structure of the “evidence” involved is classically psychological, bespeaking Thompson’s pursuits in no way whatsoever, but rather reflecting the frame of mind of whomever begot the suspicion and proceeded to add “convincing” details and deductions.
I wish to urge you to make a special effort to see through the fallacy involved. I urge you to do this out of respect for both your intellect and integrity. Because I have such respect, it hurts me to consider that the quality of your thinking may deteriorate more than passingly.
I shall not go into Vince’s deductions, all of which – to my mind – have absolutely nothing to do with objective and external evidence, but are such reflections of his own psychology as are related to its past manifestations – true to his personality, but untrue to subject matter. But it would be sad if his catalytic psychological needs were allowed to feed such bitterness in you as may have accumulated against Thompson. However injured you may consider yourself to be, and whatever the degree of justification in your feeling so, not one thread is thereby spun between Thompson and the CIA.
For her part, Sylvia Meagher wrote on January 11, 1968:
But I cannot take seriously the suggestion that Tink is a CIA plant... Whatever their shortcomings and errors, both Epstein and Thompson have made a solid, significant, and probably historic impact against the fraudulent Warren Report. It is my belief that the imperfections in each case subside into relative insignificance, in comparison with the positive achievement. Yet both have been the subject of bitter, dogmatic, and even vicious attack other critics.
By the spring of 1968, I had dropped out of contact with Vince Salandria. I never bothered to renew that contact because I thought his claims were both hurtful and indefensible. I saw him once at the COPA conference in Dallas in 1998 and argued against the positions taken by him and Marty Schotz.
I do have to agree with one thing in the Salandria correspondence. Salandria said he met me at a party and took me to task for a comment in Six Seconds. At the close of a final chapter entitled “Answered and Unanswered Questions,” the last section is entitled, “Did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot the President?” and runs for fifteen pages introducing new reports and photos appearing to show two people near the Sixth Floor sniper’s next. The section ends with a question, “What does this collection of new evidence prove? It does not prove that the assassination was a conspiracy and that two men were together on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time the shots were fired. Nor does it prove Oswald’s innocence..”
Salandria says that my reply when confronted with this comment was, “An error in exposition, Vince. An error in exposition.” I don’t remember his question or my reply right now but it all sounds right. What I should have said, however, was: “You’re right, Vince. That comment was really stupid. I spend a whole book proving that the murder was a conspiracy with shots from many directions and then say, at the end of a section, ‘It doesn’t prove a conspiracy.’ It beats me how it got through the editorial process but it obviously did. I wish it hadn’t.”
Since Fetzer has been flashing Salandria’s “charges” around the internet for months, I have said nothing. I’ve now taken the time to reply in detail. If anyone has any questions about this ancient history, I’ll be glad to answer them. Except for Fetzer’s bile, this whole sad history could have been left to molder away in the past of forty years ago.
Thompson wants to ridicule my suggestion that he operates as though he
were a "disinformation agent" and dismisses Vincent Salandria's similar
conclusions as "looney tunes". I have already outlined my case against
him in earlier posts on this thread. Here are some of Salandria's reasons
for arriving at that opinion. Notice that these statements are being made
quite recently, some in 1994 but several in 2000. Read them through and
ask yourself if Salandria and I are "looney tunes"! This is very important
for understanding how major developments in this case--about the X-rays,
the brain, the autopsy photos, and the Z film--are distorted and subverted.
Ask yourself, Why would anyone want to do a thing like that? Why, indeed!
These quotes are taken from the two sections of the Salandria/Morrissey
correspondence on Michael Morrissey’s web site:
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Professor Fetzer's advertisement for himself continues. The only fly in the ointment is that I'm not selling anything. Six Seconds in Dallas has been out-of-print for thirty-five years or so. I just think Professor Fetzer does really bad work and have said so... again and again.
Let's take a look at a couple of things he says in his latest love note.
Fetzer says: "Anyone who read the review by the writer for the Milwaukee paper would notice that he does not even explain the book's principal findings--about the alteration of the autopsy X-rays and the substitution of a brain--but instead trivializes the book's contents in ways that Thompson has endlessly repeated. But, as anyone who has actually read the book (or at least its Preface and Prologue) is aware, I spell out--actually emphasize!--those key findings from the start, which means that he can only have missed them on purpose! There is no other explanation. And I am sure Pat can confirm what I am saying here."
When a reporter reviewed Fetzer's book in the Milwaukee paper, he dumped on it and said Fetzer's family would be about the only readers interested in it. Fetzer immediately charged that the reporter was doing a "hit piece" presumably for some shadowy intelligence agency. His explanation now. The reporter "on purpose" must have neglected to read the "key findings" in the book. This is obviously sinister. Well, wait a minute. How about the more likely chance that the reporter read the book, and, like many others, thought the whole thing was stupid?
I pointed out that my own review of his latest book on Amazon.com was not nearly as harsh as what some other readers said. Fetzer replies: "I have no doubt that Josiah recruits his friends and buddies to put up trash posts on amazon.com. They are so similar I even suspect that they were all written by the same person: Tink himself! So for him to cite them is simply more of the same."
Why would anyone bother? Do I have to deny this latest paranoid fantasy of Fetzer's? Okay, I will. I don't have a clue who any of these folks are who panned his latest book but I admire their discernment. Just for added good measure, I had nothing to do with the three latest books on the Zapruder film which also refer to Fetzer's work pretty much as a joke. The authors are Richard Trask. David R. Wrone and Harrison Livingstone. References to the pages where they dump on Fetzer can be provided on request.
Now a very personal word to Professor Fetzer: Why can't you get used to the fact that the trouble with your work is the work itself and not some evil genius like me conspiring behind the scenes against you? If you'd do a better job, critical people could applaud your work instead of knocking it. I imagine you won't do that. I imagine you'll continue trying to salve your wounded ego with the same old, tired complaints to the ultimate boredom of everyone concerned. It is more than a little revealing that you choose to fling insults here instead to dealing with some very acute criticisms of your Wellstone book on the Education Forum's site for your book. Over there, several people (including an Australian Navy guy with aviation experience) is handing you your hat!
It is a common ploy among propaganda experts to plant a story that conveysthe message they want to spead and then "discover" and "endorse" it. Anyone
who read the review by the writer for the Milwaukee paper would notice that
he does not even explain the book's principal findings--about the alteration of
the autopsy X-rays and the substitution of a brain--but instead trivializes the
book's contents in ways that Thompson has endlessly repeated. But, as any-
one who has actually read the book (or at least its Preface and Prologue) is
aware, I spell out--actually emphasize!--those key findings from the start,
which means that he can only have missed them on purpose! There is no
other explanation. And I am sure Pat can confirm what I am saying here.
I have no doubt that Josiah recruits his friends and buddies to put up trash
posts on amazon.com. They are so similar I even suspect that they were all
written by the same person: Tink himself! So for him to cite them is simply
more of the same. I am not hurt by his behavior: I am disgusted by him!
Here's another example of obvious lies and deliberate distortions: he says,
"I do think that he pretends that people are "experts" when they're not, that
he publishes non-facts as if they were facts and provides a kind of tabloid
quality research to an area which, as Pat points out, is desperately looking
for the real thing." Anyone who has ever picked up one of my books can
assure you that there is nothing remotely "tabloid" about any of them. It
is absurd to make this suggestion--so why does he make it? And the qual-
ifications of my contributors are always published on the CONTRIBUTORS
page. So why does he make these false, vile, and disgusting comments?
I think the reason is obvious, but it should not be trivialized. Anyone who
cannot see through this man's duplicitous conduct will never have the least
chance of figuring out what happend to JFK. If you want to know the state
of the art in 1967, by all means read SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS. If you
want to know what we know now about the death of JFK, try ASSASSIN-
ATION SCIENCE (1998), MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and THE
GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Of course, you can count on him
to repeat his claim that I am always promoting these books. Well, that's
certainly true, because, page for page, they present more new discoveries
about the case than any other books ever published. But please know this,
too. I do not profit from these books. I recycle the royalties to support
additional assassination research. He knows it, but he would never tell
you. Gee, I wonder why? Think about it. Something nasty is going on.
Just about everything Fetzer posts, turns into an advertisement for himself and his books.With respect to Amazon.com, I don't think my own reader's comments are in any way out-of-place or unusual. The last time I looked 9 out of the 10 most recent reviews knocked Fetzer's latest book badly. One writer wrote: "Fetzer, in all of his books, has yet to add anything of real historical value. Within the conspiracy world, Fetzer is a god. Within legitimate academic circles of real historians, he is a carnival con artist. This will eat at him forever." I don't think Fetzer's work qualifies to be that of "a carnival con man." Such a description is stronger than anything I've ever written about him. I do think that he pretends that people are "experts" when they're not, that he publishes non-facts as if they were facts and provides a kind of tabloid quality research to an area which, as Pat points out, is desperately looking for the real thing. Apparently, if the comments on Amazon.com are any indication, a lot of other readers have Fetzer's number. He'll have to come up with a new conspiracy to explain why these folks knock his products.
Fetzer claims I want to return things to their 1967 basis. This, of course, is nonsense. Let me rebut it by pointing out a major mistake I made in "Six Seconds."
I measured there that JFK's head moved forward about two inches between Z312 and Z313. This forward movement followed by the obvious left, backward snap suggested to me that he had been hit in the head from the rear and then, almost instantaneously, from the right front. Within the last few years, Art Snyder of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, was able to show me how this involved a serious mistake in measurement.
As you all know, Z312 is quite clear while Z313 is smeared from movement of the camera. Using fairly complicated math, Snyder was able to demonstrate to me that I was measuring the smear on frame Z313 and not the movement of Kennedy's head. That socalled "two-inch movement" was an illusion; it came from the smear.
David Wimp and Joe Durnavich came to much the same conclusion. Wimp, however, has gone futher. He has shown that JFK's head begins moving forward about Z308 and that everyone else in the limousine... Kellerman, Greer, Jackie, Mrs. Connally, John Connally... also begin a moderate movement forward at that time. After Z314, JFK flips backward and to the left while all the rest continue moving forward. The explanation: When Greer turned to look in the back seat at circa Z302 his foot tapped the brake, decelerating the limousine and throwing forward all the limousine's occupants. There is no longer any clear evidence in the Zapruder film of Kennedy being hit in the back of the head. (I say "clear" because there may be some evidence of a hit from the rear at Z327/328) The Z312-Z317 sequence... the bowling over of JFK to the left rear.... is the unambiguous result of a shot from the right front.
This is wonderful progress by careful research. Because of it, I am delighted to admit... even proclaim... that I made a mistake in 1967. This kind of research requires more than the National Enquirer method of research espoused by Professor Fetzer. In fact, such research would never have have been undertaken had anyone paid any attention to Fetzer's now bankrupt obsession with proving the Zapruder film a hoax.
Even when we disagree, I find Robert Charles-Dunne's posts extremely valuable.And Pat Speer's remarks are entirely appropriate. But Tink's are something else.
Josiah Thompson would have you believe that "real research" began and ended
with him and his cronies! I have had interminable exchanges with him for many
years, beginning around 1996, when I organized and moderated a symposium
on the authenticity of the Zapruder film. I have since created a video on JFK
("JFK: The Assassination, the Cover-Up, and Beyond"), chaired or co-chaired
four conferences on the death of JFK (Minneapolis 1999, Dallas 2000, Dallas
2001, and Duluth 2003), published three books (ASSASSIATION SCIENCE
1998, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA 2000, and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX
2003). I have brought together some of the most qualified individuals to ever
study the case, including a world authority on the human brain, who was also
an expert on wound ballistics; a Ph.D. in physics who is also an M.D. and board
qualified in radiation ontology, which means that he makes decisions affecting
life and death in his professional work based upon his interpretation of X-rays;
a physician who was present when JFK was brought into Trauma Room 1 and,
two days later, supervised the medical treatment of his alleged assassin; the
leading photo analyst in the history of the case, who served as an advisor to
the HSCA and later assisted Olver Stone in creating "JFK": another Ph.D. in
physics who is an expert on light and the physics of moving objects, who has
made the most important scientific discoveries about the film ever; and the
like. Thompson, for whatever reason, has committed himself to attacking me
and these books, which have been dedicated to taking rumor and speculation
and politics out of the case and placing its study on an objective and scientific
foundation. Anyone who wants to assess this man's credibility must compare
any one of these books with the three hatchet-job reviews he has posted on
amazon.com. I have dealt with him for too long to become engaged in more
of his enless savage tirades, which are grossly baseless and extremely unfair
to the excellent studies that have been made by my contributors. Just ask
yourself how likely it is that no new discoveries would have been made in
the nearly fifty years since SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS appeared! My books
include the most recent work on the most important topics by the very best
experts I have been able to bring together. Why in the world would these
books be so utterly lacking in significance? Something is going on. It seems
to me that his efforts are dedicated (a) to besmurching my reputation to dis-
courage others from reading these books, which somehow serves to give a
boost his own, apparently inadequate, self-concept, (
to restore to somedegree a reputation that has been undermined by keeping the pubic from
realizing that his work was based on the study of fake film, no matter how
admirable its theft; and, © to turn the status of knowledge about the death
of JFK to the state in which it existed before the extremely important work by
highly qualified experts appeared in the books I have published. I invite the
members of this forum to consider the situation very carefully for themselves,
since anyone with access to any on of these books should be able to compare
the book and its contents with the nasty review this guy has posted and make
a determination for themselves. In the meanwhile, he would trade upon your
gullibility by suggesting that, to be a disinformation agent. you must work for
the federal government. But that is false. To be a disinformation agent, you
only have to have an agenda that directs your use of misinformation, which is
false information. The agents of politicians, advertisers, and corporations are
experts at this craft. Those who rely upon false information without knowing
any better are simply misinformed; those who rely upon misinformation with
the deliberate intention to mislead, however, are practicing disinformation. By
providing an extremely narrow and highly misleading definition of "disinforma-
tion" itself, Thompson himself appears to be disseminating misinformation with
the intention to mislead on this very forum in this very discussion! I have made
preliminary efforts to sort out different kinds of disinformation, which appeared
earlier on my web site, http://www.assassinationscience.com. I suggest anyone
with a serious interest in this subject may want to visit and scroll down the menu
bar and find many additional discussions of this extremely important subject that
every student of history needs to understand. In the meanwhile, if you want to
understand what's going on with Thompson's attack upon me--the likes of which
he has posted literally hundreds of times since 1996--then I suggest you simply
compare one of these books and its contents with the review the man has posted.
SEE ABOVE:
"As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet."I couldn't agree more with you, Pat. From the very beginning, real research into this case has been hamstrung by the lunatic fringe. Precisely to the extent that "assassination science" replaces real science and honest research, precisely to that extent will research on the case be relegated to jokes for late night comics.
I also liked your nuanced account of the media's response to the case. Painting the media in broad strokes, really misses what is going on. If the media was so controlled by the military industrial elite, then how come LIFE and the SATURDAY EVENING POST became locked in such a pissing contest in the fall of 1967? A full account of the media's response to this case would take hundreds if not thousands of pages in order to account for the nuances of competitive journalism. It's much easier to make some general statement and get a cheering section to back it.
Robert, I think you're missing part of the picture. The media botched their initial reporting of the Kennedy assassination so badly that they felt they should play ball with the government to help restore order and confidence in American institutions. By 1966, however, after Weisberg, Epstein and Lane's books were released, the media was kinda split, with some publications wanting to give the critics a fair shake and others wanting to shut them down. The November, 1966 review of the autopsy photos and Boswell's statements were part of the government's response. When Life came out that Thanksgiving with their article on Connally, this shifted the momentum noticeably towards the critics. CBS then contacted McCloy and began strategizing on how to reverse this momentum. This resulted in both the so-called Miliary Review of the autopsy materials, and the CBS 4-part defense of the Warren Commission in June, 67. This defense, by the way, did assert that the WC was wrong about a number of things, including the order of the shots. In late 67. after Thompson's book came out, raising further questions and even gaining the support of the Saturday Evening Post, the government responded withyet another review of the autopsy materials, by what is known as the Clark Panel review. Their report tried to answer some of Thompson's questions by changing the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, a movement which I believe (and will eventually prove) was a mistake.So to say the media has always bought and sold the government line is a gross misrepresentation of history. The attitudes' of various networks and publications have changed with the weather. After all, wasn't The Men Who Killed Kennedy shown by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Wasn't JFK financed and distributed by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Weren't many of the most influential conspiracy books distributed by mainstream publishers? My take on Life Magazine is that they were all game to push for conspiracy as long as it was a foreign conspiracy, but got gun-shy when Garrison started talking smack about Johnson and the CIA.
The current battle as I see it is not between the research community and the evil government, or the research community and the evil media, but between the research community and itself. As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet. I was once a record buyer for a large record wholesaler. I would read 30-100 one-sheets a day on upcoming record releases. There were certain buzzwords, particularly on rap releases, that I learned meant the record had no story--i.e. that no one outside the artist's friends would buy it. Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.
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You are right, Mr. Dunne, Berney Geis was a "maverick" and didn't give a damn what other people thought of him. The book was never "shopped around" because I never had in mind writing a book. I started out writing a long article on the case with Vince Salandria. When we disagreed about a particular point of evidence, I went ahead and worked on my own. I was trying to meet with Willie Morris of Harper's when I met Geis. The full story is as follows... again from Richard Trask's new book:
July 1966 I visited the National Archives often with Philadelphia lawyer and early critic of the Warren Commission, Vincent Salandria. We viewed the Warren Commission copy of the Zapruder film. We also set up two slide projectors and confirmed there is a small forward movement of JFK’s head between Z312 and Z313. (This turned out to be a illusion caused by the smearing of Z313. There is in reality no measurable forward movement.)
September 1966 I got the book contract for “Six Seconds in Dallas” completely by accident. I had written (first with Vince Salandria and then alone) a long article on the Kennedy assassination. A mutual friend got me an appointment with Willie Morris, the editor of Harper’s magazine. I went up to New York but Morris could not see me for five or six hours. This left me with that amount of time to kill. I killed it by dropping by to see a friend of a friend, Don Preston, the Executive Editor of Bernard Geis Associates. Don and I chatted for forty minutes about what I had written in the article and he introduced me to Berney Geis. The three of us had lunch together, and, at the end of the lunch, Berney said to Don, “Write up a contract for Thompson. He’s going to write a book for us.” I was flabbergasted because I had no intention of writing a book; I was working full-time at Haverford College. But they agreed to pay expenses to send me to Dallas and give me a $500 advance. At that time I had no idea what assassination-related were available. Many were dug up during the subsequent LIFE investigation or obtained from the National Archives. The idea to use photos of evidence and of the scene to make arguments came almost a year later during the run-up to book production.
National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 2005), pages 363-364.
Robert, I think you're missing part of the picture. The media botched their initial reporting of the Kennedy assassination so badly that they felt they should play ball with the government to help restore order and confidence in American institutions. By 1966, however, after Weisberg, Epstein and Lane's books were released, the media was kinda split, with some publications wanting to give the critics a fair shake and others wanting to shut them down. The November, 1966 review of the autopsy photos and Boswell's statements were part of the government's response. When Life came out that Thanksgiving with their article on Connally, this shifted the momentum noticeably towards the critics. CBS then contacted McCloy and began strategizing on how to reverse this momentum. This resulted in both the so-called Miliary Review of the autopsy materials, and the CBS 4-part defense of the Warren Commission in June, 67. This defense, by the way, did assert that the WC was wrong about a number of things, including the order of the shots. In late 67. after Thompson's book came out, raising further questions and even gaining the support of the Saturday Evening Post, the government responded withyet another review of the autopsy materials, by what is known as the Clark Panel review. Their report tried to answer some of Thompson's questions by changing the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, a movement which I believe (and will eventually prove) was a mistake.So to say the media has always bought and sold the government line is a gross misrepresentation of history. The attitudes' of various networks and publications have changed with the weather. After all, wasn't The Men Who Killed Kennedy shown by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Wasn't JFK financed and distributed by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Weren't many of the most influential conspiracy books distributed by mainstream publishers? My take on Life Magazine is that they were all game to push for conspiracy as long as it was a foreign conspiracy, but got gun-shy when Garrison started talking smack about Johnson and the CIA.
The current battle as I see it is not between the research community and the evil government, or the research community and the evil media, but between the research community and itself. As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet. I was once a record buyer for a large record wholesaler. I would read 30-100 one-sheets a day on upcoming record releases. There were certain buzzwords, particularly on rap releases, that I learned meant the record had no story--i.e. that no one outside the artist's friends would buy it. Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.
Pat:
Your points are valid, but my only reference was to LIFE magazine, specifically and in particular, for the reasons stated, not the media as a whole. [Those were Vince Salandria's broadsides.] I did so because Tim Gratz commented that LIFE was first among those media responsible for fostering doubts about the WC's conclusions. To reach that conclusion, of course, one must first ignore all LIFE's prior acts of bad faith, falsification and misrepresentation, as I itemized.
That various media paid attention to the assassination several years later is no mystery: the public wasn't buying into the mythology presented by Warren, et al, and the Garrison investigation galvanized public interest in the assassination, necessitating a media response. That LIFE finally got around to addressing Connally's assertions, several years after his testimony, is not to LIFE's credit. It was tardy to the point of uselessness, until it was left with no option but to give the issue some play.
Likewise, if the media were so anxious to pursue other avenues as you claim, one wonders where all the large publishing houses were when the idea of Tink Thompson's "6 Seconds" was being shopped around. One notes that Random House agreed to distribute this book [as it did with other Geis titles], but sure didn't publish it. Publisher Bernard Geis took a flyer on "6 Seconds," which was dramatically different to his usual fare of Hollywood memoirs and other [relatively speaking] fluff. [Nelson Algren and a few other authors, excepted.] Had Geis not been the ballsy maverick he was, one wonders if "6 Seconds" would have ever seen print, or if Tink would have been reduced to self-publishing, as Weisberg had been. Perhaps Tink had other suitors, and can comment on this, but if so, it seems rather odd to have gone with a small indie house rather than one of the corporate giants that might have exercised tremendous commercial clout on his behalf.
However, I would like to now pass comment on the general performance of the mass media: it stunk. One could write an entire book on its slipshod, half-assed, unprofessional behaviour. Whether it was the New York Times' unqualified assertion that Oswald was "the assassin" [singular] in its initial headlines, or the uncritical acceptance by virtually all media organs of whatever was issued by government sources, one can find little in the way of distinguished or even intelligent reportage. To merely uncritically regurgitate what one is told isn't reporting; it's stenography. I wish to hell I could point back to a single instance in which a major media organ rose to the occasion, asked the vital questions and reported the facts fairly. Perhaps you can, because I sure as hell have never found any such instance. But then I've only been seeking same for 40 years.
Oddly enough, I detected no such shrinking violet behaviour from the international press of the day. Living in Canada, I got to read the US wire service stories, but the latitude for more pointed commentary existed in a way that wasn't the case in the US. Canadian periodicals regularly gave play to critics from the UK and Europe whose works were rarely seen Stateside. I have boxes full of old, tattered press clippings that illustrate the chasm between the reportage in the US and everywhere else.
As for the fact that large US media corporations later fed the public appetite by publishing heretical books, or financing Oliver Stone's film, etc., that latter-day willingness to exploit and massage the public's appetite is no substitute for the early reportage that should have taken place, but didn't. These events were merely an acknowledgement that the media's best efforts to placate, assuage and misdirect public attention hadn't worked.
I would also like to draw specific attention to some tremendous work done in the '70s by one Earl Grolz in Dallas. Unfortunately for us all, for every man like Earl, there were a hundred Hugh Aynesworths.
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Sure, there are minor mistakes. I think I got the Z frame number of Willis 5 wrong. The research Gary Aguilar has done on the medical evidence adds a lot of material to that area. I could go on and on in this vein. A new edition of "Six Seconds" with an update section would permit me to remedy not just these mistakes but bring things up-to-date. I'm trying to figure out how to do that now.
Thanks for the inquiry.
Fetzer claims I want to return things to their 1967 basis. This, of course, is nonsense. Let me rebut it by pointing out a major mistake I made in "Six Seconds."I measured there that JFK's head moved forward about two inches between Z312 and Z313. This forward movement followed by the obvious left, backward snap suggested to me that he had been hit in the head from the rear and then, almost instantaneously, from the right front. Within the last few years, Art Snyder of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, was able to show me how this involved a serious mistake in measurement.
As you all know, Z312 is quite clear while Z313 is smeared from movement of the camera. Using fairly complicated math, Snyder was able to demonstrate to me that I was measuring the smear on frame Z313 and not the movement of Kennedy's head. That socalled "two-inch movement" was an illusion; it came from the smear.
David Wimp and Joe Durnavich came to much the same conclusion. Wimp, however, has gone futher. He has shown that JFK's head begins moving forward about Z308 and that everyone else in the limousine... Kellerman, Greer, Jackie, Mrs. Connally, John Connally... also begin a moderate movement forward at that time. After Z314, JFK flips backward and to the left while all the rest continue moving forward. The explanation: When Greer turned to look in the back seat at circa Z302 his foot tapped the brake, decelerating the limousine and throwing forward all the limousine's occupants. There is no longer any clear evidence in the Zapruder film of Kennedy being hit in the back of the head. (I say "clear" because there may be some evidence of a hit from the rear at Z327/328) The Z312-Z317 sequence... the bowling over of JFK to the left rear.... is the unambiguous result of a shot from the right front.
This is wonderful progress by careful research. Because of it, I am delighted to admit... even proclaim... that I made a mistake in 1967. This kind of research requires more than the National Enquirer method of research espoused by Professor Fetzer. In fact, such research would never have have been undertaken had anyone paid any attention to Fetzer's now bankrupt obsession with proving the Zapruder film a hoax.[/b]
Interesting comments. Did you make any other mistakes?
If you were writing another book on the Kennedy Assassination today, what areas would you focus on? What characters need more research? In other words, who do you think organized, carried out and paid for the assassination of JFK.
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Just about everything Fetzer posts, turns into an advertisement for himself and his books.
With respect to Amazon.com, I don't think my own reader's comments are in any way out-of-place or unusual. The last time I looked 9 out of the 10 most recent reviews knocked Fetzer's latest book badly. One writer wrote: "Fetzer, in all of his books, has yet to add anything of real historical value. Within the conspiracy world, Fetzer is a god. Within legitimate academic circles of real historians, he is a carnival con artist. This will eat at him forever." I don't think Fetzer's work qualifies to be that of "a carnival con man." Such a description is stronger than anything I've ever written about him. I do think that he pretends that people are "experts" when they're not, that he publishes non-facts as if they were facts and provides a kind of tabloid quality research to an area which, as Pat points out, is desperately looking for the real thing. Apparently, if the comments on Amazon.com are any indication, a lot of other readers have Fetzer's number. He'll have to come up with a new conspiracy to explain why these folks knock his products.
Fetzer claims I want to return things to their 1967 basis. This, of course, is nonsense. Let me rebut it by pointing out a major mistake I made in "Six Seconds."
I measured there that JFK's head moved forward about two inches between Z312 and Z313. This forward movement followed by the obvious left, backward snap suggested to me that he had been hit in the head from the rear and then, almost instantaneously, from the right front. Within the last few years, Art Snyder of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, was able to show me how this involved a serious mistake in measurement.
As you all know, Z312 is quite clear while Z313 is smeared from movement of the camera. Using fairly complicated math, Snyder was able to demonstrate to me that I was measuring the smear on frame Z313 and not the movement of Kennedy's head. That socalled "two-inch movement" was an illusion; it came from the smear.
David Wimp and Joe Durnavich came to much the same conclusion. Wimp, however, has gone futher. He has shown that JFK's head begins moving forward about Z308 and that everyone else in the limousine... Kellerman, Greer, Jackie, Mrs. Connally, John Connally... also begin a moderate movement forward at that time. After Z314, JFK flips backward and to the left while all the rest continue moving forward. The explanation: When Greer turned to look in the back seat at circa Z302 his foot tapped the brake, decelerating the limousine and throwing forward all the limousine's occupants. There is no longer any clear evidence in the Zapruder film of Kennedy being hit in the back of the head. (I say "clear" because there may be some evidence of a hit from the rear at Z327/328) The Z312-Z317 sequence... the bowling over of JFK to the left rear.... is the unambiguous result of a shot from the right front.
This is wonderful progress by careful research. Because of it, I am delighted to admit... even proclaim... that I made a mistake in 1967. This kind of research requires more than the National Enquirer method of research espoused by Professor Fetzer. In fact, such research would never have have been undertaken had anyone paid any attention to Fetzer's now bankrupt obsession with proving the Zapruder film a hoax.
Even when we disagree, I find Robert Charles-Dunne's posts extremely valuable.And Pat Speer's remarks are entirely appropriate. But Tink's are something else.
Josiah Thompson would have you believe that "real research" began and ended
with him and his cronies! I have had interminable exchanges with him for many
years, beginning around 1996, when I organized and moderated a symposium
on the authenticity of the Zapruder film. I have since created a video on JFK
("JFK: The Assassination, the Cover-Up, and Beyond"), chaired or co-chaired
four conferences on the death of JFK (Minneapolis 1999, Dallas 2000, Dallas
2001, and Duluth 2003), published three books (ASSASSIATION SCIENCE
1998, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA 2000, and THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX
2003). I have brought together some of the most qualified individuals to ever
study the case, including a world authority on the human brain, who was also
an expert on wound ballistics; a Ph.D. in physics who is also an M.D. and board
qualified in radiation ontology, which means that he makes decisions affecting
life and death in his professional work based upon his interpretation of X-rays;
a physician who was present when JFK was brought into Trauma Room 1 and,
two days later, supervised the medical treatment of his alleged assassin; the
leading photo analyst in the history of the case, who served as an advisor to
the HSCA and later assisted Olver Stone in creating "JFK": another Ph.D. in
physics who is an expert on light and the physics of moving objects, who has
made the most important scientific discoveries about the film ever; and the
like. Thompson, for whatever reason, has committed himself to attacking me
and these books, which have been dedicated to taking rumor and speculation
and politics out of the case and placing its study on an objective and scientific
foundation. Anyone who wants to assess this man's credibility must compare
any one of these books with the three hatchet-job reviews he has posted on
amazon.com. I have dealt with him for too long to become engaged in more
of his enless savage tirades, which are grossly baseless and extremely unfair
to the excellent studies that have been made by my contributors. Just ask
yourself how likely it is that no new discoveries would have been made in
the nearly fifty years since SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS appeared! My books
include the most recent work on the most important topics by the very best
experts I have been able to bring together. Why in the world would these
books be so utterly lacking in significance? Something is going on. It seems
to me that his efforts are dedicated (a) to besmurching my reputation to dis-
courage others from reading these books, which somehow serves to give a
boost his own, apparently inadequate, self-concept, (
to restore to somedegree a reputation that has been undermined by keeping the pubic from
realizing that his work was based on the study of fake film, no matter how
admirable its theft; and, © to turn the status of knowledge about the death
of JFK to the state in which it existed before the extremely important work by
highly qualified experts appeared in the books I have published. I invite the
members of this forum to consider the situation very carefully for themselves,
since anyone with access to any on of these books should be able to compare
the book and its contents with the nasty review this guy has posted and make
a determination for themselves. In the meanwhile, he would trade upon your
gullibility by suggesting that, to be a disinformation agent. you must work for
the federal government. But that is false. To be a disinformation agent, you
only have to have an agenda that directs your use of misinformation, which is
false information. The agents of politicians, advertisers, and corporations are
experts at this craft. Those who rely upon false information without knowing
any better are simply misinformed; those who rely upon misinformation with
the deliberate intention to mislead, however, are practicing disinformation. By
providing an extremely narrow and highly misleading definition of "disinforma-
tion" itself, Thompson himself appears to be disseminating misinformation with
the intention to mislead on this very forum in this very discussion! I have made
preliminary efforts to sort out different kinds of disinformation, which appeared
earlier on my web site, http://www.assassinationscience.com. I suggest anyone
with a serious interest in this subject may want to visit and scroll down the menu
bar and find many additional discussions of this extremely important subject that
every student of history needs to understand. In the meanwhile, if you want to
understand what's going on with Thompson's attack upon me--the likes of which
he has posted literally hundreds of times since 1996--then I suggest you simply
compare one of these books and its contents with the review the man has posted.
SEE ABOVE:
"As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet."I couldn't agree more with you, Pat. From the very beginning, real research into this case has been hamstrung by the lunatic fringe. Precisely to the extent that "assassination science" replaces real science and honest research, precisely to that extent will research on the case be relegated to jokes for late night comics.
I also liked your nuanced account of the media's response to the case. Painting the media in broad strokes, really misses what is going on. If the media was so controlled by the military industrial elite, then how come LIFE and the SATURDAY EVENING POST became locked in such a pissing contest in the fall of 1967? A full account of the media's response to this case would take hundreds if not thousands of pages in order to account for the nuances of competitive journalism. It's much easier to make some general statement and get a cheering section to back it.
Robert, I think you're missing part of the picture. The media botched their initial reporting of the Kennedy assassination so badly that they felt they should play ball with the government to help restore order and confidence in American institutions. By 1966, however, after Weisberg, Epstein and Lane's books were released, the media was kinda split, with some publications wanting to give the critics a fair shake and others wanting to shut them down. The November, 1966 review of the autopsy photos and Boswell's statements were part of the government's response. When Life came out that Thanksgiving with their article on Connally, this shifted the momentum noticeably towards the critics. CBS then contacted McCloy and began strategizing on how to reverse this momentum. This resulted in both the so-called Miliary Review of the autopsy materials, and the CBS 4-part defense of the Warren Commission in June, 67. This defense, by the way, did assert that the WC was wrong about a number of things, including the order of the shots. In late 67. after Thompson's book came out, raising further questions and even gaining the support of the Saturday Evening Post, the government responded withyet another review of the autopsy materials, by what is known as the Clark Panel review. Their report tried to answer some of Thompson's questions by changing the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, a movement which I believe (and will eventually prove) was a mistake.So to say the media has always bought and sold the government line is a gross misrepresentation of history. The attitudes' of various networks and publications have changed with the weather. After all, wasn't The Men Who Killed Kennedy shown by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Wasn't JFK financed and distributed by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Weren't many of the most influential conspiracy books distributed by mainstream publishers? My take on Life Magazine is that they were all game to push for conspiracy as long as it was a foreign conspiracy, but got gun-shy when Garrison started talking smack about Johnson and the CIA.
The current battle as I see it is not between the research community and the evil government, or the research community and the evil media, but between the research community and itself. As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet. I was once a record buyer for a large record wholesaler. I would read 30-100 one-sheets a day on upcoming record releases. There were certain buzzwords, particularly on rap releases, that I learned meant the record had no story--i.e. that no one outside the artist's friends would buy it. Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.
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"As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet."
I couldn't agree more with you, Pat. From the very beginning, real research into this case has been hamstrung by the lunatic fringe. Precisely to the extent that "assassination science" replaces real science and honest research, precisely to that extent will research on the case be relegated to jokes for late night comics.
I also liked your nuanced account of the media's response to the case. Painting the media in broad strokes, really misses what is going on. If the media was so controlled by the military industrial elite, then how come LIFE and the SATURDAY EVENING POST became locked in such a pissing contest in the fall of 1967? A full account of the media's response to this case would take hundreds if not thousands of pages in order to account for the nuances of competitive journalism. It's much easier to make some general statement and get a cheering section to back it.
Robert, I think you're missing part of the picture. The media botched their initial reporting of the Kennedy assassination so badly that they felt they should play ball with the government to help restore order and confidence in American institutions. By 1966, however, after Weisberg, Epstein and Lane's books were released, the media was kinda split, with some publications wanting to give the critics a fair shake and others wanting to shut them down. The November, 1966 review of the autopsy photos and Boswell's statements were part of the government's response. When Life came out that Thanksgiving with their article on Connally, this shifted the momentum noticeably towards the critics. CBS then contacted McCloy and began strategizing on how to reverse this momentum. This resulted in both the so-called Miliary Review of the autopsy materials, and the CBS 4-part defense of the Warren Commission in June, 67. This defense, by the way, did assert that the WC was wrong about a number of things, including the order of the shots. In late 67. after Thompson's book came out, raising further questions and even gaining the support of the Saturday Evening Post, the government responded withyet another review of the autopsy materials, by what is known as the Clark Panel review. Their report tried to answer some of Thompson's questions by changing the location of the entrance wound on the back of Kennedy's skull, a movement which I believe (and will eventually prove) was a mistake.So to say the media has always bought and sold the government line is a gross misrepresentation of history. The attitudes' of various networks and publications have changed with the weather. After all, wasn't The Men Who Killed Kennedy shown by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Wasn't JFK financed and distributed by a large and wealthy media conglomerate? Weren't many of the most influential conspiracy books distributed by mainstream publishers? My take on Life Magazine is that they were all game to push for conspiracy as long as it was a foreign conspiracy, but got gun-shy when Garrison started talking smack about Johnson and the CIA.
The current battle as I see it is not between the research community and the evil government, or the research community and the evil media, but between the research community and itself. As long as the research community is associated in the minds of those in power, i.e. the government and mainstream media, with UFO's. fake moon landings, and rampant paranoia, then JFK research will be treated as such by those in power, i.e. our letters and articles will be inserted into the circular filing cabinet. I was once a record buyer for a large record wholesaler. I would read 30-100 one-sheets a day on upcoming record releases. There were certain buzzwords, particularly on rap releases, that I learned meant the record had no story--i.e. that no one outside the artist's friends would buy it. Those of us within the research community who wish to take our stories beyond the bounds of the CT community need to figure out how to remove those buzzwords from our one-sheet, how to make our story both palatable and credible enough for someone like Mike Wallace to risk his reputation on it.
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I can't be of much use in explaining the various versions of this caption. I was working for LIFE at the time of the Salandria letter. In fact, I think I got Vince's letter to Ed Kern. Kern was a feature writer for LIFE, and, prior to September 1966 had had nothing to do with the JFK shooting. He was not the guy to ask about various versions of a caption and told Vince what he knew. If memory serves, Dick Stolley was asked the same question and gave pretty much the same answer as Ed Kern gave.
It is a fact that there were several versions of this caption. Apparently, you are inclined to believe that the various captions were part of a plan on LIFE's part to keep the facts of the Zapruder film from the American public. I really don't have an opinion on the question because I haven't looked into it. If I said anything about an editor being confused or their being confusion at the magazine about what was on the Zapruder film, you would claim I am some sort of apologist for LIFE or a fellow traveler for intelligence agencies. I worked for LIFE as a consultant for about four months. They sued me and made certain that all the earnings of "Six Seconds" would be used up in lawyer's bills. So I have no particular love for LIFE or any reason to defend them. All I can tell you is that I worked with group of very highly motivated journalists and we weren't restricted in what we did by higher authority at the magazine.
As for Vince Salandria... he is one of the real heros of the critical community. His early work in "Liberation" and "The Minority of One" laid out the path that we would all follow later on. Without Vince, I would not have gotten involved in the case. On the other hand, his later theorizing that Bill Turner, John Newman, the ACLU and I are all being directed by some intelligence agency is looney-tunes.
With regard to the other incidents and claims Mr. Dunne makes, I wasn’t at LIFE at the time so I have no inside knowledge at all.
Mr. Dunne also mentions “a Z-film copy pilfered [from LIFE] by its own contractee, Josiah Thompson.” This is rather mild. James Fetzer, Ph.D., is claiming right now on another thread on this site (the one devoted to his silly book on the Wellstone crash) that my “stealing”the Zapruder film had something to do with me leaving Haverford twelve years later.
Actually, I’m rather proud of making copy of the Zapruder film in the Time/Life Building in November of 1966. I’m happy to take credit for it and have done it again and again. I testified before the ARRB about it. I offered an oral history about it for the Sixth Floor Museum’s oral history. Finally, I published an account of it in Richard Trask’s new book on the Zapruder film. If there was anything about it that reflected badly on me, I probably should have shut up. But I didn’t. In any case, the reader can judge for himself/herself whether there was anything morally demeaning in what I did.
Not at all, Tink. If my wording was "mild," it was because I find nothing immoral about your actions at all. Like all others who read "6 Seconds," I was thrilled that you had done so.
However, that you felt the necessity to "liberate" a copy of the film's key frames demonstrates precisely what I had wished to draw to Tim Gratz's attention: far from being impartial seekers of a noble truth, LIFE did all in its power to ensure that its own readers would never seen the critical frames in their proper order; not even in their own august periodical, let alone in some book that called LIFE's own prior assertions into question.
I also am glad that you mentioned Ed Kern, Tink. Vince Salandria, whom Tim Gratz has called all but insane in past posts, reached a far less benign conclusion about LIFE's motivations than you have done. The following is an excerpt from a COPA symposium speech given by Vince, and I think it helps illustrate precisely the point I was raising for Tim Gratz's benefit:
We will now relate how Life magazine served our military-intelligence community. Time Inc., the owners of Life, bought the rights to the Zapruder film in 1963 and withheld it from public viewing. Please pardon me for not believing that this censorship was designed to enlighten our people. We shall see that Life both censored the Zapruder film and lied about its contents. In its September 6, 1964 issue Life sought to explain away the wound in President Kennedy's neck as follows:
...it has been hard to understand how the bullet could enter the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else. But the 8mm. film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed --- toward the sniper's nest- -just before he clutches it.
But we now know that the Zapruder film tells us that the President did not turn his body far around to the right, and that his throat was not exposed toward the alleged sniper's nest. So Life was not only censoring the Zapruder film, but while having it in its sole possession, was lying about its content and therefore obstructing justice through censorship and falsification of the Zapruder film's content.
My October 2nd, 1964 issue of Life magazine contained a color reproduction of frame 313 of the 8 millimeter Zapruder motion picture showing the moment of bullet impact on President Kennedy's skull. The caption for that Zapruder frame read: "The assassins shot struck the right rear portion of the President's skull, causing a massive wound and snapping of his head to one side." To me it appeared that striking a head from the rear and causing it to snap to one side ran counter to a Newton law of motion. So, I decided to collect oher copies of the same issue of Life.
In the next copy I acquired I found that Life had changed the caption to read: "The direction from which shots came was established by this picture taken at instant bullet struck the rear of the President's head, and passing through, caused the front part of his skull to explode forward." But in this copy of the magazine Life had changed the Zapruder frame to a later one which showed that the President's whole body had been driven not only leftward but also backwards against the back seat of the limousine by a shot supposedly fired from the rear. That frame with that caption impressed me as causing even more difficulty for the Warren Report.
The next copy of Life that I found put together the exploding-forward caption with Zapruder frame 313. Life finally got the deception right. I reported these findings in my March, 1965 articles in Liberation magazine.
Later, in 1966, I inquired of Life about the three versions of the same issue. Edward Kern, a Life editor, replied in a letter to me dated November 28, 1966. In his reply he said: "I am at a loss to explain the discrepancies between the three versions of LIFE which you cite. I've heard of breaking a plate to correct an error. Ive never heard of doing it twice for a single issue, much less a single story."
Well, unlike Edward Kern, I was not at a loss to explain the three versions. To me the three versions of Life and Life's lies about what the Zapruder film revealed show in microcosm an elegant example of how the U.S. media criminally joined with U.S. governmental civilian personages, and with the national security state apparatus to employ deceit in seeking to prop up the Warren Report.
Henry R. Luce created Life magazine. He was an ardent Cold Warrior having championed the American Century and having lobbied for the National Security Act of 1947. His widow, Claire Booth Luce, was a former member of the House of Representatives and a former ambassador to Italy. She was one of Allen Dulles' lovers. In his book, The Last Investigation, my dear friend, Gaeton Fonzi, who worked for U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker while the Senator was investigating the Kennedy assassination, told how Claire Booth Luce lead them on a wild goose chase. She effectively used up their governmentally-paid-for time by sending them on a fruitless search for fanciful persons.
Congressman Gerald R. Ford, who had been a Warren Commissioner, and who was later to become President, signed that October 2, 1964 Life article. He concluded this article with the following statement: "This report is the truth as we see it, as best we know it, and on this, we rest."
The three versions of Life demonstrate clearly the criminal conspiratorial joining together of the U.S. intelligence community, the civilian aspects of our government, and our media to support the Warren Report. They were and still are all in bed together.
If Tim Gratz still believes LIFE magazine to have been an impartial and objective observer/reporter of events, rather than a dedicated accessory to the crime after the fact, it is only because he knows nothing about LIFE, its history, or its deeds. Which hardly makes LIFE a unique topic; it's only one of multitude of topics about which he knows nothing, but about which he concludes much.
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"Good to be reminded also that, inspite of his "6 Seconds In Dalls" Dr. Thompson has a rather inconsistant past."
Ms. Meredith, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what you have in mind with the phrase "a rather inconsistent past."
[quote=Robert Charles-Dunne,Sep 25 2005, 05:25 PM]
Once, on this Forum, several months ago, someone claimed that when you were working on the assassination for "Life" magazine it was not a serious attempt to solve the assassination (because "Life" was supposedly under the control of the CIA). I recall that "Life" was one of the first major media to raise questions about the Warren Commission. I am sure many people in the US first began to doubt the Warren Commission because of "Life" magazine.
Much of that "doubt" was caused by LIFE's own foolishness and sleight of hand.
* This would be the same LIFE that airbrushed the backyard photo that ran on its cover, in order to enhance the speculation that Oswald was holding the murder weapons in those pix.
* This was the same LIFE that transposed critical Z-film frames, in precisely the same fashion as did the WC, in order to falsely corrupt any critical analysis of their pictorial contents.
* This was the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to ensure that a Z-film copy pilfered by its own contractee, Josiah Thompson, wouldn't appear in his book, nor would allow him to use illustrations of those Z-film frames. Why not ask Tink his opinion on how sincere LIFE was about revealing the truth about the assassination? He had a front-row seat for LIFE's struggle against the truth ever being revealed.
* This is the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to prevent Jim Garrison being granted access to what was thought to be the most vital piece of evidence in the assassination.
* This is the same LIFE magazine that attempted to rationalize two contrary facts - Parkland assertions of a throat wound being one of entry, though sustained after JFK had passed the shooter - by falsely declaring as fact that the President had turned around to wave to well-wishers, thereby giving an assassin to his rear the chance to hit him in the front.
* This is the same LIFE that financially subsidized CIA-backed anti-Castro exiles and sponsored CIA-backed raids upon that country.
Yet you assure us that LIFE was key in trying to educate the public on the "facts" of the assassination, while mocking the demonstrable truth that it was, for all intents and purposes, in CIA's pocket. Dear boy, you grow more laughable by the day.
It is unfortunate that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives.
What is unfortunate is that even at this late date, certain people make it their daily business to assure others that xxxxe is actually Chanel No. 5. And when called on their nonsense, resort to ad hominem attacks on the "intelligence" of their detractors, while nevertheless feigning a pout over how unfortunate it is "that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives."
If people choose to live in a state of perpetual ignorance, that is their business. When they insist that others cohabit in that state with them, they become a danger to history and democracy.
At the same time I would grant the possibility that disinformation had been generated to stall or sidetrack investigations.
"The possibility.....?" My, how astonishingly liberal of you to even consider the concept..... D'ya think?
Robert: Please don't stay gone so long. This forum needs your imput to keep its members honest. (Even when they are not).
Good to be reminded also that, inspite of his "6 Seconds In Dalls" Dr. Thompson has a rather inconsistant past.
Dawn
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[quote=Robert Charles-Dunne,Sep 25 2005, 05:25 PM]
Once, on this Forum, several months ago, someone claimed that when you were working on the assassination for "Life" magazine it was not a serious attempt to solve the assassination (because "Life" was supposedly under the control of the CIA). I recall that "Life" was one of the first major media to raise questions about the Warren Commission. I am sure many people in the US first began to doubt the Warren Commission because of "Life" magazine.
Much of that "doubt" was caused by LIFE's own foolishness and sleight of hand.
* This would be the same LIFE that airbrushed the backyard photo that ran on its cover, in order to enhance the speculation that Oswald was holding the murder weapons in those pix.
* This was the same LIFE that transposed critical Z-film frames, in precisely the same fashion as did the WC, in order to falsely corrupt any critical analysis of their pictorial contents.
* This was the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to ensure that a Z-film copy pilfered by its own contractee, Josiah Thompson, wouldn't appear in his book, nor would allow him to use illustrations of those Z-film frames. Why not ask Tink his opinion on how sincere LIFE was about revealing the truth about the assassination? He had a front-row seat for LIFE's struggle against the truth ever being revealed.
* This is the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to prevent Jim Garrison being granted access to what was thought to be the most vital piece of evidence in the assassination.
* This is the same LIFE magazine that attempted to rationalize two contrary facts - Parkland assertions of a throat wound being one of entry, though sustained after JFK had passed the shooter - by falsely declaring as fact that the President had turned around to wave to well-wishers, thereby giving an assassin to his rear the chance to hit him in the front.
* This is the same LIFE that financially subsidized CIA-backed anti-Castro exiles and sponsored CIA-backed raids upon that country.
Yet you assure us that LIFE was key in trying to educate the public on the "facts" of the assassination, while mocking the demonstrable truth that it was, for all intents and purposes, in CIA's pocket. Dear boy, you grow more laughable by the day.
It is unfortunate that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives.
What is unfortunate is that even at this late date, certain people make it their daily business to assure others that xxxxe is actually Chanel No. 5. And when called on their nonsense, resort to ad hominem attacks on the "intelligence" of their detractors, while nevertheless feigning a pout over how unfortunate it is "that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives."
If people choose to live in a state of perpetual ignorance, that is their business. When they insist that others cohabit in that state with them, they become a danger to history and democracy.
At the same time I would grant the possibility that disinformation had been generated to stall or sidetrack investigations.
"The possibility.....?" My, how astonishingly liberal of you to even consider the concept..... D'ya think?
Robert: Please don't stay gone so long. This forum needs your imput to keep its members honest. (Even when they are not).
Good to be reminded also that, inspite of his "6 Seconds In Dalls" Dr. Thompson has a rather inconsistant past.
Dawn
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All I can do is tell you what I recall about those days working at LIFE. A fuller account can be found in Richard Trask’s very excellent new book, National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 2005) pages 363-366.
In October 1966, I met with Loudon Wainwright, Dick Billings and Ed Kern in the Time/Life Building. I never saw Wainwright again but Kern, Billings and I were very closely over the next couple of months. In Dallas, we were helped by Patsy Swank, LIFE’s Dallas stringer.
On November 25, 1966, an issue of LIFE carried a black cover with Zapruder frame 230 centered on it. The cover asked in type that got progressively larger: “Amid controversy over the Warren Report Governor Connally examines for LIFE the Kennedy assassination film frame by frame... Did Oswald Act Alone? A MATTER OF REASONABLE DOUBT.” As far as I know, this article was the first break in a virtual chorus of support from the establishment media for the Warren Report.
In the months I worked with Kern and Billings on the Kennedy case, I never got a whiff of any attempt to look the other way or not pursue the investigation aggressively. When I wanted to talk with Dr. Boswell or Dr. Gregory, this was quickly worked out. Look at CE 399 and other evidence in the Archives? Sure. Interview witnesses like Bill and Gayle Newman or Marilyn Sitzman? You bet. Spend some time with S.M. “Skinny” Holland? Sure thing.
At this time, there was blood in the water on this story. Any journalist would have given his right arm to break open the Kennedy case. Both in Dallas and New York we heard rumors that the New York Times had a ten or twelve investigator team in the field. I think we all felt that this case was about to break open and we wanted to be the people who did it. There was absolutely no attempt on the part of the management of LIFE to influence or restrict what we did.
On the other hand, I thought we had a stronger case than the one that got published on November 25th. However, I don’t see this as an effect of senior management at LIFE trying to water down the story. At that time, the practice of what has been called “committee journalism” at LIFE and TIME meant that something like a dozen people had to sign off on our article. Institutionally, that sort of requirement leads necessarily to a watering down of the product. “My God, what if we’re wrong about this?” I can hear some middle-level editor asking. The article could have been longer and it could have been more hard-hitting. But neither of these effects resulted from management trying to cover up the truth. If they had wanted to do that, they wouldn’t have shown Connally the Zapruder film in the first place. They wouldn’t have had him pick out the frame when he was hit after Kennedy had been hit and thus kayo the single-bullet theory.
The following June, Berney Geis and I attempted to get permission to use frames from the film in Six Seconds. At the same time CBS News wanted to use it in their four-part documentary. We offered Time Inc. all commercial interest in the book.... that is, all author’s royalties and all publisher’s profits. The Time Inc. Board of Directors turned down both CBS and us. Geis and I consulted Doug Hamilton, a law professor at Columbia who recommended that we use artist’s renderings and not the frames themselves. That’s what we did. To this day, I think the turndown from the Time Inc. board flowed from the complexity of their business interest in the film and not from any attempt to suppress it.
With regard to the other incidents and claims Mr. Dunne makes, I wasn’t at LIFE at the time so I have no inside knowledge at all.
Mr. Dunne also mentions “a Z-film copy pilfered [from LIFE] by its own contractee, Josiah Thompson.” This is rather mild. James Fetzer, Ph.D., is claiming right now on another thread on this site (the one devoted to his silly book on the Wellstone crash) that my “stealing”the Zapruder film had something to do with me leaving Haverford twelve years later.
Actually, I’m rather proud of making copy of the Zapruder film in the Time/Life Building in November of 1966. I’m happy to take credit for it and have done it again and again. I testified before the ARRB about it. I offered an oral history about it for the Sixth Floor Museum’s oral history. Finally, I published an account of it in Richard Trask’s new book on the Zapruder film. If there was anything about it that reflected badly on me, I probably should have shut up. But I didn’t. In any case, the reader can judge for himself/herself whether there was anything morally demeaning in what I did. Here’s what happened as drawn from Trask’s new book:
“Early November 1966 I flew to Dallas and met Kern and Billings and Patsy Swank there. [swank was a LIFE stringer who had originally let magazine personnel know about the existence of the Zapruder film.] Using 4" by 5" transparencies, we interviewed Dr. Charles Gregory who in 1963 had treated the wounded Governor John Connally. We returned to the hotel leaving the transparencies with Henry Suydam, LIFE’s Miami bureau chief. We returned from dinner to the hotel room. I said I’d like to study the transparencies and take them to my room. Before leaving the room, I inventoried the stack of transparencies and found that four (in the 230s) were missing. They were present there when we showed the transparencies to Dr. Gregory. I left the stack in the room. I learned subsequently that the next morning Ed Kern distracted Henry Suydam while Billings searched Suydam’s room. The missing transparencies were not found.”
“Mid-November 1966 I didn’t know what was going on. I suspected that there was some power struggle at LIFE in motion, but I had not a clue what it was about and who was on what side. I decided that it would be an extremely good idea for a good copy of the relevant frames to exist outside the Time-Life Building. I put a 35 mm camera with a copying stand and 15 or so rolls of film in my brief case and went up to New York on the Thursday or Friday before the issue entitled “A Matter of Reasonable Doubt” closed. Kern and Billings left by about 5:00 PM. I stayed. I set up my copying stand over the light table in Kern’s office and started copying the 4" by 5" transparencies. Kern came back and said, “What’re you doing, Tink?” I replied, “I’m copying some frames from the goddam film. I need to study them down in Philadelphia.” Kern said nothing and then left. I spent the next two hours or so copying the remaining frames until my film was exhausted. We learned in the lawsuit [later filed by Time Inc.] that the following Monday Kern told the editor of LIFE, George Hunt, that he had come back and found me copying the film. Hunt later signed a consultancy contract with me which legally gave me permission to have a copy for my own research use. “
National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film by Richard B. Trask (Danvers, Massachusettes: Yeoman Press, 2005), pages 364-365.
Once, on this Forum, several months ago, someone claimed that when you were working on the assassination for "Life" magazine it was not a serious attempt to solve the assassination (because "Life" was supposedly under the control of the CIA). I recall that "Life" was one of the first major media to raise questions about the Warren Commission. I am sure many people in the US first began to doubt the Warren Commission because of "Life" magazine.
Much of that "doubt" was caused by LIFE's own foolishness and sleight of hand.
* This would be the same LIFE that airbrushed the backyard photo that ran on its cover, in order to enhance the speculation that Oswald was holding the murder weapons in those pix.
* This was the same LIFE that transposed critical Z-film frames, in precisely the same fashion as did the WC, in order to falsely corrupt any critical analysis of their pictorial contents.
* This was the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to ensure that a Z-film copy pilfered by its own contractee, Josiah Thompson, wouldn't appear in his book, nor would allow him to use illustrations of those Z-film frames. Why not ask Tink his opinion on how sincere LIFE was about revealing the truth about the assassination? He had a front-row seat for LIFE's struggle against the truth ever being revealed.
* This is the same LIFE that fought tooth and nail in court to prevent Jim Garrison being granted access to what was thought to be the most vital piece of evidence in the assassination.
* This is the same LIFE magazine that attempted to rationalize two contrary facts - Parkland assertions of a throat wound being one of entry, though sustained after JFK had passed the shooter - by falsely declaring as fact that the President had turned around to wave to well-wishers, thereby giving an assassin to his rear the chance to hit him in the front.
* This is the same LIFE that financially subsidized CIA-backed anti-Castro exiles and sponsored CIA-backed raids upon that country.
Yet you assure us that LIFE was key in trying to educate the public on the "facts" of the assassination, while mocking the demonstrable truth that it was, for all intents and purposes, in CIA's pocket. Dear boy, you grow more laughable by the day.
It is unfortunate that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives.
What is unfortunate is that even at this late date, certain people make it their daily business to assure others that xxxxe is actually Chanel No. 5. And when called on their nonsense, resort to ad hominem attacks on the "intelligence" of their detractors, while nevertheless feigning a pout over how unfortunate it is "that issues cannot be debated on their merits without the need to impugn people's motives."
If people choose to live in a state of perpetual ignorance, that is their business. When they insist that others cohabit in that state with them, they become a danger to history and democracy.
At the same time I would grant the possibility that disinformation had been generated to stall or sidetrack investigations.
"The possibility.....?" My, how astonishingly liberal of you to even consider the concept..... D'ya think?
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Well put, Tim. It would seem that a "disinformation agent" is someone in the pay of an intelligence agency who knowingly disseminates false information. Would that agree with your definition.
I would disagree with Gary's point #2 unless the adjective "knowing" is included.Example the KGB disinformation "Oswald letter to Mr. Hunt". All of the assassination authors who wrote about that letter were not KGB disinformation agents.
I would think a disinformation agent would be someone who knows a goverrnment or intelligence agency has propogated a lie and nevertheless speads it.
I know that during the Cold War both the KGB and the CIA spread disinformation. The Winston Churchill quote comes to mind (I think I can get it approximately correct): In war truth is so precious it must always be protected by a bodyguard of lies.
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I think you're very close to hitting the nail on the head, Gary.
Sometime ago on another board, Bill Kelly quoted a technical definition of "disinformation agent." If memory serves, Kelly said it is a term specifically developed to cover false information disseminated by the KGB. He cited a particular word in Russian which was used by the KGB for this sort of thing --- "dezinformaya" --- or something like that. Consequently, it has made the jump to English and means misinformation of some sort disseminated by an intelligence agency. The bogus Lee Harvey Oswald letter to Mr. Hunt, earlier mentioned in this thread, would be a perfect example of this.
In Kennedy assassination circles, it is used by James Fetzer, Ph.D., to smear those who disagree with him. He had a whole bogus scholarly template put together with varying levels of "disinformation" and then topped it off with some quotes about CIA use of journalists and others to spread "disinformation." I think Fetzer even claimed that some benighted journalist for a Milwaukee paper who said only Fetzer's relatives would be interested in Fetzer's book was carrying out some sort of "hit piece" for an intelligence agency. I am proud to be named among those opponents of Fetzer who were called "disinformaiton agents." It's probably libelous because it means an agent of an intelligence agency who under orders of the agency spreads misinformation. But given Fetzer's identity, who cares.
I'm trying to remember if Jack White has ever referred to me or others as "disinformation agents." I believe Mr. White's favorite term for those who disagree with him is "provocateur."
Having often been the victim of them, I find ad hominem attacks unnecessary and degrading to the people who make them. In logic courses, an ad hominem attack is considered a logical fallacy.Having just seen (on the Chauncey Holt forum) someone else being accused of being a "disinformation agent" (and having posted a joke about the definition of such) I thought a serious discussion of same might be in order.
I do not think one necessarily needs to be paid to be a disinformation agent. Moreover, even if one is paid for writing the truth, that would not constitute him or her a disinformation agent (else all professional writers would be so classified).
There are two types of information: fact and opinion. I do not think that any post that constitutes an opinion would fall into the category of "disinformation". If the author of the post was pursuing an agenda, and did not honestly believe the opinion, he or she would be being intellectually dishonest but I do not think that is technically information.
To be technically accurate, I would submit only a primary source could be a disinformation agent. A primary source (even to include I would say an author who reports on an interview he or she conducted) would be a disinformation agent if he or she deliberately and dishonestly reported something.
If someone posts a fact developed by another, that can hardly constitute being a disinformation agent even if the information is false. For one thing, how would the poster even know it was false?
There ARE disinformation agents. They fall into these categories:
1. WITTING
a. paid agents who are employed to spread false information or propaganda
b. political agents whose actions are based on party loyalty (Swiftboat Veterans)
c. persons with personal or pecuniary agendas (right/left wingers and authors)
d. contrarians, who just like obstructionism
2. UNWITTING
a. persons with mistaken but sincere beliefs, like space enthusiasts
b. persons employed by groups with an agenda, like NASA or the CIA, etc.
c. persons employed by certain media
d. persons who have not examined the evidence
e. persons who believe what they see on TV or read in the media
It is far more complex than this. Each case must be considered on its
evidence...for instance James Files or Judyth Baker, and the people
promoting such stories.
Jack
I think your definition of disinformation agent is too broad. It would cover just about anyone--or at least anyone one disagrees with. "People with mistaken but sincere beliefs?" I would put you in that category, regarding your Apollo Hoax ideas, as I suppose you would me. But I would not call that disinformation. There is a difference between disinformation and misinformation. Here is a definition of disinformation I grabbed off the internet:
1.Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation: "He would be the unconscious channel for a piece of disinformation aimed at another country's intelligence service" (Ken Follett).
2.Dissemination of such misleading information.
to restore to some
JFK assassination film hoax: The blood mistake is Costella's!
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
With all due respect, Professor Fetzer, do you really want to argue here in front of all these people that Mary Moorman took her famous photo from the street and not from the position she is shown to be in in the Zapruder film? Are you willing to argue this? Or are you just blow-harding around as usual? If you are serious in wanting to argue this point, all you have to do is give your reasons. Why do you think Mary Moorman was standing in the street and not on the grass when she took her famous photo?
If you are not serious about this, then spare us the irrelevant correspondence with David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D. which proves exactly nothing.