James DiEugenio

Let me excerpt from my review of the godawful Inside the Target Car for the factors that indicated a crossfire from witnesses in the Plaza on the GK: Clearly, something was happening behind the stockade fence. All you have to do is review the record. Let's begin with the startling testimony of Lee Bowers, a worker in the rail yard adjacent to it and behind. From his vantage point in a 14-foot tower, he talked about the three cars he saw driving behind the fence about 25 minutes before the assassination. (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 75) The first car looked like it was searching for a way out or checking the area. (ibid, p. 76) A second car came in about ten minutes later. The driver looked like he was speaking into a phone or a mike since he held something up to his mouth. This car probed a little deeper into the area than the first car. Then a third car came in: it was muddy up to the windows. It was occupied by what appeared to be a white male. This car spent a little more time in the area and then cruised back toward the Texas School Book Depository. At the time of the shooting Bowers saw two men standing between his vantage point and the mouth of the triple underpass. This would seem to approximate the spot, which I described in part one as being the best shooting venue. We all know what Bowers described next: "At the time of the shooting, in the vicinity of where the two men I have described were, there was a flash of light or ... something I could not identify ... some unusual occurrence—a flash of light or smoke or something which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary had occurred there." (ibid p. 77) It is interesting—compelling actually—to couple this testimony with that of Sam Holland. In a 1966 interview that will live as long as people study this case, Josiah Thompson talked to Holland in Irving, Texas. He was reluctant to talk to Thompson. Why? Because as I mentioned in part one of this review—and what Gary Mack leaves out—many witnesses complained about what the FBI or Warren Commission did with their testimony. Holland is one of them. He told Thompson that the Commission "had not transcribed his testimony as he had given it." (Thompson, p. 83) So now, three years later, he told Thompson his whole story. While standing in Dealey Plaza, he acted out what he did on 11/22/63. And those photos are memorialized in Six Seconds in Dallas. To anyone looking at them, they become almost seared into one's sub-conscious. Holland told Thompson that he was originally standing on the overpass as he watched the motorcade come toward him. He then heard four shots, with the last two very close together. (ibid) Holland said the third shot sounded like it was from a different class of weapon than the others. Holland also said he saw a puff of smoke beneath some trees on the knoll area. (ibid, p. 121) Thompson then notes seven other witnesses who saw a puff of smoke in that area. (ibid) Three of these—Holland, James Simmons, and Richard Dodd—were so sure the shots came from over there that they ran off the overpass to an area behind the fence. When Holland got there, he could see scores of footprints in the soft ground behind a car. Looking at their pattern, it didn't make sense to him. Why? Because they were all concentrated in a very narrow area, like a lion pacing in a cage. (ibid, p. 122) To cap this fascinating story, Thompson noted another witness named J. C. Price. Price saw someone running from this area with something in his hand, which he said could have been a headpiece. (ibid p. 123) This reminds us of the driver of the car Bowers saw, holding what he thought was a phone or a mike. Need more? A woman told Dallas Patrolman Joe Smith that the shots came from the bushes up on the knoll. Smith ran behind the fence and smelled gunpowder. While he was there he had his gun pulled. As he was replacing it a man in the area showed him Secret Service credentials. Yet, as Thompson notes, every Secret Service agent had gone to Parkland Hospital with the motorcade. (ibid, p. 125) So who was this guy? Was one the guy in the film at the 3:04 mark?

This is utterly ridiculous. As Pat Speer has noted, there was never any kind of rigorous and systematic cataloguing of the ear witness testimony. And to say there was is simply balderdash. Pat has gone through the sourcing on this chart and exposed it for the unreliable and ersatz evidence that it is. If the FBI had ever done a rigorous and systematic catalogue, then obviously the results would have been as the films show. Or are DVP and FC going to say, what you nutty people: you would believe your lying eyes over John McAdams' chart? Concerning the inane comment that the witnesses did not find anything on the GK, can the man be serious? There were two tell tale signs of a crossfire. First, the phony persons planted there as SS agents. Which is why I asked about the man at the 3:04 mark and only Rick picked up on that. There should have been no SS agents there. And, Larry Hancock, among others, has found sources that explain how those credentials got there. Secondly, there is the utterly memorable and compelling testimony of Sam Holland. How anyone can discount what Holland told Tink Thompson back in 1966 is simply astounding. It was one of the highlights of Six Seconds in Dallas. Made even more fascinating because Holland was reluctant to talk to Tink because of what the WC had done to his words.

This is the last part of Len Osanic and Jeff Carter's nine part post script series, the follow up to their fine 50 Reasons for 50 years on the JFK case. This deals with the political impact of the murders of MLK and RFK, and also the cumulative impact of the four major assassinations of the sixties, adding in JFK and Malcolm. It was a giant tsunami from which the USA never recovered.

BTW, in the film I posted above, take a look at the image at the 3:04 mark. Does anyone know who the guy walking from R to L with the coat over his arm is?

FC: You also write "The extant videos also show, quite clearly, that everyone ran to the grassy knoll in search of the assassin(s) immediately after the shooting.No, that's not true. That's one of the myths of the Kennedy assassination." Dead Wrong: As per the Parkland doctors not having their testimony massaged. Again, this flies in the face of the declassified record, something that DVP and FC do not pay much attention to at all. Based on these records Gary Aguilar wrote that, after the assassination, Secret Service agent Elmer Moore spent a lot of time at Parkland. The Dallas doctors, up until about 12/11, had been talking to the press and they said that the throat wound was an entrance wound. But now Moore set up shop in the place. With the official autopsy report in hand, he began to turn the tide. For example, with Malcolm Perry. He also began to get this story in the local papers, e.g. the DTH of December 12th. That story said the throat wound was an exit wound and at a downward angle. (LOL.) Moore also got some SS agents to alter their testimony to the FBI agents, Sibert and O'Neill, in order to discredit their report, which was Specter's agenda also. (Jim DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 167-68) When Moore showed up to testify about his perfidy to the Church Committee, he had a lawyer in tow. Why? Because he understood that talking a witness out of his testimony in a criminal case was a felony. As many have written, Moore then became Earl Warren's personal escort through the hearings, and he admitted he talked to him every day. (ibid) FC would probably say it was about baseball or the weather. Final comment about Moore. He despised Kennedy. Said he was pink, and selling us out to the commies--he actually got scary talking about this issue. (ibid) This is the kind of inquiry that the Warren Commission was. With utterly wrong comments like the above, FC is showing why no one, except DVP, missed him. Here comes another Comedy of Errors.

This is around the point that Life Magazine fell out with Garrison on the JFK case. Their team consisted of DIck Billings, Tink Thompson, Ed Kern, Patsy Swank and Holland McCombs. There is some evidence that Aynesworth interacted with them or, at the very least, knew what they were doing. (Hugh also knew what Garrison was doing through informants in his office.) He probably set up this interview for McCombs since its clear he was handling SAS through the Dallas Police. The problem was that McCombs was a friend of Clay Shaw. And as you can see from his rendition of this interview, that fact shines through in almost every paragraph. In fact, I would not be surprised if he sent it to Shaw for some final editing. And recall, Billings was a part of Operation Tilt, which used to be called Operation Red Cross. Therefore, when Garrison indicted Shaw and then began to focus on the CIA as the main culprit, that was it for Life. How could it not be considering the close associations of Luce to the Agency. I mean when Fonzi asked Andrew St. George if he ever worked for the CIA, he replied, "Only when I worked for Life."

Everyone take a listen to this. I have never heard the whole speech before. Its not perfectly synced, but at least you hear the whole thing. Its stunning. He actually had this predominantly black crowd cheering him on-- right after he tells them King was killed. That is how good this speech was. The monument is at the end and you can see it in perspective.

This is what I mean about Kavanaugh and the GOP hazing procedure. http://jfkfacts.org/on-jfk-secrecy-brett-kavanaugh-sides-with-the-cia/ This is what the court system has become because of the Federalist Society and its union with the GOP. And this is why I think the Democrats are only slightly less useless than the GOP. If it had been me, I would have been running press releases on this issue long ago. That is how the Federalist Society has altered the power structure and made the judiciary little more than an arm of the Republican Party. Which was exposed in Bush v Gore.

There were several articles on the subject of how Thomas more or less was Scalia's echo chamber. BTW, last night's nomination was about as surprising as being in Times Square in Manhattan on New Year's Eve. A guy who worked for Ken Starr and on the Florida recount and had planned 11 different ways to impeach Clinton. But now questions the whole Mueller case? I mean listening to all that stuff about following the Constitution: blah blah blah. When in Bush vs Gore, they overthrew the Constitution on both the states rights issue and the equal protection clause. Ginsberg really roasted Rehnquist, and to a lesser degree Scalia, in her dissent over what this decision had done to the whole conservative idea of precedent and tradition. It had exposed them as empty poses. The rightwing has really completely corrupted the judicial process almost beyond meaning. They have made it something like a hazing process for a fraternity. It begins in law school by the way, there is a famous conservative one at Liberty University. And, as many have indicated, its not just on the federal level, but now, as we see in this McAdams case, on the state level also. Returning to that, I do not know in Wisconsin, if they have an out for following administrative law. In Colorado, they did, and that is why Churchill could not get his job back. But if Marquette's lawyers agreed to go the civil route, but did not have to, they should be fired. Any idiot could have seen what the outcome would have been by just reading that 2011 New Yorker article I posted.

We need more of this kind of thing throughout our culture to remind youth of what great leaders this country once had. And what promise they brought to the country. Things were not alway this bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmark_for_Peace_Memorial

Mr. Harper: I guess you and I have a disagreement about: 1.) The relevant facts of this case, and 2.) The status of the political make up of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 3.) The fact that its not an "ouch" contest and you don't seem to value the danger to Abbate's physical well being as compared to Finkelstein's professional employment. Even though I said that was simply wrong on Dershowitz's part and DePaul should not have gone along with it. IMO, as far as the Abbate case goes, considering the status of Scott Walker and Wisconsin's supreme court, Marquette had about as much chance of prevailing on the merits as Dred Scott did back in 1857, or Al Gore did in 2000 after Scalia stopped the vote count because, as he more or less admitted, he did not want to see W lose the election, and give Gore the chance to appoint Democratic justices. Those two cases stand out as two of the most politically motivated federal Supreme Court decisions ever. And please recall what Scalia said to all those books written about the indefensible and absurd lengths the court went to in order to justify the stopping of the vote count in Florida: "Get over it!" Did he also say that to the parents of those 5,500 dead Marines his man W sent to their deaths in Iraq? In my opinion, when you overturn two administrative hearings, and one lower court hearing and say that a professor does not have to follow the faculty handbook or guidelines, or internal procedures, and can terrorize a student teacher and then lie about it, then I guess we have a different view of the facts and values in this case, and what the concept of academic freedom consists of. BTW, my comment about your freedom ending at the next person's health and well-being, that is one of the most common figures used in teaching both civil and criminal law.

To me the Willie Horton ad was not the worst. Although it was pretty bad. To me, the very worst thing under Bush 1 was the Clarence Thomas nomination, and the attendant circus around Anita Hill. I mean, nothing showed America just what the Republicans had done to the race issue than that. The idea was to shove King, Malcolm and Jessie Jackson down the Democrats' throats. Clarence Thomas was the equivalent of Jack Benny's Rochester and that was the way black Americans should be. Even though the guy was not even qualified to be on the court! And then what they did to poor Anita Hill capped it off. To this day I do not understand what Biden was thinking of as he conducted that hearing. To try and be nice to the opposition as they used every trick in the book to turn the proceedings into a sideshow. And then not to call the corroborating witnesses for Hill, and to let the opposition mischaracterize them in advance? I mean really, when the other side starts complementing you on how fair you are being Joe, its time to wake up. That means they are eating your lunch. The only Democrat who gave a speech worth a salt during that whole fiasco was Ted Kennedy. And he wasn't in charge. He was the only guy who showed any outrage about the process. I mean Thomas called what was going on a high tech lynching? And Biden didn't call him on it. Really sick.

Isn't that really funny about Smith trying to deny he knew Ferrie? And then his wife blows it up by telling the press Ferrie was at their house the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion. BTW, I don't know if I left this in the second edition, but Smith actually had films of the Bay of Pigs he used to watch with Ferrie. I mean do you know how high up the daisy chain he must have been to have those films? The only other two guys I know of who would place that high up would be Artime and DeTorres.

I see I left out your other key point: gerrymandering. After the utter failure of Reconstruction, the way the remnants of the confederacy reasserted itself was through the black codes and then through tenant farming. The black codes then evolved into Jim Crow. And these local and state laws were allowed to overrule the Civil War amendments for the simple fact that no president, including FDR, wanted to challenge the southern establishment. For two reasons: 1.) It would sandbag their own program and 2.) It would lose the Solid South for the Democratic Party. That was the state of affairs until the fifties when you had a bit of movement with Brown vs Board, the 1957 Civil Rights Act and the 1960 Civil Rights Act and Little Rock. But Eisenhower and Nixon consciously decided not to enforce any of those acts and Ike only acted in Little Rock because he had to enforce federal law over Orville Faubus' defiance. No one had ever done, or even contemplated, what the Kennedys did. That is a three year campaign to strike down Jim Crow, voting discrimination and force integration in the south. The way the GOP and Nixon later got around this was to manipulate white backlash. They did it with Kevin Phillips' Southern Strategy and Nixon's attempts to put two southerners on the Supreme Court in Carswell and Haynsworth. Those two nominations were clearly a code to the south that he was going to try and reverse the Warren Court on civil rights. The other way the GOP fought back was through gerrymandering. This process has gotten so ridiculous in the last twenty years that its not really even funny anymore. And this is because the GOP controls so many state houses and that is how they draw up state seats in the assembly. And sometimes for congress. The only real way you can break open gerrymandering is through an aggressive Justice Department. As they did in California to get Gloria Molina on the Board of Supervisors. The Justice Department went to court and in a case that lasted about four years they finally got a new map that allowed a minority person to get elected for the first time in over a century in LA county. But that is how determined these regressive forces really are. And this is one reason I think Obama was such a disappointment in so many ways. I really think there is some evidence to promote the idea that Obama was really the Democratic Establishment's answer to Jessie Jackson. I wonder if Ted Kennedy would have endorsed him at the end of the day. I mean Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State?

Those are both good points. See, as most good historians will tell you--and Foner was good--Reconstruction was simply a failure. And this is one of the problems I had with Ken Burns' documentary on the Civil War. And its why Foner would not cooperate with Burns. Because he left out Reconstruction. And then he made the film's leading talking head that Confederacy apologist Shelby Foote. Thereby selling about two million copies of his book. Off of that, one could see what Burns was going to do with Vietnam. Again, Koch brothers money. So when the Kennedys came in, and JFK made that phone call to Coretta King, and then RFK got King out of jail, that was a signal to the civil rights activists that, hey, you finally have an administration that will back you. Its a longer story than that of course, going back at least to 1957. But once the Kennedys were in the White House, the geyser exploded. And the reason it was so powerful is because it had been laying dormant for almost a century. Now, if I could find one of these conservative guys--e.g. Bill Buckley-- who said something positive in public about what the Kennedys were doing at the time they were doing it, or if I could find something negative they said about the relative non action of Eisenhower and Nixon even after Brown vs Board, then maybe you could make some kind of case for equivalency, no matter how small or isolated. But I have never been able to see anything at all substantial in that regard. I mean McAdams grew up in Alabama, has he ever said how he admired how the Kenendys faced down George Wallace at Tuscaloosa? I will never forget watching that whole episode on TV. I thought it was uplifting to see the power of the federal government asserted in the cause of integration. Even if it was a hundred years late. I mean McAdams is so wrapped up in denial that he once said to me in a debate that both Truman and Johnson were more liberal than JFK!!! My God in heaven Mr. Professor: who dropped those 4 billion tons of bombs over Indochina as part of Rolling Thunder? It wasn't Kennedy. Who inserted a half million combat troops, deliberately breaking with JFK's policy? And this is what I am talking about. The Koch brothers look at what they are doing as some kind of moral cause. A way of rolling back whatever is left of the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. In other words the whole idea and concept that somehow the government can intervene in public policy and be a force for good, that has to be dashed, to be caricatured, to be destroyed. And make no mistake, I have been exposed to these people. They really do not like JFK. They can barely utter his name. In fact its always expressed as something like "that damn liberal Kennedy!"

Academic freedom, as any such concept as we know it, ends at the well being and health of the person next to you. As I described it, that is what happened here. There were many ways that McAdams could have pursued a complaint within the academic confines. He did not want to for the simple matter that he did not wish to reveal what he did not reveal: the student was being advised by him, and he was flunking the class. So far from being a dispute about academic freedom, one can see that this was a way for both the student and the advisor to serve their own ends. And, in fact, the student's agenda was brought out at the first academic hearing he had on the subject. He wanted to drop the class without sustaining the fail. The administrator told him that this was not possible since the deadline had passed. As I said, McAdams covered all this up in his writings and emails on the subject by saying that somehow the administrator had not given the student due process. And, as predicted, the people who he mailed this out to cooperated with him. As I have noted, being in the field of education for over three decades, as both a teacher and student, I had never seen a case like this before. Not even close. McAdams should have been disciplined or suspended far earlier for the antics he was pulling on campus. And this was a problem in my view. Marquette had been far too lenient with him prior to this case. Whatever you think about Scalia and the special prosecutor, did you also think he was correct in issuing the order to stop the counting of ballots in Florida in the year 2000? Did you like the excuse he used for that one? The continued counting of the votes could cause irreparable harm to candidate Bush? Talk about Orwell. The irreparable harm was to Gore. Scalia and Jeb Bush stole the election for W. Which then caused the invasion of Iraq. Here is another indication as to what these fruits and nuts have done with the Federalist Society: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-supreme-court-roe-v-wade-abortion_us_5b422ba3e4b07b827cc1c6d5 People like Alito and Gorsuch get their ticket punched by doing things like what happened in the agency fees case for public employees unions and Citizens United. As if people like the Koch Brothers need more help. These guys then compare what they are doing to what the NAACP and ACLU did. When, in fact, they are not remotely the same. Giving black Americans access to public places and the right to vote, and giving immigrant workers due process before the are fired and deported is not the same as saying that influence over elections should be unlimited for billionaires, and workers in public unions should not have to pay for the benefits they get from that union. Especially when the court manipulates the first case in order to set it up more completely for a reversal of stare decisis, and when the same stare decisis overthrow is used for agency fees. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/21/money-unlimited) As I said at the beginning, what we are seeing here is the ultimatum reaction to the Kennedys belated supporting of Brown vs Board. These same people felt that was lawyer advocating. Somehow the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, plus the horrible bloodshed of the Civil War did not exist.

Robert: I am afraid you don't know this case that well. And for you to quote only what the rightwing Supreme Court wrote in its decision, which was clearly designed to conceal the specifics of what McAdams did that was so offensive, and then to compare it with the Dershowitz case, that is not really accurate. Dershowitz never put FInkelstein's life in danger and as far as I can tell, his mental health. And the same comparison applied to the Churchill case. In the Abbate case, that is what McAdams did. He made sure that the issue WAS NOT JUST academic freedom. And he hid three facts that were important to the case: 1.) That he was the faculty advisor to the student in question, 2.) The student was taping his conversations with Abbate and lied about it, and 3.) The student was flunking the class. This part of the inquiry, I believe, did not go far enough. From all the indications I saw this clearly had all the earmarks of a provocation. Consider what the faculty report mentioned about the student, who: “had a leadership role in the student chapter of a national organization that encourages…confronting professors in the classroom to expose liberal bias.” The report states they did not discover this fact until after their four day hearing was concluded, and they decided not to reopen the proceedings, because there was no indication McAdams was aware of this. The report gives no evidence as to how they made that conclusion. But I should add, the report does state that the student switched to McAdams as his advisor prior to the semester in question. Which, to me, suggests the issue merited further inquiry. Because, in conjunction with this, McAdams told the committee that he was not aware that the student was failing the class. Yet, he was the young man’s faculty advisor! And further, the student told the committee that he never told McAdams that he was dropping the class for any other reason than his failing grade. (See report p. 84) And if you have studied McAdams' career at Marquette, which I do not think you have, you will see that this was his method of operation for about the last 10-15 years. His issue was not really academic freedom. It was the rightwing meme as propagated by Dinesh D'Souza at Dartmouth, that of Political Correctness. If you recall, D'Souza made his name doing things like putting pictures of Klan hangings of black Americans in the college newspaper. This eventually got him an audience with President Reagan. When the controversy over Abbate first surfaced, McAdams got his gig on national Fox TV. This was after he had forwarded his first writings on the subject to the local Fox outlet.On national TV he then lied about what he had done by saying he had only mentioned the woman's name once in his blog. Not true. He had mentioned her several times, and he then went on the radio to do the same. Further, he had mailed and emailed the info to allied bloggers and TV stations. He was clearly on a crusade to make her radioactive and to advance his name in the process. It worked. Once he had her name out there in the rightwing broadcast media, it was pretty simple to track her down. She began to get threats via phone and even at her faculty mailbox. The university had to give her a security guard to escort her to and from her classes. This began to take a mental toll on her. She eventually decided to leave the campus. And she essentially had to start her graduate career over at Colorado. McAdams was granted not one but two hearings. One by the dean: you can read that report here http://d28htnjz2elwuj.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2015-01-30-Holz-to-McAdams.pdf. and one by a faculty committee of his peers. It became clear through the inquiries that the main problem was that McAdams had a long record of doing these things, at least 12 incidents. Not just with faculty members but with administrators and students also. And his MO was as it was in this case: to publicize the names and email addresses of those involved. For instance in a student production of The Vagina Monologues. Thereby making them targets of the like minded PC fleet. (Click here for an article on this https://kennedysandking.com/news-items/john-mcadams-and-marquette-go-to-court) The history of these cases is that most of the time, a civil court does not interfere in administrative law. The Churchill case was an exception not the rule. But McAdams and his lawyer knew what the Kochs and the Bradley foundations had done in Wisconsin. Through Scott Walker they had begun implementation of the whole rightwing paradigm and the Supreme Court was a big part of it. They knew what would happen once they got there and that was their aim all along. Anyone can see that by reading the New Yorker article I posted on how the right had altered the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The law firm that represented McAdams was part of the Koch brothers' affiliated State Policy Network which Norquist alluded to. That amounts to a large, sprawling network to create mini-Heritiage foundations with about 83 million behind them. I object to what happened to Finkelstein myself. Because that really was about academic freedom. This case was not. It was about terrorizing a student teacher to advance one's own reputation and name. To quote a kangaroo court that backed Walker's move to strip public worker's collective bargaining rights and during which one justice threatened to strangle another is, to say the least, a bit odd. And weirdly one sided.

DVP on the Single Bullet Fantasy:

Take a look at the profile of his lawyer. http://archive.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/lawyer-rick-esenberg-revels-in-public-policy-fights-e69tilg-207137331.html Please note how this jibes with what I started this thread with. These rightwing fruits actually excuse what they are doing by saying that advocacy lawyering began with the NAACP and ACLU and they call them "left groups". In other words, the crusade to get voting rights for black Americans and to get integrated facilities in the south, that is a leftist agenda to them. Does this mean they were fine with Jim Crow? The ACLU began when AG Mitchell Palmer and J Edgar Hoover tried to imprison and deport workers and union organizers without due process. In other words protesting the deprivation of someone's legal rights, that is leftist to them. This is how goofy these people are and this is how they salve their consciences for what they do. McAdams is right at home with them. Since they think terrorizing a student teacher in print and on the radio is academic freedom. I wonder what this guy would have said if Abbate had been killed or seriously injured. Well, heck, its part of academic freedom?

I liked her interview in which she quoted the nut Grover Norquist: As an example, I offer this quote from Grover Norquist: "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals — and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship." This is what the Kochs and their allies have done with their regional groups. BTW, before McAdams even was released he threatened his dean with a lawsuit from this group.

Thanks for that Jim. I really look forward to seeing that demonstration. Its almost funny that DVP keeps on using Specter and the Rod. Knowing that its in no way an experiment and Beyond the Magic Bullet blew it all up. Sort of like Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Here is a good example from Pat Speer: You just can't seem to get this OBVIOUS fact, David. All of the WC's evidence, CE 903, the testimony of Kelley and Shaneyfelt, was designed to support that the Rydberg drawings were accurate...when Specter, by the time of this testimony, knew for a fact they were not. It was all a con, David. Now, you can choose to believe that Specter was wrong, and that the SBT works just fine with the bullet hole on the back where the HSCA said it was, but you cannot do that while propping up Specter's re-enactment as proving your point--when even he felt it did not.

Larry, I already have a thread on this. Can the mods place this link in that thread. No point in having two of them.

Now, we have three sources that indicate a much steeper angle than that used by the WC: Frazier, Sibert and O'Neill report and this one.

Davey, in none of your replies have you noted the fact that Specter's Rod did not work on the actual Cable TV demonstration about the Magic Bullet. In Beyond the Magic Bullet the bullet came out the chest. See, that was a real experiment, it tested itself. Did not work. Specter with a pointer is not an experiment. it is a set up for people like you.

DVP: That's right, Jim. It was The World Vs. The Patsy all the way through the HSCA even (despite the fact the HSCA said there WAS a conspiracy). Go figure that. This is one of the most ignorant statements Davey has made of late. (Which will probably be surpassed very soon after he wakes up.) The whole point of my post is that Sprague was going to do a reinvestigation of the original evidence. That is surely the impression he left with those who worked with him before he resigned. He was not going to accept the WC/DPD version of the crime scene and CE 399 and the Magic Bullet. In fact, I once heard Tanenbaum, his assistant, say words to the effect, "If you go with the whole sniper's nest scenario"; which clearly denotes that he is saying that he has real reservations about it being for real. Now, see Davey, let us take a historical cause and effect view so you will not sound so ignorant of the facts I am about to elucidate. Step 1: Sprague is asked to resign, or the message is the committee will not get funded again. Step 2: The committee now has a hard time getting a replacement. Goldberg, for example, will not take the job after seeing what happened to a first rate prosecutor like Sprague. Or as ACLU lawyer Joe Rauh once said, "You know, I never thought the Kennedy case was a conspiracy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague it must have been." Step 3: Chris Dodd has to set up a search committee in order to find candidates. In a newly declassified transcript , its Dodd who pushes Blakey as the choice against one other candidate. (Davey would not know anything about this since he does not search declassified files..) Step 4: Blakey is walked around the committee by Tanenbaum for a few weeks and, as Fonzi describes it, he realizes what the lay of the land is. Step 5: The decision is now made not to go down the complete forensic overhaul path. The committee decides not to reexamine the first day crime scene, the Magic Bullet, the origins of CE 399 or the whole sniper's nest scenario. This was done in back to back meetings involving Baden and Purdy and Blakey. Prior to this, both Baden and Purdy had been in the Sprague/Tanenbaum camp. (This last piece of information was given to me by Eddie Lopez who was there, and he could hardly believe what happened. As he said to me, "Jim, from that moment on, Andy Purdy had religion about the Magic Bullet.") Step 6: What makes this so astonishing is that Purdy was one of the members of Mark Lane's Citizen's Commission of Inquiry. In fact, it was Purdy who got Groden to show Tom Downing's son the Zapruder film. Downing's son then insisted they show it to his congressman father and this is how the HSCA got off the ground in the first place. It was Downing, who after taking a vote in the committee, called Sprague and offered him the position. Needless to say, this information--which Davey could have never discovered since he admits he does no original research--is crucial in showing what happened to the HSCA. How it went from a no holds barred, unfettered quest for forensic truth in the JFK case, to a much more narrow and guided view of the JFK case. As Mr. Gordon noted above, the original finding about the Single Bullet Fantasy is really a political statement. It was designed that way, mostly by by Specter. Unfortunately, that is what happened to the HSCA also. I think Blakey has some regrets about this, as he later denounced the NAA as junk science and says the CIA lied to him about Johannides, and he cannot trust them on anything. I don't think Sprague would have fallen for those two pretexts in the first place. Because he was a very experienced and efficient prosecutor from the beginning.