James DiEugenio

I always felt that this was one of the best articles Probe Magazine ever printed. And Part 2 about Freeport and Indonesia is just as good. But this one connects the main players in New Orleans to the upper levels of the Establishment. http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/freeport-cuba.htm

I have to say that in his upcoming book, Volume Three in his tetraology, John Newman is going to date the origins of the assassination plotting to the beginning of 1963. It will be interesting to see what he bases that upon. I had theorized that the plot was hatched in the summer of 1963, after the Peace Speech and also it became clear that Kennedy was going for detente with Castro.

David: Didn't you have the actual invitation for the luncheon at one time? Do you still have it?

Paul Bleau has expanded and revised his original important article of the previous plots to kill Kennedy. To me this is so interesting in so many ways. Man, Kennedy was not going to make it out of 1963 was he? I guess they did not want to kill him in an election year. It seems someone should do a real forensic inquiry into the FPCC also. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-three-failed-plots-to-kill-jfk-part-2

That is good Mathias, I had never heard this addressed like that before. I would agree with you , I don't see a startle reaction from the people in front of the TSBD. Am I missing something? Does someone see that?

I should have noted, as Baker is sinking he latches on to a life raft sent out by DVP. DVP: Neither one is really even needed to come to the reasonable conclusion that only bullets from Lee Harvey Oswald's Carcano rifle were fired at President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza. Here's why that is so.... Baker then agrees with this! But here is what DVP links to in part: Dr. Vincent P. Guinn, in 1978, came to the conclusion, via his NAAstudies, that the above 5 bullet specimens very likely came from justtwo individual bullets, with both of those bullets "most likely" beingWestern Cartridge Company/Mannlicher-Carcano bullets. LOL! In other words, DVP predictably hangs on to a test that he knows has been discredited beyond recognition. But that is DVP. It is what we expect from him. But Baker is supposed to be a scientist. Whew. The other rubbish DVP spews is that the bullets were linked to "Oswald's rifle". When, as Sandy Larsen just showed, there is no credible case that the rifle in evidence was ordered by Oswald. For one, its the wrong rifle. Then DVP talks about the fragments in the car. He does not tell us that those fragments are the head and tail of a bullet that was supposed to have gone through Kennedy's skull and left its middle portion right outside the skull table in the rear of his head. Yesirree. Except that did not happen until 1968 when the autopsy was changed.We all know what their guy, Larry Sturdivan, said about this: "...to have a cross section sheared out is physically impossible." Finally, there is the whole fantasy of CE 399. After the work of Ray Marcus, John Hunt, Gary Aguilar and TInk Thompson, anyone who buys that fantasy is out of Cervantes. This is what is called a reliable conclusion by DVP. The "scientist" Mr. Baker meets up with the polemicist DVP. And he evidently did not even read what the guy wrote. This is the problem with some of the "scientists" in this case. Baker belongs with Guinn, Canning and Alvarez. In Litwin's book.

Ron: I was just quoting from a report that went to Garrison's desk from Lou Ivon which was the first time Garrison was alerted to Del Valle's death. The asset you refer to was Bernardo DeTorres. He was the infiltrator in Garrison's office, and turned out to be a prime suspect in JFK's murder.

You know, Paul Baker is a perfect example of how the Oswald did it crowd ends up being what they accuse the critics of being i.e. solipsistic and eccentric. PB: the NAA studies conducted as part of the investigation of President Kennedy support the notion that the bullets fired that day came from a single source. Assuming that Baker means Guinn's work on this topic, which came to be called CBLA, he is simply wrong. And its not me who is saying this, its a metallurgist, Ric Randich, and a professional statistician namely Pat Grant. Both of whom have been published in peer reviewed literature on the subject. Here is the money shot: Perhaps the most arresting piece of evidence produced by the duo was a chart measuring the trace elements of the five pieces of evidence Guinn analyzed: the bullet left in the rifle at the so-called "sniper's nest", the bullet that Oswald allegedly fired at General Walker, and the three samples from the Kennedy assassination. The values varied widely, but especially for the "sniper's nest" bullet and the Walker bullet. Peter Dale Scott looked at this chart and surmised that it looked like those two bullets came from a different gun or type of ammunition. Right before this chart was placed on the overhead, Randich was talking about how trace metal values can vary widely in a particular run if one of the ingots used for the metals has been replaced on the production line. I asked him if he was then saying that theoretically all of those bullets, with their wide trace metal values, could come from one box. He replied that yes, they could. I then asked him, "Then what's the basis for this science?" He replied, "You're talking to the choir." Today, this new analysis is so convincing that the man that originally sponsored it and then advocated it to convict Oswald, Robert Blakey, has now joined the choir. Unfortunately, like many things in this case, the truth has emerged 28 years too late. Now, if Baker wants to argue with those two guys, fine, please do and copy us on it. I would love to see the results. Baker reminds me of Don Quixote on this, he does not know what a windmill is. Its gone Paul, CBLA was always a mirage and people like MIlam and Art Snyder knew it over 20 years ago. MIlam once said that, to him, CBLA was as bad as the medical evidence in this case. Which is putrid.

Yes there was. The coroner initially said he died around midnight. But then, George Lardner stepped forward and said he was with Ferrie until four am on February 22nd. Due to this, the coroner revised his time of death and said four am was the the outward boundary of when he could have passed on. Cyril Wecht says that a coroner should not be that far off on an estimated time of death. But if Ferrie was killed, this would mean that the killers were waiting for Lardner to leave. Also, Ferrie had purchased a hundred thyroid pills the day before, these were gone when Garrison got there. The other thing that makes this so odd is the murder of Eladio DelValle about 24 hours later. If Ferrie had broken down and started cooperating, the trail probably would have led, to Florida and JM WAVE in the east, meaning Del Valle, and Sergio Arcacha Smith in Dallas. Is it only a coincidence that DelValle's body was found dead gangland style with a shot in the chest and his body was left in the vicinity of Bernardo De Torres' apartment? De Torres had been a militant Cuban exile who had infiltrated Garrison's inquiry.

This is a good point and I agree. He could have done so, or someone else could have also. Also, do you have any idea about the differences in the time of death, I mean Lardner vs Chetta? Are you familiar with that issue?

FL: I did find it, and I also found Joel Grant's rebuttal. This is hilarious. Freddie Boy, Grant was obviously wrong and Wallace was obviously correct. Except Wallace did not go far enough. And BTW, Joel Grant was one of these Oswald did it quacks who Jerry Rose let populate his journal after the release of JFK. Grant actually tried to argue with Mili Cranor about the disappearing particle trail in the back of Kennedy's skull. This proves my point about Litwin. It does not matter who says it or what they say. The ends justify the means. Which is why he is on McAdams' web site. And so is Grant.

Death of the NAA Verdict part 3: Perhaps the most arresting piece of evidence produced by the duo was a chart measuring the trace elements of the five pieces of evidence Guinn analyzed: the bullet left in the rifle at the so-called "sniper's nest", the bullet that Oswald allegedly fired at General Walker, and the three samples from the Kennedy assassination. The values varied widely, but especially for the "sniper's nest" bullet and the Walker bullet. Peter Dale Scott looked at this chart and surmised that it looked like those two bullets came from a different gun or type of ammunition. Right before this chart was placed on the overhead, Randich was talking about how trace metal values can vary widely in a particular run if one of the ingots used for the metals has been replaced on the production line. I asked him if he was then saying that theoretically all of those bullets, with their wide trace metal values, could come from one box. He replied that yes, they could. I then asked him, "Then what's the basis for this science?" He replied, "You're talking to the choir." Today, this new analysis is so convincing that the man that originally sponsored it and then advocated it to convict Oswald, Robert Blakey, has now joined the choir. Unfortunately, like many things in this case, the truth has emerged 28 years too late. That Baker claims to be a scientist in this field and he somehow ignores the giant holes in the work Guinn did to sell his phony test, is simply baffling. And the chutzpah of this guy who then comes on this forum and somehow tells us that it is we who are somehow biased? When in fact, this junk science has been so discredited that the FBI will not use it again in any case since the agent testifying could be charged with perjury. To leave all of this out shows you who Baker really is.

Part 2, This new analysis shows that although the critiques of Milam and Snyder are valid, they don't go far enough. The reason being that neither of them, or Guinn for that matter, was a metallurgist. Which Randich is. (And as Randich told me, Guinn should have had a metallurgist consulting him in his work.) The following startling facts have been left out of the debate over NAA. Randich and Grant declare that a major fault in the HSCA work is Guinn's tenet that WCC MC lead "was found to differ sharply from typical bullet leads." This is not the case: WCC MC bullets do not differ sharply from most bullet leads. They are much like other metal-jacketed leads. The MC lead seemed different to Guinn because he compared it to unjacketed handgun rounds. In his talk in San Francisco of July 15, 2006, Randich said that outside of .38 and .22 handguns, most bullet manufacturers use the same lead alloy. (He put the figure at about 75%.) This is shocking. What it says is that the lead alloy for MC ammunition, far form being unique, is the same that say, Remington would use. So one of the pillars of Guinn's work, the singular identifiability of MC ammunition, has now fallen. Randich and Grant also discussed a crucial phenomenon in lead smelting called "segregation", i.e. how the lead and trace elements distribute themselves through the heating and cooling process. During this process, the lead, because it is heavier, stays in the center, while the antimony "floats" to the edges. So depending on where one draws the sample from, that particular location will determine the levels of antimony. Further, copper tends to coagulate in clumps, so if you drew a sample from just one spot you might get a high concentration of copper. If you drew it from a few millimeters away, you could get a very low concentration. In fact, this is precisely what happened to Guinn. Which is why he tended to ignore his copper findings in favor of antimony and silver. Randich and Grant also concluded that Guinn's sampling number for his conclusions was way too small to allow for the possibility of random matches. Randich said that the FBI held until recently that you could not get random matches with NAA analysis. It was later determined that they had never looked for any. After 2004, when Randich became a witness against them, they did look and they found one. Note the two italicized points. These completely undermine the basis for Guinn's work. He was simply wrong on both of them. WCC MC ammo is not distinctive from other bullet lead alloys. And in the smelting process antimony floats around the mixture therefore it is not consistent. Also note that the statistical basis was undermined in the third italicized point. And it only lived until then because the FBI did not want to undermine their own phony test.

From Death of the NAA Verdict: The first serious broadside against Guinn and the NAA was issued by Wallace Milam at the COPA Conference in Washington in 1994. Milam questioned the very basis of Guinn's conclusions. Guinn had said that the metallic make-up of WCC MC could vary widely from bullet to bullet, the term for this being "heterogeneous" or irreproducible. But Guinn also added that the metallic make-up of a single MC bullet was not; the term for this was "homogeneous". But Milam showed that Guinn's data did show large variations within a single bullet, especially in the measure of the trace element antimony, which Guinn placed much weight on. He also noted that his testimony on this issue seemed to contradict a paper he wrote that very same year in Transactions of the American Nuclear Society. There he wrote that: "In the U. C. Irvine INAA background studies of the Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, it was found that this bullet lead is remarkably heterogeneous somewhat within a given bullet." (Emphasis added) Yet, for the HSCA, Guinn seemed to place the efficacy of the findings on the intra-bullet lead being homogenous or uniform and consistent throughout. And really, if this were not the case, then Guinn's whole testimony would dissolve. Milam's logic was penetratingly simple on this point. In the 1964 tests the FBI had taken microscopic samples from the same bullet and come up with different concentrations of antimony ranging from 636 parts per million (PPM) all the way up to 1125 PPM. With this wide range of data within one bullet, then it would be possible to match varying PPM values to differing fragments if one were to allow a large enough variance. And it appears that this variance is what led the Bureau to declare the earlier NAA results "inconclusive". Milam's discussion was well informed, pointed, and well documented. (It is available online at the site Electronic Assassinations Newsletter, under the title "Blakey's linchpin".) Later on Art Snyder, a physicist, questioned the statistical analysis used by Guinn. Interestingly, although Guinn prepared such an analysis, when challenged to assign a probability number for the certainty of his work, he declined. (For instance, the two acoustical analysts for the HSCA gave their work a 95% probably certainty statistic.) Snyder later commented that Guinn probably did not assign such a figure because the number would have been too high, signaling a high probability of error due to the high variables involved in his findings. Note above: Milam's critique began in 1994. And like Galanor, it went after Guinn's chart and his claim of antimony consistency. So if Litwin was a real researcher, which he is not, he would have found this presentation. Also note that Guinn contradicted himself about a major tenet of the test.

BTW, I went ahead and scanned the rest of Litwin's joke of an article. The first time around i started laughing when I saw he backed the CBLA that the HSCA did. Anyone who would accept Guinn's analysis even in the nineties had to be desperate. Since his figures on their own terms were deeply flawed. In his fine little book Cover-Up, Stewart Galanor showed this very clearly. In three pages, he showed that the bullet mixture for Carcano projectiles are not unique throughout, as Guinn said they were. Galanor did this with Guinn's own evidence chart. (See p. 43) That book was written in 1997 and published in 1998. At the same time, Wallace Milam was doing the same thing with Guinn's work at JFK seminars in Washington. Somehow Litwin was so wed to his Oswald did it dictum that he could not see straight, or he never looked at Guinn's chart. Probably both. So please do not use, "Well i wrote that essay before CBLA had discredited Guinn" as an out Mr. Litwin. As we shall see, for your search of evidence,, the ends justifies the means. Great example: This guy actually uses the HSCA's Canning as a witness for the trajectory test showing that the Single Bullet Fantasy is correct. LOL Yet by 1995, the material on the HSCA phony Canning experiments was being declassified. Canning's letter to Blakey shows that 1) He was terribly unhappy with the info he was getting via the compartmentalization Blakey used. 2.) He thought they had proved a conspiracy in the JFK case. (The Assassinations, edited by Jim DIEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 81) Litwin also fails to note that in Canning's work, he used the old WC version of where the back bullet struck, which was in the neck! (ibid p 79) We know that is not the case and we knew it back then. But just as bad, in Canning's work there is no downward angle in the trajectory through the neck. Further, Canning stopped his analysis of the Single Bullet Fantasy at Connally's back. So how does this bolster what Litwin says it does? I could go on and on with this since Canning's testimony is so full of holes that Pat Speer wrote about ten pages demolishing him. But this is the kind of work Litwin does. He does not understand that just because some quack says this or that, and it indicts Oswald, that does not make it true. But he does that with Canning and Guinn. BTW, I did not even get to the worst part of Canning, that is his sphere of incidence, that is from where the rifle could have fired from, that is flat out hilarious. (Ibid, pp 80-81) In certifying the BYP, Litwin does not note the wrong ring finger in the photos or pose the question as to why would LHO switch the ring for these pics. And he accepts the wrong chin, which even the members of the HSCA had real problems with. He just says, well, they could not detect any line there. He does not then add that if one follows that kind of logic then LHO had a chin operation. He accepts the autopsy photos and x rays without mentioning the different testimony on the back of the head, which the HSCA deliberately covered up. By not mentioning it, he does not have to explain it. The most hilarious part of this essay is the so called jet effect he uses from the discredited Luis Alvarez. This has been discredited so many times its ridiculous: by Wallace Milam, by Doug DeSalles for starters. TInk Thompson did so in his new book by using the actual data from Alvarez' own experiment. Gary Aguilar has used that to rip the experiment to smithereens. Alvarez lied. Period. End of story. If Litwin's book is like his essay, and I suspect it is, its a waste of paper. This guy did about as much honest research as John McAdams does. And that is why his essay is housed there. Which means he surfs the web for anything that will support his thesis, no matter what it says, or who wrote it, or how many times its been discredited. What a disgrace.

OMG, Baker pops up again with that semantical trick he always used. This guy tries to confuse the public with a shell game. The NAA technique vs the CBLA. You use NAA for Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis. The latter is JUNK SCIENCE. Period. This is why the FBI will never use it again in court. Somehow Baker knows better than the FBI and he calls it an old chestnut. What a joker. Here is my review of the evidence in that regard: https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/death-of-the-naa-verdict It was done in concert with Pat Grant. Who, along with Ric Randich, tore open the whole farce. Here is an overview of the whole battle to get CBLA thrown out of court. https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=faculty_publications

That was one of the reasons Hoover did it. Because Garrison was showing him up by pointing out all the flaws in the Warren Report. Bill Turner later told me he recognized one of the guys who the FBI used to do the tapping.

That stuff is all true. Garrison's phones were tapped by two sets of tappers, Gordon Novel for the CIA, and also by the FBI, which went through the actual phone lines. BTW, two people have emailed me about this article. One sent it to the original publisher, and asked if I could reply and one sent it to the author. As per the former, on a cold day in Hades.

No I think he is trying to say that if your book is worth reading, you at least should have addressed these questions. If not, its just another piece of McAdams style boilerplate.

You know, I like both Sandy and Bart, but this thread is not about this topic. At least I doubt if Litwin has it in his book. Can we get back to what the topic was, that is Mr Litwin reforming himself and finding salvation with the Warren Commission.

This came from an FBI interview with one of the justices down in New Orleans. He was not dealing with the Shaw case. Garrison showed him some of the stuff he had. Mellen mentions it in her book. As to your questions, I have no doubt that once the FBI learned about it they sent in, or got in contact with one of the various infiltrators in Garrison's office, and it disappeared. Which happened to a good deal of the evidence he had. As per your other question 1.) I don't think Garrison liked admitting the fact that so much valuable evidence was gone, and 2.) Garrison had so much fascinating stuff that there just was no way he could present it in an interview anyway.

Francois: In the above, do you mind answering the questions? Either you or Mr.Litwin, perhaps he deals with this matter in his book. Considering that Stringer denied taking the brain photos since it was not his film or technique, and the particle trail Humes described is not on the x rays today then: 1.) Who took the autopsy photos and why did it have to be someone else? 2.) Where did the particle trail go and why?

Francois, Its you, DVP and Tracy who have absolutely no standards of what constitutes proof or evidence. The non pareil of this is the fact that you stay in denial, even when the witness who created the record admits something is wrong with the record! Two examples: Humes and the missing particle trail above, and Stringer denying he ever took the photos of JFK's brain. In fact he actually said he could not have because its the wrong film and the wrong technique. He never used either one. Recall, what Davey Boy said about that one? Stringer had a bad memory. Yeah, he forgot what he was doing for 15 years and how he did it. So please do not ever tell anyone about what standard of proof or critical thinking is. Because you have no idea what either one is about. Those two samples, from about 70 of them, are enough to show that something was seriously wrong with the autopsy of JFK. At the very least, one has to ask: 1.) Who took the autopsy photos and why did it have to be someone else? 2.) Where did the particle trail go and why? It will be a cold day in Hades when you three ever ask those questions, even though they are completely logical and well founded by the evidence.

Does DVP even realize what he is saying at times? I really wonder. Davey: Are you saying that the pictures Minyard had, and which several other people have seen, that those pics and those descriptions are fake? You guys trap yourselves so often in this case its funny. Now did Humes write in his report that there was a trail of particles leading from the EOP to the trail near the top of the skull behind the eye socket? Yes he did. Is that fragment trail visible on the x rays today? No, and Humes was surprised when he saw that they were not. When Jeremy Gunn asked him about this he could not explain what happened. Same thing here. But in the face of the above, like your mentor Vince, you choose to go into denial. Remember what Vince said, this is a simple case.

BTW Mr Litwin, what did the late Mr Roy say about the following: Instead of looking at 1967, when everyone and their mother doubted the Single Bullet Fantasy and Garrison was closing in on him, why not tell us about 1963 Davey? If Ferrie had no connection at all, then why did he begin searching and calling his former CAP pals to see if anyone had any evidence linking him to Oswald? Why did he lie his head off in his FBI report? Why did he drive to Houston through a rainstorm to a skating rink and then sit by a phone for a couple of hours? Why was he worried about Oswald having his library card? And what about the Bomb package? You probably don't even know what that one is do you? Are you going to ignore these just like DVP did?