James DiEugenio

LOL, nice one Dave Incredible how DVP completely reverses the standard of evidence. Which shows he has no comprehension of what the legal system is all about. It was the job of the WC to prove their case against Oswald. They did not do that. By any legal standard. Our side does not have to prove what actually happened. They always say we should. But its simply not in the rule book. What our side has to do is to show that their case is simply not credible. Which we have done. A zillion times over. In every aspect. http://www.ctka.net/2014/wr_anniv_00.html

That is only the beginning of the problems with CE 399. I mean, if I am a defense lawyer, I want the prosecutor to admit that exhibit since it would be the beginning of the end of his case. I would not even call a 402 hearing. Since I think it would be harder to prove the people's case with it than without it. In fact, if the prosecution tried to prove the case without it, I would then enter it myself. Because not only would you prove it's bogus, you prove the whole unreliability of the handling of evidence in the state's case. Which is a very important plateau to cross. Once you have done that, its an uphill climb with the jury. Tanenbaum once mentioned this to me. He said, once you lose the jury's trust in the efficacy of the people's case, then they begin to look at your case as not really factual, but theorizing. Which, of course, is the giant problem with the Warren Commission. Its one big theory. (Which makes it so bizarrely ironic that DVP calls us conspiracy theorists.) The WR doesn't prove anything. Even Jesse Curry admitted that the DPD could never put Oswald in the window with that rifle. And then when you add in Vickie Adams? In the last couple of years, I have tried to stress that the WC is an object lesson in what happens to our judiciary if the adversarial procedure breaks down. Oswald was not allowed a defense. And the guy sent by the ABA did not do his job at all. Since the rules of evidence were not even acknowledged, let alone followed. As Chris Sharrett once said, the Nazis at Nuremberg got a better defense than Oswald. I mean, does it get worse than that? And with Dulles, McCloy and Ford running the show, the fix was in. I mean, Ford even admitted this later to the president of France. http://ctka.net/2013/VGEonJFK.html

Maybe I should try this: "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" [2] -John Maynard Keynes- "I work for a Government I despise, for ends I think criminal." [3] -John Maynard Keynes- Abstract: On Saturday, November 23, 1963, Billy Harper found a skull fragment on the infield grass at Dealey Plaza. Three Dallas pathologists agreed that it was occipital bone. After photographs were taken in Dallas, the FBI took possession of the bone, and then gave it to Admiral George Burkley, MD, the president's personal physician. Before Burkley lost the bone (forever), the FBI X-rayed it, but then these X-ray images also disappeared for many decades. In this monograph I examine the photographs and X-rays of the Harper fragment (hereafter "HF") and I list (in Section 6) fifteen independent and self-consistent signs for its origin from JFK's upper occiput. In addition (in Appendix K) I present a multiple headshot scenario that encompasses all of the significant evidence related to JFK's head wounds. HF has great importance for one reason: if it derives from the occiput, a frontal shot is strongly implied; and that means conspiracy. The Forensic Pathology Panel (FFP) of the (1977-1979) House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and their consultant, J. Lawrence Angel, disagreed with one another on the precise origin (in the skull) of this fragment, but they agreed that it was not occipital. Two subsequent researchers, Joseph N. Riley, an expert in neuroanatomy, and Randy Robertson, a diagnostic radiologist, also disagreed with an occipital origin. This paper reviews and critiques their arguments. Riley, in particular, claimed that occipital bone does not show a pattern of vascular grooving; he also claimed that it never shows foramina (small dimples in the surface). For him, such criteria closed the case; HF could not be occipital. In an earlier essay,[4] I had critiqued Riley's opinion and concluded that multiple lines of evidence (many not discussed by Riley) actually favored an occipital origin. In particular, standard anatomy textbooks flatly disagree with Riley's two key points. Many textbooks (discussed here) –– from 1906 to 2006 –– display vascular grooves in occipital bone. As for occipital foramina, a human skull in my possession clearly shows them; many textbooks also display occipital foramina. This refutation of Riley's two chief points opens the door (quite widely) to an occipital origin for HF. The above is the beginning of his four part essay.

DVP actually calls CE 399 evidence. When any prosecutor in his right mind would be anathema to put that exhibit in play. It would blow up his whole case. http://www.ctka.net/2010/journeyCE399.html Only the WC would do such a desperate act. BTW, when Clay Shaw's lawyers were defending him in New Orleans, they actually tried to get Garrison's charge thrown out by presenting the WC volumes in court as evidence. They brought the 26 volumes into court in a wheelbarrow and put it in front of the judge. The judge was aghast. He then started smiling. He said words to the effect: You are going to ask me to admit that pile of unchallenged testimony, and unvetted exhibits into evidence? He then started to giggle. One of DVP's personal shortcomings is his lack of humor.

LOL Well, Greg don't be too hard on me. What I meant is that it was not meant as a forensic inquiry. But to get ratings. BTW, in comparison, the TV trial of James Earl Ray was a lot closer to a real court case. GN: you're not well, are you Dave... ​I think you may be on to something there.

DH: In case English is a problem, Tannebaum suggests early in his book, Oswald would have never been put on trial based on the 1964 Warren Commission findings and report. He goes even further stating the WCR reads like a prosecutor's brief, a BAD one. ​And here is the difference between Tanenbaum and VB: Tanenbaum was actually examining the record for an official investigation with government powers. Bugliosi was doing a TV show, and a poor one. One of the worst things about VInce's inflated and stilted book is his endless harping on how this trial was the equivalent of an actual trial. That is simply ludicrous. Not even close in reality. At one point, Spence and Bugliosi ended up sitting at the same table reading part of the HSCA together! That "trial" was a sideshow. And one of the worst aspects was Spence was not ready. (Tanenbaum told me, "Jim, that was predictable.") For instance, Vince was reckless enough to put Harold Norman on the stand. Spence should have been salivating, because Norman was one of Elmer Moore's victims. (Moore was the Secret Service agent who got several witnesses to change their testimony after he decided they would not jibe with the official story. And he later admitted he had done so.) Spence should have demolished Norman, and Vince, with the difference between his first statement and his statement on the 26th: in the first one there is no mention of any hearing of three shells dropping above him (RP, p. 31) ​In other words, Dave is right here. Vince was being paid to do a TV show. And a bad one. Neither he nor Spence should have taken the job since what they did adulterated the legal profession and also history. ​BTW, every lawyer who has looked a this case in an official capacity disagrees with Vince. That is, they have grave and serious reservations about what the WC did. Why? Because Vince was not looking at the case in an official capacity. What he did was pure entertainment. And it should be looked upon in that way. Nice to have you back Dave.

I thought this was supposed to be about Mantik's new work on the head wounds? Which I think is important and interesting. Here is his take on the Harper Fragment at ctka: http://www.ctka.net/2014-mantik/essay/Harper1.html Dave told me this is useful when you buy the e book, since he refers back to it as part of his overall thesis. Remember this essay is just on the Harper fragment; his book is on the head wounds en toto. Our web master, Al Rossi, deserves a lot of credit for inserting all the illustrations and photos. I think anyone trying to learn something about the (very complex) medical evidence will find this series edifying.

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black742b.mp3 Here is a preview, I thought this interview came off really well. If you don't know about BOR, you should.

And I hope a lot of others are also. I really think the Big Picture is important. We have a tendency to confine ourselves to Dealey Plaza, due to people like DVP etc. Which I think works right into their hands. Further its not a coincidence that people like John McAdams tried to deny all these policy changes took place. But, I am doing my rock bottom best to try and expand the focus. So that some of us will understand that the disastrous policy changes that took place after Kennedy was murdered were not just a coincidence. They were deliberate. I mean just look at how fast it all happened. I am looking forward to reading the new Talbot book on Allen Dulles and JFK which will be out in November. I really hope his book gets some media attention. The debate needs to be opened up on that level to make the public understand that this is not just about forensics, and witness statements. Its about what happened to this country as a result of an unannounced coup.

Ken: You are really going to like my article. Although as a general outline, the above is correct, as they say, the devil is in the details. These two new books shed a lot of new light on what Kissinger and Nixon were doing in private. Nixon actually tried to use the Madman Theory on Hanoi and Russia. Wait till you see what happened with that. These guys actually considered tactical nukes. And bombing the dikes. And he essentially had his way there until 1972. Congress did not cut him off until 1973, and wait until you see what he did then. I can only call it Nixonian.

Wow Jon, sorry this hit home so personally with you. But I'm sorry, the record is the record. 1. Dulles, Nixon, and Ike got us into Vietnam. They did this by essentially creating South Vietnam under the aegis of Lansdale. They then picked an Americanized Catholic, Ngo DInh Diem, to be the leader of this country. They then propped him up with an American support system, including anywhere from 750-1,000 advisors. And an open ended commitment. This was a mistake. That commitment should have never been made. 2. LBJ knew that those VC were on the border of Cambodia and Vietnam. He knew all about the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He dropped something like 31 tons of bombs there and authorized some special forces units. That was it. Nixon and Kissinger authorized the massive secret bombing of Cambodia. Which went on for 14 months. In which thousands of tons of bombs were now being dropped on a neutral country. It was not stopped until it was exposed in congress. Nixon also authorized an invasion of the country. In support of seeking COSVN, a mythical VC HQ which was never found. This destabilized Cambodia and Sihanouk was overthrown. Now, there was a war between General Lon Nol and the Khmer Rouge. The latter barely existed under Sihanouk. We all know how this ended up. 3.) I could not disagree more with your comment about JFK not having a chance to understand Vietnam. He was there in 1951. Edmund Gullion of the State Department told him that France could never win the war. That message stuck with him forever. And it impacted his view of colonial struggles. In November of 1961, he objected to sending combat troops into Vietnam using the same arguments he learned from Gullion. He did understand it was unwinnable by 1963, after the battle of Ap Bac, and was getting out.

This is how bad Richard Nixon was. And this is why he had to rehab himself. It did not work because of the declassification process. Those records make it manifestly clear that, as Henry Kissinger once said--when working for Nelson Rockefeller--that Nixon was unfit to be president. And this is why Nixon fought not to have those records open to the public. As time goes on, and as scholars delve deeper and deeper into the declassified record, Kennedy looks better and better; while Nixon looks worse and worse. Which makes people like Chris Mathews with his nutty book Kennedy and Nixon look like a fool. Along with ideologues like Chomsky who see no differences in policy with any occupant of the White House. The people in the Third World knew better. As Gen. Giap's son told Mani Kang, he knew Kennedy was withdrawing in 1963. http://www.ctka.net/2013/General_Giap_Knew_Kang.html Moral of the story: the only thing more interesting than trying to figure out the plot to kill JFK, is sorting out the changes in the Big Picture after his death. They were immense, and we still don't have all of them. One pattern reinforces the other. Which is why DVP wants us to keep on arguing about Nick McDonald, and not those three million dead civilians in Indochina. Anyway, I hope this peaked your curiosity about the upcoming article. Everyone here, except for maybe two people, should enjoy it. I will post it when its up.

But he's only 53. Maybe there's hope?

End of story? As Nagell used to write in his letters exposing the Kennedy conspiracy from prison: "Not hardly." Nixon had lied to LBJ about what he had done. But as is the case in Washington,when he became president, through Hoover, Nixon found out about the FBI investigation. Nixon alway liked running his own covert operations. And this penchant would bring the story full circle. So he ordered Haldeman to find the file. Not knowing LBJ took it with him, Haldeman said he could not find it. When he failed, he gave the job to Thomas C. Huston, of the infamous Huston Plan. Huston could not find it. But he finally got a lead that it might be at Brookings Institute. This was around the time the Pentagon Papers were preparing to be published. When Nixon heard about this, he said he wanted to have the Brookings Institute raided, and blow the safe to get it. As Ken Hughes writes in his book Chasing Shadows, this is the real beginning of the Plumbers Unit. In a story that might have been written by a gifted playwright, over fear of exposrue of his Anna Chennault mission, Nixon was eventually undone through Watergate. Now, did Saigon get a better deal through Nixon than with LBJ? Hard to say, but probably not. What this all did was simply guarantee Nixon's election, and then his reelection. With four more years of bombing, fighting and horror in Indochina. Including now, the destruction of Cambodia.

As I said, there are two indications of Nixon attempting to lengthen the war. The second instance is much more clear. It happened in 1968 during the presidential race between Humphrey and Nixon. LBJ was trying to get a peace agreement with Hanoi negotiated before he left office, or at least serious negotiations in place. And he was careful to let both candidate's know what was going on. But Nixon thought that this would work to his detriment if successful. Especially if it was a close election, which it was. Therefore, he enlisted Anna Chennault, the veteran GOP China lobbyist to sandbag the negotiations. And she did so through contact with Saigon. Nixon told Theiu and Ky to hold out and he would get them a better deal. LBJ suspected as much. So he told the FBI to investigate. They confirmed his suspicions about Nixon's perfidy. LBJ now had a choice, expose it and go public thereby helping HHH. Or bury it for the mythical good of the country. He chose the latter and Nixon won the election. Read the sordid details here. https://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/03/lbjs-x-file-on-nixons-treason/

The link below leads to an utterly fascinating, but much overlooked article by the exemplary investigative journalist Jim Hougan. (Who, among other things, has written what I--and many others-think is still the best book about Watergate, Secret Agenda.) http://jimhougan.com/NixonInTheJungle.html Once you read it you will see that it poses a mystery that almost defies explication. What the heck was Nixon, a private citizen at the time, doing in the jungles of Vietnam in 1964? As Jim notes, the explanation given does not really wash. I am not saying I agree with Jim's interpretation, but it seems to me that the timing of the visit is more than a bit suggestive. It does seem to jibe with the beginning of the end of Kennedy's efforts to exit, and the start of Johnson's to escalate. Was Nixon giving a bit of a boost to the latter?

The argument I will make in this essay is simply this: If any President's name deserves to be attached to the VIetnam War its Nixon's. Direct US involvement was from 1954-1973. NIxon was in the White House for 11 of those years. LBJ was there for 5, and JFK for 3. Further, it was Eisenhower/NIxon/ Dulles who made the initial commitment and who actually created South Vietnam. And it was really Nixon who extended the war in a very large way into Cambodia and, to a lesser extent, into Laos. Somehow, Halberstam discounted all that. But there are two other things he missed about Nixon, which he probably should not have. Because they are indications that Nixon helped extended the war. Even when he was out of office.

Let me tell you something about Halberstam's book Ken. When McGeorge Bundy started doing his memoir about Vietnam, with Gordon Goldstein, he went back and revisited the whole declassified record. That, combined with his memory, made him conclude that JFK would have never gone into Vietnam. In fact, he had nothing but admiration for what Kennedy had done. He even said that JFK was so smart that he perceived that Bundy was too hawkish on the issue, so he went around him and through McNamara to enact his withdrawal program. In fact, there is a phone dialogue in the book Virtual JFK where McNamara and Kennedy are talking about getting out of Vietnam, and Bundy does not know what the heck they are talking about. When he listened to it, he told Goldstein that Kennedy had appointed McNamara as his emissary to get out of Indochina. Therefore bypassing him, which he had no problem with. He then went back and reread Halberstam's book. He said Halberstam got it all wrong because he completely missed out on who JFK was, especially in comparison to Johnson. And you are right Ken, his book is a bloody bore to read today. Especially in relation to books like Kaiser's and Douglass' and Newman's. Since he did not have the pertinent facts and evidence, he padded it out with peripheral and irrelevant attempts at biographies. I want to know what a guy did in relation to an epochal event, not how long he was married, or what his town folk thought of him or how he could memorize term papers in high school. I mean Indochina resulted in the death of about 3 million innocent civilians. The vast majority were killed after 1954, when the USA took over the situation. I want to know how that happened, not about Bob McNamara's or Dean Rusk's reading habits.

Davey: Did you tell everyone about Ruth's asterisk? Or do I have to?

But before we get to that, I want to demonstrate just how badly secrecy can harm a democracy. See, way back in the late sixties, David Halberstam started writing a mega bestselling book called The Best and the Brightest, which was supposed to be about America's involvement in Vietnam. It was not about that really. It was about Kennedy's and Johnson's involvement in Vietnam. In other words, the Democratic Party in Vietnam. I mean he started the book as a magazine assignment suggested by rightwing nut Midge Decter. So how could it be anything else? (Halberstam, p. 607) But further, Halberstam's book was largely based on interviews. In fact, he admits that. (p. 668) Further, in many cases, he did not source the interviews. And he did not catalog the people he interviewed. And although he says he managed to look at the Pentagon Papers before publication, it could not have been for very long. Since they had only just been published as his book was being completed. So he relied on interviews with Leslie Gelb, the editor of the Pentagon Papers. (p. 671) These decisions have made his book pretty much superfluous today. In fact, its worse than that really. Its pernicious in the face of the declassified record. Here is my analysis of his book today, as I show how imbalanced it is. Nixon could not have hoped for anything better. Kennedy could not have been done much worse. http://www.ctka.net/2011/Halberstam_pt1.html

I just taped a long interview today for Len Osanic's upcoming Black Op Radio show, this Thursday. I spent a lot of time on two topics: 1.) The historical impact of the assassinations of the sixties on that decade 2.) Nixon vs. JFK on VIetnam The reason I did so is that I have a long two part essay coming up on Bob Parry's fine site Consortium News based on the latter subject. See, Nixon fought for a long time not to have the NARA take over and start declassifying his tapes and papers. In fact, when a former friend of mine tried to get a look at his papers in the nineties, he told me, "Jim, there is almost nothing there. Its a disgrace." Well, after Nixon died, this situation changed. And now scholars can go through a lot of his stuff. I based my essay on two new books dealing with Nixon on Vietnam: Nixon's Nuclear Specter, and Fatal Politics. The combination of these two books pretty much covers most of what the guy did while he was president on Vietnam. The net result is devastating to Nixon's attempt to rehab himself after Watergate. He should have burned the tapes. When you compare him talking about Vietnam, with Kennedy talking about Vietnam, there is simply no comparison. Kennedy is an intelligent analyst and statesman. Nixon is a smartass/stupid thug: a man who has little or no regard for how many innocent people die in a war he knew could not be won. In my article I say that if these tapes had been available to David Frost, Nixon would have been eviscerated in public. In fact, he would have never agreed to be interviewed. They are that bad.

If I understand DSL, then he is saying he thinks that the cover up was designed along with the conspiracy? If so, then I agree with him.

I brought this back because of this: I just checked the stats marker today: This Bugliosi essay has become the most successful article posted at CTKA in the last three years. Its getting something over 1400 hits per day, and over 900 visits per day. That is a phenomenal ratio, ask anyone. I am forced to deduce that very few people knew very much about Vince, or certain aspects of his legal, and political career, and his personal life. He certainly managed to avoid them in his interviews. Anyway if you want to join the party, here is the link again: http://www.ctka.net/2015/the_prosecutor_bugliosi.html

DSL: The first time these doctors were --so to speak--"put on notice" (my quotes) that President Kennedy was --"officially"--shot from the front, was on December 11, 1963, when visited by a Secret Service agent who showed them a copy of the Bethesda autopsy report which had the "official" findings, and which was not sent to the Warren Commission until December 20, 1963 or to the FBI until December 23, 1863. Was the SS agent not Elmer Moore?

Wasn't that rich? Talk about a Freudian slip. McCains' father was very high up in the Navy. In fact, he was an Admiral who was off the coast of Vietnam. He was very much involved with the actual bombing and blockading of Indochina. Look him up in William Shawcross' Sideshow.