Michael Hogan

Recently, Jim Fetzer conducted a podcast interview with Jones Harris, a first-generation critic. Although it was mostly about Harris' work on Billy Lovelady and the Altgens photo, there were some other moments. I urge members that are interested to take the time to listen to the interview in its entirety. In my opinion, it's time well spent. More on that at the end of my post. Maurice W. Schonfeld was the managing editor of UPI NewsFilm. He later was the founding president of CNN, and has had a long career in television news and production. In 1975 the Columbia Journalism Review published Schonfeld's article The Shadow of a Gunman; An account of a twelve-year investigation of a Kennedy Assassination Film. In that article, Schonfeld writes extensively about Jones Harris and the Nix Film. Excerpt: Stills from the Nix film appeared in the UPI/American Heritage book Four Days, and some of the footage was used in a David Wolper documentary feature movie of the same title. UPI made money on the footage, but no one found it particularly noteworthy until, early in 1965, an assassination buff named Jones Harris came upon stills from the Nix film in the Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, commonly known as the Warren Report. Harris, a New Yorker of independent means, did not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald had pulled the trigger. He had found a picture that had led him to believe that Oswald was standing in the street in front of the Book Depository at the time of the shooting. Working with Bernie Hoffman, a talented film technician and photographer, he had sought to prove that the man in the street was, indeed, Oswald, but their findings were inconclusive. In some of the pictures published in the Warren Report, Harris found something new. First off, he saw a station wagon with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Such a station wagon did exist in Dallas—it was used to advertise a Dallas gun shop—and it was Harris’s theory that the station wagon and the shop were involved in some way in the Kennedy assassination. Then he found a curious shape on the grassy knoll, a shape that could be read as a man aiming a gun at John F. Kennedy. We gave Harris some of the key stills made from the Nix film. They showed the knoll and, atop the knoll, “the pergola”—a concrete structure consisting of two octagonal towers connected by a wall thirty-eight inches high and 100 feet long. In the process of enlarging these stills, two things happened: the station wagon went away and the head, shoulders, arms, and gun of the rifleman was standing behind this car, leaning on it, as he took aim.... Thanks to Paul Rigby for originally posting the link to the above article years ago: http://www.cjr.org/f...nman.php?page=2 In a 1992 article that appeared in The New Yorker, Edward Epstein wrote: Early the next morning, I went with my research associate, Jones Harris, to his office suite in the Criminal District Court Building, where Garrison had left word with his assistant, district attorney, James C. Alcock, that I "should start going through the evidence." He brought in six cardboard cartons that contained such Shaw's personal paraphernalia as letters, photographs, manuscripts, checkbooks, address books, calendars, blueprints for the renovation of houses in the French Quarters (which had been one of his civic projects) and a Mardi Gras costume and, before leaving us alone with it, he explained that the staff had yet to fully examine it. Even though a Judge's order had forbidden disclosure or discussion of the evidence in the case, Garrison apparently had no compunction about turning it over to a journalist to peruse. Though none of this material, as far as I could see, had any bearing on the conspiracy Garrison had described to me the night before, Harris discovered a striking coincidence between a 5 digit number in Shaw's address book and one in Lee Harvey Oswald's book. Oswald's phone book contained the number 19106 preceded by the Cyrillic letters DD. Shaw's book contained the same number in an entry "Lee Odom, PO Box 19106, Dallas, Tex". It was of course only a partial match since the prefixes were different, but, if it proved to be more than a coincidence, it could provide a connection between the two men. Apprised of this discovery by Harris, Garrison immediately announced to the press that he had linked Shaw to Oswald. He stated without equivocation that Shaw and Oswald's address books had the identical entry in them "PO 19106" (which was untrue), that this number was "nonexistent" (which he had not yet determined) and that the number was a code, which when deciphered, produced the unlisted telephone number of Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby, and "no other number on earth" (which was also false). When asked by a reporter for the Times-Picayune how "PO 19106" became Ruby's number "WH 1-5601," Garrison, without missing a beat, explained that one simply transposed its third and last digit (so it became PO 16901) and then arbitrarily subtracted 1300. Since this nonsensical hocus-pocus still did not produce the "WH" portion of the number, Garrison added that the code was "subjective." http://www.edwardjay...ed/garrison.htm In 1977 Harold Weisberg wrote the following to George Lardner: The "recently released" memo on Hoover and an Oswald imposter is not in context, not recent, not unpublished. Ben A. Fankling was conned into an unfair story based on it in 1975 by one Jones Harris, a secret Nixonian pretending to be a Bobby Kennedy man. (The best I can say for Jones is that his mother refused to marry his father even after she was carrying Jones. Ruth Gordon-Jed Harris.) http://jfk.hood.edu/...ael/Item 10.pdf The editor of Gallery Magazine wrote in May, 1976: You are quite right about the significance of the fact that Jim Hicks, the JFK murder "communications man," and the "umbrella man" stood right across the street from each other. It is also important to note that the President was killed at a point almost between them. It was Jones Harris, a lawyer and JFK assassination researcher, who.identified and talked with Hicks. Hicks told Jones that he had been the "communications man." http://jfk.hood.edu/...her/Item 16.pdf From John Armstrong's article that appeared in a 1998 issue of PROBE: Researcher Jones Harris interviewed Julia Postal in 1963. When Harris asked Julia Postal if she had sold a ticket to "Oswald" (the man arrested), she burst into tears and left the room. A short time later Harris again asked Postal if she sold a ticket to "Oswald" and got the same response. From Postal's refusal to answer this question and her reaction to same, Harris believes that Postal did sell "Oswald" a theater ticket. On February 29, 1964 Postal told FBI Agent Arthur Carter "she was unable to recall whether or not he bought a ticket." (A few months later, when the Warren Report was issued, Postal's memory had improved. She was now certain the man did not buy a ticket. See page 178 of the report.) http://www.ctka.net/pr198-jfk.html As I mentioned, Jim Fetzer recently interviewed Jones Harris. In that interview Harris explained why he went to Dallas in the first place. I found this account fascinating: Harris: Yes, if your audience would like to know I was seeing a great deal of Jackie’s press secretary, the wonderful Pamela Turnure, and when she came back, I had been with her the weekend before they left for the trip and then I came down the following weekend and outside her little house in Georgetown she said I’ll tell you one thing Jones and then I’m never going to discuss this with you or anybody else on the face of the earth, and she pretty well stuck to that, she knew all the Secret Service people very well, and she knew Clint Hill, and everybody loved Pammy, she was very pretty and very intelligent, and very charming, and the President was fond of her, and a lot of people, she was just a terrific person, but what she said to me on the front steps of her townhouse was, ‘The Secret Service believes that there was gunfire from more than one position.’ That puts you and I a little bit at odds, Jim, for obvious reasons, and so forth and so on, your theories and my theories- Fetzer: Well, I believe there was- Harris: as often as they come together. But, it was on the basis of that that a few days later I took off and went to Dallas, I had never, I had been in Texas before but I had never been in Dallas and then the man that was prominent in the newspapers of that time was the Ford dealership and so forth, and I talked to the great big charming Texas manager of the thing who had seen Oswald coming in dealing with his man, Bogart, I think his name was, and so forth, and had seen him plenty of times around and that was my first opening- Fetzer: Now was this in December, was this in December? Harris: This would have been, yes, the second week of December. (Later in the interview, Fetzer clarified his position on the sources of the shots for Harris. The above was taken from a transcript produced by an EF Member on another blog site; bolds were added) Finally, there are some interesting anecdotes about Jones Harris in John Kelin's book, Praise From A Future Generation. The back story on the researchers' meeting at Sylvia Meagher's home is a classic.

See parts II - VI: http://www.ctka.net/djm.html Gary Buell's blog: http://mccone-rowley.blogspot.com/

According to Joan Mellen, Joseph Cooper was a Baton Rouge policeman that had worked undercover for the FBI, infiltrating the Klan. Cooper told Garrison investigator Andrew Sciambra that Guy Banister attended a speech given by Edwin Walker in 1963. He claimed that Banister and Walker knew each other. http://books.google....d=0CDYQ6AEwAjgK Cooper's story is a strange one. http://mcadams.posc....man/jcooper.htm

Hickey's attorney in that lawsuit against St Martin's Press was Mark Zaid. http://news.google.c...&pg=4654,213971

From dallasobserver.com: Looks Like the City May Allow Free Speech on JFK 50th After All by Jim Schutze March 11, 2013 There are signs -- hints, indications, wisps of smoke in the wind -- suggesting we might get out of the JFK 50th observations in one piece after all. I've been quick to suggest Dallas would blow itself to smithereens with a bizarre compulsion to shut down free speech at Dealey Plaza come November 22 when the world remembers what happened here a half century ago. I guess I should acknowledge that it could also come out OK. First good sign: the mayor of Dallas is acting like a not-totally-crazy person about it. As I report in my column in the newspaper this week, Mayor Mike Rawlings quietly met with a national umbrella group of assassination conspiracy theory experts in Washington last January when he was there for the inauguration. When he talked to me about it recently, he had generally respectful things to say about them. The back-story here is a push by that most important of all local leaders in this politically opaque town -- the Great and Powerful "Somebody" -- to shut down Dealey Plaza with paramilitary force on November 22, specifically banishing anyone who would dare inform visiting media that some people still aren't sure who killed Kennedy. That's crazy. Welcome to Big D. John Judge, head of the Coalition on Political Assassinations, described three eminently reasonable compromises he put to the mayor in their meeting. The mayor acknowledged having heard most of them. Any fair-minded person would think there has to be a way forward somewhere in there. Fair-minded people are often wrong about Dallas. "The second big indicator, however, is that the city of Dallas has raised the white flag in its emblematic persecution of conspiracy theory author Robert Groden. Groden, arrested and jailed two years ago for giving speeches and selling tracts and other literature in Dealey Plaza, won an appeal in the matter. But back on the fair-minded thing. I should point out that this was the 81st time Groden beat Dallas. That would be ... let's see here ... yes, every single time they have ticketed or arrested him over the years. Eighty-one. And this appeal was not Groden appealing; it was the city, having already lost 80 times, appealing yet another defeat and losing for the 81st. I wish Texas Lawyer would look into whether that's a record for municipal legal defeats. After the city informed Groden's lawyer Bradley Kizzia that it would not further appeal again, he sent out an email that began, "Praise the Lord!" That tells you something, does it not? But, wait. Another harbinger of possible better outcomes ahead: After Groden won his appeal, The Dallas Morning News, which has a long history of trying to grind all conspiracy theorists under its inky boot heel, congratulated him and called it a victory for free speech! No! Not kidding! You might have missed it. I did, until Kizzia called it to my attention. It was a one-paragraph item shuffled into one of those long "hits and misses" bullet-item editorials that I never read. The header for it was, "A victory for free speech." They said, "Author and photographic evidence consultant ..." Pause. Author and photographic consultant: Did you get that? Not necrophiliac monster xxxx slanderer of Christian mothers. Praise the Lord! "... Robert Groden has been persistent and visible among a bevy of JFK conspiracy theorists, so much so that the city of Dallas tried to stop him from hawking conspiracy brochures and books at Dealey Plaza," the paper said last Friday..... Full story: http://blogs.dallaso...ns_--_hints.php

Sorry Jim, I have apparently missed this development. What happened to the judge? Martin, the judge's name was Carrie Chavez. From the Dallas Morning News: Over the years Groden’s been given 80 citations for illegally peddling his wares on city-controlled parks property, and 80 times those citations were tossed. The city long claimed that Dealey Plaza was a municipal park over which it had total authority, but as Dallas Municipal Judge Carrie Chavez ruled in December 2010, the site of the assassination is never mentioned in the Dallas City Code. So she tossed the case. (Chavez, incidentally, is no longer a municipal judge: She wasn’t recommended for rehire last summer during those contentions muni judge back-and-forths at City Hall.) As you can read below, on February 15 Judge Kristen Wade of the County Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Chavez was absolutely right in her initial ruling. In documents filed in federal court last week, (now-outgoing) Dallas City Attorney Tom Perkins wrote that Dallas “will not further appeal the municipal court’s order quashing the misdemeanor information against Groden. Therefore, the City cannot further prosecute Mr. Groden in with respect to his actions that gave rise to that misdemeanor charge.” Full story: http://cityhallblog....ley-plaza.html/

Although Jim Fetzer is quick to lecture others about logic and reasoning, he seems oblivious to the confirmation biases that pervade his posts. http://en.wikipedia....nfirmation_bias

Albarelli's book is scheduled to be released in a week or two, according to Amazon: http://www.amazon.co...2&pf_rd_i=typ01 Hopefully it happens this time. Other TrineDay books in the works include Baker's book on David Ferrie, Scott Kaiser's book on his father, Todd Elliot's book on Rose Cherami, Robert "Tosh" Plumlee's Deep Cover, Shallow Graves, and an update of Vince Palamara's Survivor's Guilt. http://trineday.com/ Kris Millegan deserves credit for not shying away from controversial topics.

From straight.com Author James Douglass on JFK and the Unspeakable by Adrian Mack March 7, 2013 http://www.straight....and-unspeakable

What a bunch of double spaced, upper case contemptible crap. Greg has earned his excellent reputation among JFK researchers for good reasons. Jim Fetzer has earned the scorn that has come his way on this and other threads, for good reasons.

From wfaa.com Court rules Dallas must allow conspiracy vendors at Dealey Plaza by Brad Watson March 5, 2013 DALLAS –– An appellate court ruled Tuesday that the city of Dallas must stop an enforcement effort against JFK conspiracy vendors selling materials at Dealey Plaza ahead of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. The Dallas County Criminal Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Robert Groden, a longtime conspiracy theorist and vendor who was arrested in 2010 for selling merchandise in Dealey Plaza. The appellate court upheld a lower court's decision to toss the city's case out..... http://www.wfaa.com/...-195439101.html

I wonder why Frazier doesn't mention a single word about being hooked up to a lie detector in this 2002 interview with Gary Mack? http://www.c-spanvid...rg/event/178017 Yes, it's true that Gary didn't ask Wesley this question -- Were you given a lie detector test? And if so, were you pissing your pants with fright as you were being used as leverage by the DPD as they were naming you as a co-conspirator in the President's murder? -- but Gary gave Wesley ample room for telling everything that occurred at City Hall when Frazier was being questioned for many hours on Nov. 22. Six years after Gary Mack's interview, Hugh Aynesworth interviewed Buell Frazier. Aynesworth wrote: Mr. Frazier was questioned vigorously by police – accused of being involved in the plot to kill Kennedy – and even told falsely by police officers that Oswald had named him as a co-conspirator. After 12 intense hours at the Police Department, he was allowed to take a polygraph test, passed it impressively and was released. The fact that Mr. Frazier helped train Oswald at his new job (Oswald was hired at the book depository Oct. 16) and had driven him to Irving several times soon faded from most people's memories. But another factor remained noteworthy. Officials assumed that the package Oswald carried to work that morning was the Italian-made rifle he used to kill Kennedy. Mr. Frazier still doesn't believe it. .........In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Mr. Frazier said the brown paper package Oswald carried that morning was too short to contain a rifle. Oswald cupped the package in his hand, he said, and it fit under his armpit. In Washington, Mr. Frazier said, he was "pressured" to change his recollection. In the days afterward, he was badgered by the media, harassed by people who didn't understand his relationship to Oswald and even became fearful for his life. His testimony was important because investigators had proved that Oswald bought the rifle used in the JFK slaying and had found a matching palm print on the stock, but they had no proof that he had it with him that day. Ms. Randle, who was also a leading witness, said recently that when she and Mr. Frazier testified before the Warren Commission, "they tried to get us to say that package was much longer than we recalled, but that wasn't true." The commission kept pushing, Mr. Frazier said. Could it be that he was traumatized by the horror of what happened or embarrassed that he hadn't been more observant? "I know what I saw," he said, "and I've never changed one bit." ....."Conspiracy theories are like noses," he said. "Everybody has one. No one has ever sold me 100 percent that Lee did it. If he did, yes, but some other people were involved in some way." http://jfkfiles.blog...lent-about.html

Jim Fetzer is in no position to lecture others about logic, evidence and truth. This was my one and only brief post on this long thread: Jim Fetzer is in no position to lecture anyone about ad hominems or intellectual integrity.

“I’m a logician. No matter how wrong I am, I can always convince myself I am right.
” -- Jarod Kintz

From dallas.news.com: Blue Angels flyover at Dallas’ JFK commemoration threatened by budget impasse by David Flick March 1, 2013 The current fight in Washington over $85 billion in automatic budget cuts could have some odd consequences — affecting, among many other things, Dallas’ official commemoration next fall of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. Ruth Altshuler, co-chair of the committee coordinating the event, told a Dallas civic group Friday that plans for a flyover by the legendary Navy air team the Blue Angels during those ceremonies were now, well, up in the air. To honor President John F. Kennedy, who was a Navy veteran, plans called for the Blue Angels to fly over Dealey Plaza during the 40-minute commemoration of his death there on Nov. 22, 1963. The air team was slated to perform the Missing Man formation used to honor the memory of a fallen comrade. The Blue Angels cancellation would apparently be one of dozens over the next few months. News stories over the past weeks have quoted Navy officials as saying that if the budget crisis can’t be resolved, the Pensacola, Fla.-based Angels would be among the first casualties. Altshuler emphasized that the situation was fluid. “We still want it to happen. They still want it to happen. But at the moment, we don’t know. It’s all a budget matter,” she said. An appearance at the ceremonies by the 73-member U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club apparently will not be affected. Altshuler told the audience of the Dallas Friday Group that the glee club’s Dallas expenses were being underwritten by private donations. Her remarks were part of an hourlong discussion at the Crescent Hotel on the effect of the assassination on the city of Dallas. Another panelist, Gary Mack, curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, addressed the five-decade-long controversy over whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting the president. Mack said he once considered himself a conspiracy theorist and even now has questions about the shooting. Nonetheless, he said, he believed the case against Oswald is overwhelming. “There is no hard evidence that there was anyone else. There really is not,” he said. Mack also defended commemoration organizers who have been criticized for plans to close Dealey Plaza to demonstrators during the official ceremonies. “There are legitimate questions [about the assassination], but there is a time and place to ask them. The November event is not that time and place,” he said. http://www.dallasnew...get-impasse.ece

Unfortunately, the pathologists were never subjected to the rigors of cross-examination that would have occurred in a court of law. The exception was Finck in New Orleans. And had Oswald lived to face trial the testimony of the Parkland witnesses, as Pat refers to them, would have been crucial. In a 1966 letter he sent to both Dr Boswell and Dr Humes, Harold Weisberg wrote: But I do want you to know that among the things I say and prove in it is that the President got an autopsy unworthy of a Bowery bum. (emphasis added) So damn true. http://jfk.hood.edu/...nce/Item 01.pdf

Paul Baker has a vivid imagination, unencumbered by such things as facts or reality.

Mr. Hogan, Bill O'Reilly? Just because the Koch Brothers buy 500,000 copies of your book, it doesn't make it worth reading... Mr DeFiore, you can email Liz Smith and tell her.

An excerpt from Liz Smith's February 25th column for the Chicago Tribune: THIS NOVEMBER marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There are many specials and new books being readied, including, but of course, a release of Oliver Stone's controversial movie, "JFK" (Oliver will probably stuff it with a lot of scenes cut from the original release.) Also, ABC-TV will air a documentary about how JFK's assassination changed life forever in the United States, especially for young people. Not for the better. The show is produced and will be hosted by Tom Hanks. Hanks wrote, starred in and directed "That Thing You Do!" about a Beatles-like band that becomes famous in 1964, in the wake of JFK's murder. Hanks himself has said "1964 was the last great year of innocence." If you want to read a riveting version of JFK's death, I highly recommend Bill O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy." http://www.chicagotr...0,7350811.story

Immaterial to what I quoted.

According to Barbie Zelizer "the Texas Observer issued a number of articles in critique of the (Warren) commission." http://books.google....tter up&f=false

From an article by Rich Archbold that appeared in yesterday's Long Beach Press-Telegram: One of the Southern California stories involved Bill Hunter, a veteran and respected reporter for the Press-Telegram and a friend of (David) Henley who was shot to death in Long Beach police headquarters April 23, 1964. In a chapter entitled, "Killing in Long Beach: Accident or Conspiracy?" Henley writes about the Press-Telegram sending Hunter to Dallas to cover the aftermath of President John Kennedy's assassination. Hunter witnessed Lee Harvey Oswald's death at the hand of Jack Ruby, covered Ruby's trial and interviewed several of Ruby's friends after Ruby had been jailed. When he returned to Long Beach to cover the police beat, Hunter was reading a book in the police headquarters building at Broadway and Magnolia Avenue downtown when a policeman shot Hunter through the heart. The policeman initially said he had dropped the gun and it fired accidentally as he picked it up. But he changed his story later and said he was playing a game of "cops and robbers" with another police officer with loaded revolvers and his gun went off accidentally. Five months after Hunter died, a second reporter who also had covered Kennedy's assassination, Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times-Herald, was killed in his apartment. Fourteen months after Koethe's murder, a third reporter who covered the deaths of Kennedy and Oswald, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York town house. In his book, Henley said conspiracy theorists attempted to link the deaths of the three reporters to "sinister forces," reasoning that the journalists "had been done away with to prevent them from uncovering the truth about the Kennedy-Oswald murders." Henley told me in an interview this week that he does not believe in the conspiracy theory. "I think Hunter's death was just an innocent tragedy," he said. http://www.presstele...g-adventures-at

According to Barbie Zelizer "the Texas Observer issued a number of articles in critique of the (Warren) commission." http://books.google....tter up&f=false

Skyhorse Publishing: http://www.skyhorsep...60239101763270 Amazon: http://www.amazon.co...ils_o00_s00_i00