Paul Rigby

This is not about who Truman was, or the Pendergast machine, or who Truman's appointments were. This is about three things:

1.) Was Truman's editorial a veiled recognition of what he thought happened to Kennedy?

2.) Dulles seems to have contemplated that. Recall, Dulles was on the WC, but formally out of the CIA. Why is it him there and not say Larry Houston, CIA counsel?

3.) Did Dulles want to cut off any theorizing at the time about VIetnam being a motive for the assassination? His comments to Truman seem to suggest this.

All of this seems to me to be very important new material, not about Truman, but a man who Jim Garrison had no doubt was in on the Kennedy plot.

All the above is spot-on. Pity Truman came so late to the game. Kennedy was warned about Dulles almost immediately after his election. And this wasn't the wisdom of post-assassination hindsight:

The evening after his election, the President-elect and Mrs Kennedy were alone at Hyannis Port with three close friends. In the happy, relaxed conversations after dinner, one of the men remarked, 'There is one thing I want you to do - fire J. Edgar Hoover!' 'No,' the second interrupted, 'much more important than that, get Allen Dulles out of CIA immediately.' He had sat at the dinner table of a national columnist the night after the U-2 incident, he said, and heard Dulles declare that flight 'a triumph of American foreign policy.' 'Dulles,' Kennedy's guest warned, 'would be trying to carry on his dead brother's policies in your Administration,'

Helen Fuller. Year Of Trial: Kennedy's Crucial Decisions (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p.36

Here's a larger portion of Austin Miller's testimony:

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you hear or see?

Mr. MILLER - After the first one, just a few seconds later, there was two more shots fired, or sounded like a sound at the time. I don't know for sure. And it was after that I saw some man in the car fall forward, and a women next to him grab him and hollered, and just what, I don't know exactly what she said.

Mr. BELIN - Then what did you see?

Mr. MILLER - About that time I turned to look toward the - there is a little plaza sitting on the hill. I looked over there to see if anything was there, who through the firecracker or whatever it was, or see if anything was up there, and

there wasn't nobody standing there

...

Mr. MILLER - About the time I looked over to the side there, there was a police officer. No; a motorcycle running his motor under against the curb, and jumped off and come up to the hill toward the top and right behind him was some more officers and plainclothesmen, too.

Mr. BELIN - Did you see anyone that might be, that gave any suspicious movements of any kind over there?

Mr. MILLER -

No, sir; I didn't

Thanks, Mike, I had quite forgotten how utterly devastating Miller was on the grassy knoll gunman nonsense.

Miller's friend and co-worker Royce Skelton had the same vantage point:

Mr. BALL. Did the shots sound like they came from where you were standing?

Mr. SKELTON. No, sir; definitely not. It sounded like they were right there more or less like motorcycle backfire, but I thought that they were these dumbballs that they throw at the cement because I could see the smoke coming up off the cement.

Mr. BALL. You saw some smoke come off of the cement?

Mr. SKELTON. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Where did it seem to you that the sound came from, what direction?

Mr. SKELTON. Towards the President's car.

Mr. BALL. From the President's car?

Mr. SKELTON.

Right around the motorcycles and all that--I couldn't distinguish because it was too far away.

Mr. SKELTON. About when I saw one of the bullets where it hit on the pavement and it hit, the smoke did come from the general vicinity of where you say Oswald was.

Mr. BALL. Wait a minute let me ask you some questions about that. Tell me, now, about the smoke did you see some smoke?

Mr. SKELTON. After those two shots, and the car came on down closer to the triple underpass, well, there was another shot--two more shots I heard, but one of them--I saw a bullet, or I guess it was a bullet--I take for granted it was--- hit in the left front of the President's car on the cement, and when it did, the smoke carried with it--away from the building.

Mr. BALL. You mean there was some smoke in the building?

Mr. SKELTON. No.; On the pavement--you know, pavement when it is hit with a hard object it will scatter---it will spread.

Mr. BALL. Which way did it spread?

Mr. SKELTON.

It spread just right in line, like you said.

Mr. BALL. I haven't said anything--tell me what you think it was?

Mr. SKELTON. Like I said---south of us--it would be southwest, you know, in a direct line from the Texas Depository.

Mr. BALL. I see. In other words, the spray seemed to go to the west; is that right?

Mr. SKELTON. Yes.

Useful ammunition for those who think diversionary shots came later.

There is no way Zapruder was shown to the public that weekend.

I agree. In fact, it was shown on WNEW-TV on the morning of Tuesday, 26 November. Even worse, I have a moderately well-known assassination researcher who wrote so at the time (a Mr Mark Lane); a journalist who wrote that UPI Newsfilms had distributed it to subscribing stations (in this instance, in Milwaukee); and two other written recollections of the film being broadcast on television during that time frame. I wouldn't mind, but I got this far entirely unassisted by a generous Foundation grant.

The question is, who to believe: David and the contemporary orthodoxy, which once held the film had never been near the CIA in the days following the assassination, or the contemporaneous witnesses?

It's a tough one, I concede, but who said history was easy? Except in this case, of course.

Show me an eyewitness that said "The driver turned around and shot JFK in the head!"

Fair enough. We've established your criterion.

Bearing that in mind - no prizes for anticipating what's coming - show me exactly the same from any one of your preferred (non-car) locations.

Simple, straightforward challenge, no tricks.

I also believe that certain parts of the Z-film were altered, not the entire film

Same sort of question, again, no tricks, no "side." On what basis did you decide some frames are genuine, and others not?

I dont buy Greer as an assassin for a second

Purely out of curiosity, Dean, if you don't buy the eyewitnesses, and you think the Z-fake's a fake, what exactly are you relying upon? Is there something that we've all missed?

Or, if you are persuaded by some eyewitnesses, but not others, what are your criteria for so discriminating? Nothing too esoteric, mind, as it's getting late.

Let me say this first, I hope that the "written word" in my reply does not sound more harsh than I intend. But, where do you get the idea that the Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail's protocol includes the DRIVER RETURNING FIRE even if an attacker(s) was or were identified and located??? That is a serious misconception on your part. SERIOUS. The PPD are trained to avoid "potential danger zones" first and TAKE the bullet intended for the "client" second. Returning "fire" is not an option for MOST SS agents--particularly for the driver in such a circumstance--nor is it even necessary if the first two have been properly done. So, such an "excuse" is totally ludicrous and any suggesting of it is laughable on its face.

That's a fairly radical take on the necessity for specialization within the SS, Greg, one thoroughly repudiated, moreover, in the publicly available literature that I've come across; and common sense would suggest.

Greer wouldn't always be driving when on duty with the SS; presidential limos occasionally stopped and were momentarily engulfed in well-wishers; and he didn't need to "multi-task" when delivering the fatal shot to his President's left-temple: He stopped the car against the south curb of Elm, turned round, and fired.

Footnote from chapter 4, The Filmed Assassination, of Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams’ Murder From Within (Santa Barbara: Probe, 1974)

“…the Secret Service agent…must be able to hit the target under any and all conditions…”

C.B. Colby. Secret Service: History, Duties and Equipment, Putnam Pub Group, 1966, p. 20.

According to Merriman Smith, “All [agents on the White House Detail of the Secret Service] are crack shots with either hand. Their pistol marksmanship is tested on one of the toughest ranges in the country. The bull’s-eye of their target is about half the size of the one ordinarily used on police and Army ranges. They must qualify with an unusually high score every thirty days, and if any one of them – or any of the White House police, which falls under Secret Service jurisdiction – falls below a certain marksmanship standard, they are transferred. Agents must also qualify periodically firing from moving vehicles. This accounts for the requirement to shoot well with either hand. A right-handed agent might be clinging to a speeding car with that hand and have to shoot with the left.”

Timothy G. Smith (ed.), Merriman Smith's Book of Presidents. A White House Memoir. ( NY: Norton, 1972), p. 226.

I tend to consider this "theory" to be a rather irresponsible stretch based on little more than supposition.

Nowt to do with supposition. It's there in the statements and observations of some of the closest eyewitnesses:

Bobby Hargis:

Mr. Stern: Do you recall your impression at the time regarding the shots?

Hargis: “Well, at the time it sounded like the shots were right next to me,” 6WCH294.

Austin Miller:

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,” 6WCH225.

Charles Brehm: “Drehm seemed to think the shots came from in front or beside the President. He explained the President did not slump forward as if [sic] he would have after being shot from the rear,” “President Dead, Connally Shot,” The Dallas Times Herald, 22 November 1963, p.2 [cited by Joachim Joesten. Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? (London: Merlin Press, 1964), p.176.]

Officer E. L. Boone:" I heard three shots coming from the vicinity of where the President's car was,” 19WCH508.

Jack Franzen: “He said he heard the sound of an explosion which appeared to him to come from the President's car and ...small fragments flying inside the vehicle and immediately assumed someone had tossed a firecracker inside the automobile,” 22WCH840.

Mrs. Jack Franzen: “Shortly after the President’s automobile passed by…she heard a noise which sounded as if someone had thrown a firecracker into the President’s automobile…at approximately the same time she noticed dust or small pieces of debris flying from the President’s automobile,” 24WCH525.

James Altgens: “The last shot sounded like it came from the left side of the car, if it was close range because, if it were a pistol it would have to be fired at close range for any degree of accuracy," 7WCH518.

Hugh Betzner, Jr.: “I cannot remember exactly where I was when I saw the following: I heard at least two shots fired and I saw what looked like a firecracker going off in the president's car. My assumption for this was because I saw fragments going up in the air,” 19WCH467

Mary Moorman: “The sound popped, well it just sounded like, well, you know, there might have been a firecracker right there in that car,” Jay Hogan interview with Mary Moorman and Jean Hill, KRLD Radio (Dallas), 15:30hrs (CST), 22 November 1963, Tape 5B and 6A (NARA) – see

http://educationforum.iphost.com/index.php?showtopic=9364

Paul, what I actually said, seems to settle the issues here, since you did not even attempt to dispute anything I said, other than the "gruesome" part.

We have all seen the Zapruder film a zillion times and have forgotten how it affected us the first time we saw it. But I cannot think of an image I have seen on television or in the newspapers throughout my entire life, that is more "gruesome" than the frames following 312.

But on 11/26/63, only a handful of people had seen it and the WC deemed it unfit for public viewing. Obviously, that was wrong, but as a matter of taste, and by the standards of 1963 it was not unreasonable. Have you ever watched the Geraldo show in which Groden brought in a bad copy of the film. Did you hear the crowd's response?

Seeing blood blown out from the President's head in the Muchmore film was certainly "gruesome" at the time. In fact, I cannot remember EVER seeing a movie or newsreel back then, in which the audience saw a real-life murder being committed - NEVER, not even once.

Ah, yes, Plan B: If you can't convince them, emote.

In fact, Bob, the average TV viewer in 1975 could simply pop down to the cinema and watch much worse than the Z-fake any day of the week. Not to mention television news.

As I observed above, you're an anti-historian.

And the Muchmore film isn't a gorefest.

Bob used the word "relative" to qualify his point. You ignore that.

And if I listed the anti-alterationist absurdities you ignore I'd be here all night.

Be that as it may, let's consider the question of "relative" to what.

First, and most obviously, the Muchmore film could not conceivably have been considered "gruesome" even had it been shown in 1963, complete with added footage of the assassination untaken by Muchmore.

The first version of the Z film could.

Second, what was this age of innocence?

One in which footage of a firing squad and its victims was shown (live?) by CBS TV; and the assassination-by-stabbing of a Japanese cabinet member broadcast. Very innocent.

One of the many troubles with the anti-alterationist cause is that it is fundamentally anti-historical. It reads history backwards; and with CIA spectacles. Fortunately, Angleton had at least one thing right: The past, if we allow it, can telescope into the future.

I am not Bob...

At last, a point of substance.

And the Muchmore film isn't a gorefest.

”A motion picture taken of the President just before, during, and after the shooting, and demonstrated on television showed that the President was looking directly ahead when the first shot, which entered his throat, was fired. A series of still pictures taken from the motion picture and published in Life magazine on Nov. 29 show show exactly the same situation.”

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/The_critics/Lane/Natl-Guardian/Natl_Guardian.html

Of course, what was shown on WNEW-TV in the first hour of Tuesday, 26 November had to be withdrawn and history rewritten. But, happily, we've caught back up with them and now know what they did.

Enter stage right, the PNAC...

Actually, the car didn't only SLOW down. It didn't only STOP either.

Actually, Bill Greer PARKED the limousine and lighted a cigarette.

What do you reckon, Francois, Lucky Strike or Virginia Slim? Given the range, it would have to be the latter, surely?

Isn't that what Bob is saying?

That people had not seen the Z film yet?

That is why he called it "relative".

No, it isn't. But it should have been. Hence the laughter.

Perhaps you could help him out, Jim, by vetting his posts on the subject? That way he could get to say what you think he should, instead of mangling things hopelessly.

Is this some kind of joke?

Good question. Shall we explore further? Let's.

One or two newspapers failed to mention the name of the person who shot the movie, and some other paper showed frames from the Muchmore film but mistakenly said they were from the Zapruder film??

A promising start, it has to be said: a non-summary summary. But now our resident stand-up gets into full comedic stride. From circular logic...

Where in hell do you think they got those Muchmore frames?? You just proved that the film was on the air by the 26th, otherwise they would never have had them.

...to, er, no logic:

And why do you cite Muchmore telling the FBI that she had no "photographs" of the shooting?? Of course she didn't take photographs. She filmed the assassination.

Brilliant.

And now for the punchline:

And you have to remember that "gruesome" is a relative term. To people who hadn't yet seen the Zapruder film and were still in shock and mourning, seeing blood being blown out from the President's head was undoubtedly more gruesome than they could handle.

You've forgotten something here, Bob, and it's kind of important: The film described as "gruesome" is meant to be the Muchmore film, not the Zapruder, remember? So explaining why late November 1963 TV viewers were shocked by seeing the Zapruder film is, from your anti-alterationist perspective, just not very bright.

Now that is funny.

Is this a sample of the kind of logic you guys use to promote alterationism?

Yes; and right over your head it sailed, too.

Never mind, keep trying!

Well, I guess we just disagree. I don't believe the distinction I drew was at all "faulty" --not in the least, and I have some background in these matters. But, let me elaborate further on why I reject Greer as a shooter. There are numerous reasons, but I should start by correcting an assumption you made about me: I do not find it "unimaginable that SS involvement should extend to the actual shooting..." [paraphrased]

However, I find it operationally flawed. It is a bad plan. It involves unnecessary risk. It requires too many unknowns to be controlled. It does not account for the improbability of either 1) every witness NOT seeing what really happened nor does it account for 2) insuring that every potential witness could be forced to remain silent about what they saw or end up dead, including Jackie Kennedy, Nellie Connally, each and every Secret Service agent on the PPD who was there, over one hundred witnesses, in all. The risk factors involved in employing Greer beyond a reasonably arguable "normal" (mal) function of his regular work are not only too great, but quite unnecessary.

The contrary is true: It was an elegant, if brutal, schema which boasted powerful advantages over any other alternative plan for a public assassination using guns.

1. Any plan predicated upon the SS not merely facilitating, but firing, the fatal shots, gave it a portability which no other alternative could match: The assassins would be with their target on all relevant occasions, ready to go at any opportune moment.

2. The selection of the driver as the assassin fixed the distance between target and shooter; and ensured that the shooter controlled the speed of his target: No alternative can match this plan for economy and efficiency.

3. The selection of the driver as assassin offered element of surprise (for both target and observers); a natural alibi (“I was merely returning fire, guvnor, honest”); and more control over external factors – an excited spectator, a wandering motorcycle outrider, a curious local policeman unwittingly interdicting or merely disturbing a sniper team – than any of the alternatives.

4. The selection of the driver as assassin utilised a man with an existing skill-set perfect for the task.

5. The selection of the driver as assassin guaranteed ready access to incriminating evidence, which could then be made to vanish etc.; and furnished the most powerful motive of all for participation in the subsequent, inevitable, cover-up.

And so on and so forth.

Where are you guys getting this stuff? Could you post the link?

With pleasure:

Was Muchmore’s film shown on WNEW-TV, New York, on November 26, 1963?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12216

Muchmore’s FBI interview, 4 December 1963:

“…she advised she did not obtain any photographs of the assassination scene.”

http://www.history-matters.com/analysis/witness/witnessMap/documents/wcd_hsca/wcd_hsca_0080a.gif

That was fast work on the Muchmore film since it was on television on 11/25/63.

No, it wasn't. The first version of the Z-fake was:

The Valley Independent, (Monessen, Pennsylvania), Tuesday, November 26, 1963, Page 5

Film Showing Assassination Is Released

NEW YORK (UPI) — United Press International Newsfilm early today was first on the air with exclusive film showing the assassination of President Kennedy.

The film is 16mm enlarged from 8mm. It was shown on a New York City television station.

The sequence, shot by an amateur photographer in Dallas Friday, begins with motorcycle police coming around the corner followed by the Kennedy motorcade.

The President is then seen leaning over when the bullets strike. Mrs. Kennedy puts her right arm around the President and he slumps out of view. The film then shows a Secret Service agent running toward the car.

The film was shown in slow motion and also stopped at key points in the assassination. The scene was shown four times at different speeds and under different magnifications.

Copies have been rushed to United Press Newsfilm clients all over the world.

Mary Muchmore shot no footage of the presidential limo on Elm:

Wikipedia:

While visiting her family in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving, Muchmore told them about the film she had taken of the assassination; her family then told the FBI about the film. The FBI initially interviewed Muchmore in December 1963, during which she admitted she had a camera with her but denied that she took any pictures of the assassination scene.[8] The FBI was unaware of the film's existence until a frame enlargement was published in the UPI book Four Days: The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy in January 1964.[9] A subsequent FBI interview in February 1964 says:

Mrs. Muchmore stated that after the car turned on Elm Street from Houston Street, she heard a loud noise which at first she thought was a firecracker but then with the crowd of people running in all directions and hearing the two further noises, sounding like gunfire, she advised that she began to run to find a place to hide.[10]

http://www.history-matters.com/analysis/witness/witnessMap/documents/wcd_hsca/wcd_hsca_0080a.gif

“She said she had a movie camera with her...but she advised that she did not obtain any photographs of the assassination scene”

December 4, 1963

There is a spectacularly good thread on this very issue elsewhere on this site. I must find my own work.

I do not give the SS a break in this, not at all.

Never said you did, Greg. I simply drew attention to a faulty distinction you'd drawn. What puzzles me, quite genuinely, is why those who embrace the abundant evidence of SS treason find it so unimaginable that that involvement should extend to the actual shooting. It's particularly perplexing in the case of those such as you who have seen through the Z-fake. Clear this CIA-constructed impediment out of the road, and we transform the case into a standard murder inquiry - one dependent upon witnesses, not a lot of junk celluloid.

Are you saying that nearly identical arguments can be used to refute the existence of assassins who are "not Oswald" no matter who the alleged assassins might be? If that's what you're saying, so far, I'm still not understanding your point.

The verb you chose - "refute" - reveals you have missed my point by some distance, quite possibly the length of Elm. No, I am not "refuting" the existence of non-Oswaldian assassins by such arguments, not least because the evidence is overwhelming that Oswald had nothing whatever to do with the shooting. So the facts oblige us to consider the alternatives. I merely pointed out that the particular objection advanced by Jim DisIngenuous is, contrary to the impression he sought to convey, every bit as applicable to all other alternatives to Greer. It thus tells us nothing about the case against Greer, or, indeed, the alternatives, but plenty about DisIngenuous.

The Secret Service are not assassins. However, assassins do exist--not lone nuts--but the real deal "mechanics" or whatever label for them that suits your fancy. The Secret Service only needs to "relax" its protection protocol in a pre-arranged "window of opportunity" for the deed to be done. Their complicity is passive. An assassin's complicity is more than active. It is direct.

Here again, all is confusion. You seek to persuade us of a distinction between active and passive SS involvement which rests upon your belief that as Greer didn't shoot his President, the SS involvement was thus "passive." The distinction is bogus. "Active" complicity is stripping the layers of protection, slowing the limo to a halt etc. The question is then not whether the SS was actively or passively complicit, but whether one of its number pulled the trigger. And judgment on that issue rests with consideration of the eyewitness testimony, the Parkland doctors observations etc.

Ok Paul, now show me how that last quote proves the Greer shot?

I'm waiting.

Basic comprehension, like elementary logic, really isn't your strong point, is it? You dismissed Betzner's claims about a handgun being visible on the ground that he also referred to a rifle. I adduced Holland's testimony from 1966 to show that Betzner's claim about the former had corroboration. There are others.

Or are you going to go for the Secret Service firing squad scenario?

Which is it?

I like both, but I'll settle for the former.

The conversation with the "mechanics"/"sniper teams"/"spotters" etc - choose the fantasy term of one's choice - was so very much different. "Trust us," said the CIA, we'll ship you out of Dallas at a rate of knots, and promise to let you live unmolested for ever and a day." And they sacrificed their lives, their names, their families etc with nary a second thought, secure in the promise Langley had made them. How incredibly different such conversations must have been to those conducted with Greer.

Or perhaps not.

I'm unsure of your point, Paul. Is the sarcasm aimed at the idea of the existence of "nameless, faceless, assassins without nationality" whose families are already secured away at our "resorts" and will remain safe as long as the assassin plays the game? Or does your sarcasm have more to do with Greer?

If you are so naive as to believe that "mechanics" exist only in movies--and that their cooperation is not GUARANTEED by coercion and severe manipulation...you haven't done your homework.

My point was perfectly clear, Greg. Precisely the same basic objection can be raised against one set of non-Oswaldian assassins as any other.

As for "coercion and manipulation," why are their deployment unthinkable in the case of Greer (and other elements of the SS detail in Dallas), but viewed by you as givens in the case of your preferred alternatives?

I have always thought there was great significance to the witnesses who smelled gunpowder smoke.

Agreed. It makes nonsense of the claim all shots were fired from distance.

But I believe that those claiming that it came from a gun fired by Greer are grasping at straws.

Problem here, Jack, is that I am merely reading what eyewitnesses said about the smell, the sounds, and the events on Elm Street. I'm not inventing anything. Now, if one believes what they reported about the stench of gun powder, on what rational ground(s) do we discount what they said about shots from within the presidential limo? Why is one observation to be believed and the other discounted?

However, I believe the Secret Service WAS involved.

Their actions could scarcely be more indicative of participation.

More likely candidates for the cordite smell:

1. A pistol shot from the storm drain.

As championed by, among others, Garrison in late 1967, a fact often airbrushed from history. But how does a shot (or shots) from the storm drain a) account for the fact the smell of gunpowder clung to the presidential limo and JFK's clothing all the way to Parkland; and b)match the wound patterns observed at Parkland?

2. A pistol shot from the right rear window of the SS car behind the LBJ car, signaling go-ahead.

Left, surely?

3. A shot from behind the wooden fence.

More visible than a shot from within the limo, when you think about it.

A shot by Greer in plain sight of spectators and cameras and THE OCCUPANTS OF THE LIMO

would not be something in any planned assassination scenario.

This is a nutty theory.

The problem here is the old one.

The question is not whether we like a given scenario or not, but what did the eyewitnesses say. Austin Miller, George Davis and Royce Skelton had elevated and unimpeded views of what transpired. They had no discernible motive to lie; and have been assiduously neglected or flat misrepresented by a succession of writers, from Josiah Thompson to Mark Lane. Miller answered straight before the WC ("from inside the car"); Davis described weapons in the hands of the Secret Service; and Skelton expressed the view that the shots came from "around" the presidential limo.

The problem lies not with them, but with those among us who don't like what they reported.

He {Me}completely skipped over his like distortion of what Cranor actually said about the alternative Z film she saw. She saw no such thing like Greer shooting Kennedy on it. I wonder why?

Charity - or was it sloth? I really can't remember. Anyway, the fact is that while Milicent's story is interesting, it is, in the absence of any chain of possession, documented provenance etc. of little or no consequence; and tells us nothing more, I suspect, than that the CIA produced more than one version of the Z-fake. The action contained within the film described by her is corroborated by few if any eyewitnesses; or the Parkland doctors. By the way, that giant head flap business really is terribly far-out nonsense. I would drop it, personally.

Concerning my differences with Thomspon, which you ignore even though they are on this thread, if you hold me to Greer, then a heck of lot of people are aligned with Tink. As per Z film alteration, Tink is adamantly opposed. I am more of an agnostic on that. You are a jihadist, "take no prisoners" type on the issue. If they don't buy it, burn them at the stake.

Yesterday Robespierre, today a jihadist? This gets weirder. And even more self-dramatising: are you really in imminent danger of being burnt at a stake? Strange place, California.

The other witnesses you produce are worse than Betzner since there is no location given. And this is a serious problem for this story. Which you want to ignore. You also leave out the problem with Betzner; he saw a guy with a rifle. I'd ignore that too if I were you. I would also ignore the ambiguous time frame in his affidavit which seems to place it after Clint Hill and Jackie Kennedy sat down in the limo. With the other witnesses you bring up, the location is even hazier as to where these men were, which is probably why you do not properly source them. What are you going to say, the SS was actually a firing squad that day: firing from different cars and different directions. I thought this was about Greer?

Its almost funny what he does with Schulman. Schulman supplies just what Hill does not, a location precisely where it needs to be.

The rest of this is just the kind of drivel you tried to put on DPF. There is no comparison with the RFK case simply because of the precise and close location of witnesses, and the proximity of the diversion. Which took place right in front of RFK. Quoting the news form Lima Peru, which says shots came from the grassy knoll, does not help your cause Paul.

But, when you have nothing of substance, you throw in everything.

Hate to break it to you, Jim, but Franzen stood on the south curb of Elm and was one of the closest eyewitnesses to the shooting. Sneaky of me to quote people who were there, I realise, but then that's the Brits all over for you: Devious to the last. And to prove it, here's one of the knollers' favourite witnesses, S.M.Holland, "imagining" Kellerman holding a weapon on Elm. Crazy guy, that Betzner cove, not to mention his even crazier timeline:

Mark Lane: What were the Secret Service men in the front of the car doing when this happened?

S.M. Holland: Well, he was standing up with his machine gun, pointed in the direction that I saw the smoke, and, er, heard the shot come from.

Mark Lane: And which way did he look?

S.M. Holland: He was standing up with a sub-machine gun pointed in the direction of that picket fence.

From the LP “The Controversy: The Death of John F. Kennedy” (Capitol Records KA02677, 1966)

PS That's Lima, USA, not South America.

Paul:

There is no other way to say this: you are misrepresenting what I said about Rabern and what Cranor saw.

Ah, but there is Jim: “Paul, you were right. I did seriously posit the existence of a liberal wing of the CIA”– I almost blush to repeat such an absurdity – “who supported RFK.”

Shall we look at the key sentence again? I think we should. Which element(s) of the DiEugenio sentence to follow are interrogative?

If he was a covert operator, was he from the liberal wing of the CIA who supported RFK?

A clue: Not the bit comprising “the liberal wing of the CIA who supported RFK.” Your question manifestly assumes the existence of the absurdity. It questions merely whether Rabern belonged to the fictional faction you advanced as a given.

Rigby actually took the liberal wing comment out of context and on its own in order to slam me. He completely missed my point about the serious question about Rabern's presence there.

Alas, no. I merely identified a rank piece of disinformation. I thank you for confirming, albeit in somewhat laborious detail, the veracity of my point.

Rigby performs a card trick by comparing me to Thompson. He ignores all the differences I have had with him--and my criticisms of SSD on another thread, and goes right to his jihad: Z film alteration. That's fair isn't it? For Robespierre maybe.

I accurately noted that on the two key issues - film alteration and Greer-as-assassin - your positions are, all surface froth aside, identical. And they are. Thompson has worked assiduously over the past decade or so to sustain the Zapruder deception. You are now engaged in exactly the same activity, almost certainly in response to the appearance of Doug Horne's pentalogy.

If you are going to say that other films have been altered and various witnesses saw a SS guy shooting in the car, then please properly source them. Because it is you who bears the burden of proof.

I have, at some length. If you're too lazy to search this site, ask a friend.

I love the closing. He actually tries to compare Greer killing Kennedy with Cesar shooting RFK at the Ambassador Hotel.

Can't think why:

Jean Hill: “I thought I saw some men in plain clothes shooting back but everything was such a blur...,” Sheriff Department’s statement, 22 November 1963.

Don Schulman: “Just then the guard…took out his gun. And he fired also…The guard definitely pulled out his gun and fired,” KNXT-TV reporter, minutes after the assassination of RFK, within Ted Charach’s landmark documentary, The Second Gun.

Paul, maybe you don't know that case well. See, in that case there was a large distraction. His name was Sirhan B. Sirhan. He had been programmed. That is why the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress was next to him. His shooting caused everyone to look ahead of RFK and for people to pounce on him. This provided the perfect distraction for Cesar who was directly behind RFK to conceal what he did. In the JFK case, none of this applies.

The problem is quite the reverse: You appear entirely unfamiliar with testimony from some of the eyewitnesses closest to the Elm Street action. No distraction operation here, Jim?

1) Ronald B. Fischer: “And, after that, we stood there for 10 or 15 seconds and then we ran up to the top of the hill there where all the Secret Service men had run, thinking that that's where the bullets had come from since they seemed to be searching that area over there. They jumped off-out of cars and ran up the side of the hill there and onto the tracks where these passenger--freight cars were,” 6WCH196

2) Jack Franzen: “Mr. FRANZEN advised he and his wife and small son were standing in the grass area west of Houston Street and south of Elm Street at the time the President's motorcade arrived at that location at approximately 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963. He said he heard the sound of an explosion which appeared to him to come from the President's car and noticed small fragments flying inside the President's car and immediately assumed that someone had tossed a firecracker inside the automobile…He noticed the men, who were presumed to be Secret Service Agents, riding in the car directly behind the President's car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plain clothesmen [sic] running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location and toward a wooded and bushy area located across Elm Street from him… Because of this activity he presumed the shots which were fired came from the shrubbery or bushes toward which these officers appeared to be running,” Statement to the FBI, November 24, 1963: http://www.jfk-online.com/franzen.ht

You don't even have to trust these inconvenient eyewitnesses. The SS itself briefed reporters in the hours after the assassination about this run up the knoll. In order to avoid any suggestion that this was a rehearsed drill, the spin was that the SS men in question where merely following the motorcycle cops lead:

Compiled from wire reports, “John F. Kennedy Slain!,” Lima News, 22 November 1963, p.2: “Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the Chief Executive’s car, probably from the grassy knoll to which motorcycle policemen directed their attention as they raced up the slope.”

Greer was right in front of JFK, right out in the open in the center of the action. With about 70-90 people staring at him.

I do love a little hyperbole in the evening - this wouldn't even be true had Greer driven with the assistance of stilts - but pity your Z-fake discloses no such thing!

This is so ridiculous I don't even want to reply. But someone has to play Danton to Robespierre.

RIgby is nothing less than dishonest when he says that I was talking about RFK's ties to the liberal side of the CIA in my discussion of O'Sullivan's ersatz Ambassador scenario. Anyone can see I was not. What I was trying to do was imagine why Bradley Ayers's friend was at the Ambassador that night and said he saw some CIA chiefs there. I did not understand why the man was there. So I made up some alternative universe scenario--which RIgby actually took seriously.

That's genuinely funny, and almost - almost - as preposterous as your claim that Cranor was not describing a variant of the Z-fake. Curious, then, to find Cranor herself writing: "I recently realized that an early description of the film...fits my own impression of this version."

Its almost funny for him to name Murder from Within as some kind of a landmark--since no one quotes from it today. Except him.

David Lifton, Jim Fetzer and so on and so forth. Another DiEugenio porkie.

PNAC? LOL. I am the continuation of Thompson? Ha Ha.

In SSID, Thompson systematically expunged references to an in-car shooting, mislocated witnesses who so stated and concealed inconvenient testimony to that effect from his readers.

You're engaged in exactly the same game. What was that quote from a recent Black Op radio appearance of yours? Care to remind us?

Thompson insisted on the veracity of the Z-fake - still does - and so do you.

On the two key issues under discussion, then, you are exactly as characterised: The continuation of Josiah Thompson by other means.

...in my Bugliosi series I used what I call the classic texts--Meagher, Lane, Thompson, Weisberg--quite a bit in the early going. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water just because he doesn't go for Z film alteration.

Don't recall ever saying any such thing. But, unlike you, I remember the inconvenient stuff: Lane wrote in November/December 1963 that the Zapruder film had been shown on US TV; Weisberg was pleased that Life, not the USG, had possession of the Z-film; and Thompson, well here I would pull the plug. Meagher, the best of them, is not germane in this context.

About these quotes for these witnesses: please supply the proper academic sourcing for them. When you did a similar thing at DPF, about these witnesses who allegedly saw the SS hit, you got blown out of the water by Charles Drago.

Given that you're familiar with the thread, you know that I did. They're still there. I particularly enjoyed CD's question: "Again I ask you, how would proof of a left-temple wound of entry support ANY conclusions whatsoever regarding the firing position?" Now if that's what you call being "blown out of the water by Charles Drago" then we have very different conceptions of victory and defeat. Not to mention front and back.

Also, where are the proper quotes for the Muchmore, Nix etc?

You don't know any of this and yet you insist the Z-fake is genuine? Incredible.

Greer and the CIA? Maximilien, you can't be serious. In well over four decades, no one ever uncovered Greer's ties to the CIA? The ARRB did not either.

Er, your point is? In fact, the number of researchers doing original, detailed research on the SS is shockingly small.

Give me a break Paul. Then instead of Horne's JFK the philanderer motive (kill him for Jackie I guess), you come up with religious intolerance: Let's kill the bleeding Irish Catholic. Oh my aching back.

You obviously know your Irish history. As to Greer's attitude to Irish Catholics, ask his son.

Then to detract from the unbeleivable stupidity of doing somethign like this in the open, you say well see it was the "dipping and sloping terrain". Almost like the car disappeared from sight? Have you ever been there? How could you write something so at odds with the facts.

I have the topography spot-on. You have offered waffle.

In your last paragraph, you mix up the entities. Mobsters go into barber shops and kill people in barber chairs close up. Intelligence agencies are a bit more sophisticated about these things. They use things like MK /Ultra, and two white Mustangs etc. Especially with 70-90 witnesses looking at you.

Thane Eugene Cesar murdered Robert Kennedy in a pantry full of people. Same MO as Dallas - a direct and positive "hit," obscured behind a complex array of red herrings, distractions etc.

But the same MO.

What took you so long?

Frankly, Jim, and it grieves me to write it, slack-jawed disbelief at the quality of your arguments.

Reading Murder from Within again?

You really should. Landmark, if flawed, tome: body- and Z-film alteration in…1974? The contemporary JFK debate began here.

I was waiting for you, since you never miss an opportunity to go at me in my absence.

An interesting spin as we’ve crossed swords before, albeit by proxy (your choice), not least when I drew attention (on the DPF) to that hoary-old nonsense you were peddling about RFK enjoying the support of that most mythical of entities, the “liberal” wing of the CIA, in 1968. Weirdly, I can’t help observing, we find i) that said parapolitical unicorn was running Eugene McCarthy’s campaign; and ii) killed RFK. A novel definition of support, by any standards, save, of course, the CIA’s own. But I digress.

Or to compare me with Gary Mack at times. (Yeah, he did that.)

My own perspicacity never ceases to amaze me. Quite right. You are – together with the rest of the PNAC (Project for the New Assassination Consensus) – merely the flip side of the same coin, in a classic, if somewhat transparent, pseudo-war of the pseudo-oppositions. You are, when all is said and done, nothing more than the continuation of Josiah Thompson by other means.

I like what you did here.

Not more, surely, than what you did when you neglected to mention earlier in the thread that Mary Muchmore denied taking any footage of the presidential limo on Elm; that Nix thought his film altered; and Zapruder initially insisted he had filmed the limo turn from Houston onto Elm? Now that’s intellectual integrity of a high order.

You completely cut out the whole opening dialogue about the presence in Dealey Plaza of Polaroids, film cameras, scores of witnesses, and one thing I left out, the possibility of law enforcement agents seeing such an obvious and shocking murder and arresting Greer at Parkland.

I do so like you on the subject of witnesses. You’re just so, well, tackily dishonest. For example, was Betzner, Jr., really the only one to see a handgun in or around the presidential limo, as you maintain? Oh dear, not true. Forget George Davis, did you?

You also completely leave out the contrary subtext of Greer not being a CIA hit man ever. So the idea of using him and expecting him to cooperate with murder in broad daylight, and then "Oh, we will get you out of the country, change your identity, and put you in a house next to say Mengele in South America". This would be completely alien, foreign, and bizarre to both the guy being pitched (Greer) and the alleged perpetrators.

I don’t know Greer’s complete history – but then neither do you, as your work on the SS is thin to non-existent. But what we can say with confidence is i) it was his job to be ready to shoot targets at close range upon the instant; ii) he controlled the speed of his target; and iii) he was no lover of Irish Catholics. Means, opportunity, and motive. You offer unnamed people in vague locations, with even less eye-, ear-, and nose-witnesses testimony, and call that a superior argument. Bizarre.

Why would they want to use someone who could be so easily seen, not just by witnesses outside the car but inside it also?

An entirely unexpected event at the sparsely populated fag-end of the motorcade’s journey, on dipping and slopping terrain, with the target (and assassin) shielded for many by the other occupants of the car, accompanying motorcylists etc.? And no one saw it? I suppose Austin Miller was referring to a knife when he replied to Specter’s question “Where do you think the shots came from?” and replied: “From right there in the car.”

Especially when Dealey Plaza offers the perfect L shaped ambush triangle with concealed snipers at three points, where attention is not focused on them.

Oh no, we’re off into the land of the parapolitical pixies – “sniper teams,” “spotters,” “triangulated crossfire,” fill in the hackneyed alternative of your choice – when real-life special forces teach their goons simple, uncomplicated, common-sense, with appropriately easy-to-remember concepts and terminology.

The most effective way to assassinate was, and remains, both “direct” and “positive.” You get up close to the target and shoot him (or her) from close-range, most likely with a handgun. Crude, perhaps, but unquestionably lethal, as LHO and RFK, among others, were to discover. And not without its evidentiary perils, as Doug Horne, an honest soul, notes: “But for Mrs Lozano to smell gunpowder as her patients were wheeled by her desk, meant that it had to be embedded in their clothing – and this could only have happened if a handgun had been discharged in the Presidential limousine.”

Murder from within? You bet.

Let me add just one more thing.

Besides the irrationality on Greer's part i.e. sacrificing his life, his name, his family etc.

The conversation with the "mechanics"/"sniper teams"/"spotters" etc - choose the fantasy term of one's choice - was so very much different. "Trust us," said the CIA, we'll ship you out of Dallas at a rate of knots, and promise to let you live unmolested for ever and a day." And they sacrificed their lives, their names, their families etc with nary a second thought, secure in the promise Langley had made them. How incredibly different such conversations must have been to those conducted with Greer.

Or perhaps not.

Let us assume the Z film is altered.

There are some people who say they have seen an unaltered film. Mili Cranor is one of them.

When I read this thing in Horne, I asked her if this happened on the version of the film she saw. She said no.

Just recall the guideline: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

According to my Google instant translation facility – which, to my grateful surprise, renders Californian, no less than the slightly less challenging Chinese, into English - the above may be rendered as follows:

I, Jim DiEugenio, am a defender of the authenticity of the Zapruder fake.

In order to rubbish the claim that William Greer shot JFK, I am going to do something both absurd and dishonest.

Which is?

I am going to call in evidence a very different version of the fake which I insist is genuine.

(Hang on a minute - doesn’t that mean you implicitly acknowledge the falsity of the very film you insist is genuine?

Yes, but needs must; and, in any case, I am not subject to the ordinary rules of logic or intellectual probity because I am Jim DiEugenio, the king, among other things, of a small tribe of Kiwi cheerleaders and a Canadian web broadcaster.)

Enter Milicent Cranor.

Milicent knows the different version of the Z-fake she watched is genuine – and not, for example, just another CIA variant – because…er, how exactly? Did the projectionist give out certificates signed by Allen Dulles to that effect? No? Then how?

Because it doesn’t show Greer shooting his President.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Euclid, move over.

But there is a useful lesson here: It turns out that extraordinary projects demand extraordinary nonsense.

And the nature of that extraordinary project? Team DiEugenio is out to place film alteration and in-car shooting beyond the pale of civilised assassination discourse.

By any means necessary.