Charles Drago

Once again I ask you to join me in calling upon Rex Bradford -- a good man and world-class researcher/historian -- to disclose fully the origins and funding of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and to provide a detailed report on the whereabouts and condition of Mary's archives.

Toward these ends, I ask Mr. Bradford to consider taking part in a panel discussion -- if possible, at the next JFK/Lancer conference in Dallas -- at which he, Oliver Curme, and other principals of the MFF would answer questions relative to the issues raised in the preceding paragraph.

As I previously have written, Mary's holdings amount to a counter-National Archives (as do those of Harold Weisberg, I might add), and include unique, immensely important documents. The importance of their preservation -- to our work, to history, to the truth -- cannot be overstated.

One good electromagnetic pulse will do to cyberspace what the flames did to the great library at Alexandria. That which we can hold in our hands can be preserved.

Who will join me in this call?

Charles

Mr. Carroll,

To quote an English friend of mine: Don't get your knickers in a knot.

What a refreshingly original response.

I'm pointing out a staged gesture of contempt by a man for his former, murdered friend.

Charles

And presumably my copy of the same Time-Life issue, which happens to be in roughly the same location relative to me as Sinatra's copy is to him, is also "a staged gesture of contempt" for JFK?

Since my use of English patois seems lost on Mr. Drago, let me phrase it in plain United States: I don't know who you think you are kidding, Mr. Drago, but you are not kidding me.

And you weren't kidding me with your comments on the Mary Ferrell thread you started not too long ago, with its limpid insinuation that something sinister may be afoot at the maryferrell.org website. The Maryferrell.org website is the best thing that has ever happened to JFK assassination research. It brings the National archives to everyone in the world with internet access and its search capabilities are beyond the wildest dreams of those who, along with Mary Ferrell, were the pioneers of assassination research. Why anyone would try to cast a shadow over Mary Ferrell's legacy of continuous inquiry is something I cannot even begin to fathom.

Mr. Carroll,

While I am loathe to dignify your comments with further response, you leave me no choice but to clarify the record in regards to Mary Ferrell and the organization that bears her name.

Mary was my dear friend. She extended innumerable courtesies to me at nearly a dozen conferences, and when she welcomed me to what can only be described as her legendary salons, Mary took on the added roles of mentor and benefactor.

In raising questions about the deeper motives of Ferrell Foundation "angel" Oliver Curme -- and in demanding to know the whereabouts and condition of Mary's physical archives -- I neither pass judgment on the value of MFF offerings in their current forms, nor imply the slightest negative criticism of Mary's decision to endow that organization.

When I last spoke with Mary -- who took my call while in hospital, just a few weeks before she passed -- our conversation was characterized by humor, thoughtfulness, respect, and ultimately love. A day does not go by when my heart is not lifted by her living memory.

To permit the Mary Ferrell Foundation to continue to obscure its origins and remain silent on the status of its physical holdings would be to violate everything for which my friend Mary stood as champion.

Your ignorance, sir, of these and other matters is of zero concern to me. But I shall not permit you or anyone else to slander her memory and/or our enduring friendship.

Charles

Mr. Carroll,

To quote an English friend of mine: Don't get your knickers in a knot.

Who on God's green earth is accusing anyone of murder?

I'm pointing out a staged gesture of contempt by a man for his former, murdered friend.

Three deep breaths, please.

Charles

The attached image first came to my attention when perusing the "Architectural Digest" cover story of the sale of Frank Sinatra's last Palm Springs estate.

Whenever I come across a published photo of a library, I try to identify the visible titles. In so doing with this shot, I noted that Sinatra's shoes were resting on the cover of a coffee table book.

After some manipulation, I discovered that directly beneath the heels was a portrait of JFK as it appeared on what I've identified as a Time-Life special issue of assassination coverage.

Make no mistake: Sinatra left nothing to chance. The message was intentional as it is to this day savage.

It is also worth noting that the room in question originally was constructed to serve as the president's bedroom during what would become his famous aborted stay at the Springs estate.

Charles

Bernice.

I agree that the Moorman image shows jfk's head at the moment of impact.

I see the "open skull" after the top of the skull cap had flipped across to the right side of the head.

For what it's worth, Tom Wilson also "saw" the skull opening you reference. He included it in his Dallas presentations, and it is featured during his TMWKK interview.

Charles

-- Any reasonably informed, free-thinking, unimpaired individual who would respond to criticism of Zionism by leveling against the critic an unsubstantiated charge of anti-semitism is a fool, a cad, or both.

Charles,

Sorry for slicing this small piece from your fine post, but I think it's worth repeating for the benefit of readers.

The Holocaust and the myths that may or may not surround it is a low order issue with me. Exposing those responsible for JFK's assassination is much more important. However, criminalising public debate of the issue is, as John Simkin aptly described it on another thread, daft. It happened, it was horrible, and those responsible were guilty of crimes against humanity. What I can't understand is why this atrocity should be elevated by legal sanction above all of history's other crimes against humanity, to the extent where its mere public discussion is verboten under threat of imprisonment. I agree with Sid Walker on this. Surely this kind of legislation is a throwback to the dark ages. A mistake.

Criticising Zionism attracts nasty retribution, although not quite as fierce as those who question facts surrounding the holocaust. Fortunately, I'm not in the latter group but I'm definitely in the former. The latest charge levelled against Sid is that his motive in questioning the Holocaust orthodoxy is the revival of National Socialism. Such an accusation is a little extreme, I would say.

I've been lucky enough to escape with just the anti-Semite tag I've recieved in discussions in the political debates section. It doesn't bother me because its rubbish. What is a little more disturbing is the subtle inference from some one or two regular posters in the JFK threads that a suspicion of Israeli Government involvement in the assassination is tantamount to anti-Semitism. Hence, any such suspicion equals an agenda against the Jewish people. Of course, they never emerge from behind the bushes and state exactly why one equals the other, because such a claim can't be sustained. They like taking pot shots from behind the bushes, though, without directly committing themselves to the claim.

Mark,

Interesting, is it not, how ignorance and arrogance regularly arrive in the same coach.

Your points are well taken. If I may expand upon them:

The rights to challenge Holocaust orthodoxy and to charge those who do so with anti-Semitism are inviolate and equally deserving of our best defense.

The obligations of free-thinking men and women to indicate, explain, and scorn the latters' failures of logic and their deeper political agenda are just as pressing, and the advantages to be gained from defending all speech are just as plain.

It was the historian Gordon Craig, in his New York Review of Books analysis of David Irving’s controversial biography of Josef Goebbels, who saw this issue most clearly:

“Recently,” Craig wrote, “when Christopher Hitchins talked with Raul Hilberg, author of the classic text The Destruction of the European Jews, he found him unambiguous on this point. ‘If these people want to speak,’ Hilberg said, ‘let them. It only leads those of us who do research to re-examine what we might have considered as obvious. And that’s useful for us. I have quoted Eichmann references that come from a neo-Nazi publishing house. I am not for taboos and I am not for repression.'”

As far as the ongoing struggle for the soul of this nation and the future of this planet is concerned, however, and in the spirit of fair and full disclosure, I must quote an element of Craig's thinking with which I disagree:

“It is always difficult for the non-historian to remember that there is nothing absolute about historical truth," Craig explained. "What we consider as such is only an estimation, based upon what the best available evidence tells us. It must constantly be tested against new information and new interpretations that appear, however implausible they may be, or it will lose its vitality and degenerate into dogma and shibboleth. Such people as David Irving, then, have an indisputable part in the historical enterprise, and we dare not disregard their views."

I fervantly disagree with Craig's basic premise. Why modify "truth" with "historical" or any other word? I do not "estimate" that John Kennedy was murdered in Dallas on 11/22/63. I do not "estimate" that there is not a scintilla of valid evidence to support a non-conspiratorial explanation for that crime. There is no need to "estimate" that which has been demonstrated to be true by the applications of unbiased scientific investigation and common sense evaluation.

I do agree that the JFK event's versions of David Irving indeed play an "indisputable part" in our honest investigations of the assassination. Their (the well-informed non-crazies) transparently sinister agendas and laughable methods are among the best weapons we have in this ongoing war for history. So yes, we dare not "disregard" the Irvings' views; left unaddressed, they will attain the status of "historical truth."

There can be no moral response to the truth deniers that does not include explanations of their subtexts and good old fashioned ridicule.

So as Craig says, by all means let us put the truth deniers' claims up against the truth -- but within a context that does not afford to them or their "ideas" the slightest collegiality or respect.

Thanks again, Mark, for your thoughts.

Charles

Mr. Bovik,

I must respectfully register my extreme disagreement with the overwhelming majority of the points of view expressed in your thought-provoking post.

You wrote: "The Holocaust ... has a special meaning in history."

Who determines the definition of "special" in this context? Who decides when to apply it to historical events?

You wrote: "The most important element of [the Holocaust's] meaning is that we must carefully preserve the evidence of what occurred and continue teaching it to future generations, so that it will be remembered, and it never happens again, to any group of people."

Agreed. But how does criminalizing the written and spoken expression of disagreement with our shared acceptance of the historical truth of the Holocaust aid in these efforts -- especially when to do so is to embrace some of the most despicable tactics used by the executioners themselves: criminalization of thought, denial of free expression, and the annexation of history by violent means?

You wrote: "Comparing Holocaust deniers to conspiracy deniers, elevates JFK’s assassination to the same historical significance as the Holocaust."

[An aside: Should we begin to use the upper case "C" when writing of the JFK Conspiracy?]

I do not wish to play the Holocaust envy game. On what basis would you draw the distinction? Are we talking numbers? If so, and if the prime sponsors of the JFK assassination were powerful elites for whom the preservation of the Cold War was the sine qua non for the preservation of their positions, then add every post-11/22/63 Cold War fatality to JFK's column.

As you so powerfully and accurately note, "[JFK's assassination] was a coup d’État which subverted the foundations of our democracy, and led to a decade of war that killed millions of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans." (emphasis added)

Are you seriously arguing that the murder of millions of Asians does not rise to the world historic level of criminality inherent in the earlier murder of millions of "Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other so-called 'undesirables'"?

I stand to object to the Supreme Court's decision in Virginia v. Black. (If you are aware of majority/minority numbers, please advise.) I decry it as a major assault on free speech as strongly as I decry the motives of the cross burners. But I have no choice but to defend to the death their right to burn away -- on private property and with no physical harm resulting.

Finally, you wrote: "ecause we must preserve history for the coming millennia ... I do not believe there should be a right of free speech to cast doubt on the Holocaust."

We must solemnly and forcefully protect the right to cast doubt on the Holocaust in every imaginable media precisely because to do so gives the most powerful voice to the truth and ensures the ongoing victory of freedom over tyranny.

I shall not, sir, allow you to decide what I can say, what I can write, what I can think.

Charles

Cliff,

I thank you, too, for a most challenging reply.

You wrote: "[W]hat is 'the Occam's Razor operation'? I don't see any need to cede the principle of parsimony to the forces covering up the JFK assassination."

Allow me to explain: On the "Political Conspiracies" site, in a topic titled "Eject! Eject! Eject!" by Craig Lamson, I responded to the author's efforts to deny the truth of conspiracy by fallaciously applying the principle of Occam's Razor in analysis of the JFK assassination thusly:

Mr. Lamson writes:

"Occam’s Razor is the idea that when confronted with competing theories that explain certain data equally well, the simplest one is usually correct. It’s called Occam’s Razor, and not Occam’s Hypothesis, or Occam’s Theorem, or Occam’s Bit of Useful Advice, because it is a razor – it cuts cleanly and with great efficiency."

Not quite.

The principle of parsimony, or the principle of unnecessary plurality, holds that one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

Sir Isaac Newton asserted it thusly: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."

And herein lies the rub. William's cutting instrument is shattered when it strikes the granite that is an intelligence operation's cover story or an intelligence operative's legend -- "appearances" or fictions reverse-engineered, if you will, from the great principle precisely to meet its standards -- fictions designed to appear to be simple explanations for events that are by definition complex in the extreme -- fictions created to obscure the underlying truth.

The lone nut fiction/conclusion is dependent for its "proof" on carefully selected "supporting" data (itself for the most part contrived: LHO the loner, the SBT, etc,), carefully rejected conflicting data (where to begin?), and the purposeful confusion of the concepts of "simple" and "simple-minded."

Occam's Razor is WORTHLESS as a tool for direct analysis of intelligence operations, but remains of value when utlilized as a negative template for our investigations.

The SBT would bring a smile to William's face; it is simple, elegant ... and indefensible when viewed in the context of the evidence. But wait ... why look beyond what is elegantly simple ... why dig for, discover, and disseminate the evidence that renders the SBT inoperative when it would be so ... simple ... to accept this simple-minded "theory" and move on?

Any argument for the Lone Nut position that is based upon the validity of the application of Occam's Razor to this case is by definition a sophistry -a "deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone."

So can we please move on from these elaborately sophistic, egregiously worded "arguments"?

Charles

***

Perhaps I might have been more artful in my prose: The principle of parsimony does not work when applied to analyses of intelligence operations if the data under scrutiny is limited to the cover stories.

You wrote: "If I posit the view that the assassination was a completely different operation than the 'official lone-nut' cover-up, am I some kind of 'denier'?"

On the contrary: you are a a speaker and champion of the truth.

I find your focus on the SBT lie to be productive, and I applaud your attitude and tone when expounding upon the subject.

Further, I wholeheartedly agree with your characterization of the materials found at the website you reference. I am all too familiar with its author and his ... problems.

Charles

Sid,

I too reached the truth in the JFK case in large but hardly exclusive measure by analyzing both sides of the howdunit question.

Accordingly, I do not argue that the truth deniers -- defined as those who, in a position to know how JFK was murdered, yet defend one or more versions of the no-conspiracy falsehood for reasons that can only be sinister in nature -- should be silenced or ignored.

Rather, I am pleading for both a no-holds-barred attack on the Posner/Bugliosi brigades, and for an aggressive presentation of the facts to newcomers to the case in which the LN position is immediately, consistently, scientifically, and logically demonstrated to be what it has been since its pre-assassination inception: a fable, one designed to protect and further enrich the conspirators and disenfranchise Americans and keep a knife at the throats of all humankind.

As for the Holocaust: Yes, I did introduce the old concensus-builder into the mix, so I'm obliged to clarify my related positions.

-- Criminalizing Holocaust Denial is, if I may borrow a term, a crime against humanity.

(I champion, say, Bugliosi's right to deny the conspiratorial JFK truth, but I hold him in utter contempt for doing so, and I would not hesitate to engage him during his upcoming book tour and beyond not in polite debate, but rather in the most bellicose assaults on his arguments and his integrity.)

-- I accept, after studies of the pro and con arguments that have been far more than superficial but far less comprehensive than my work on the JFK case, the historical truth of the systematic extermination of European Jewry by the Nazi state. I do not engage in Holocaust envy, so I accept that the final numbers of victims (six million? more? less?) cannot ever be ascertained. "Millions" tells us all we need to know.

-- I accept that some 20 million Soviets were murdered during the same period -- human beings whose lives were as sacred as those stolen, say, in Auschwitz.

-- I accept as historical fact that the Holocaust has been manipulated by opposing political and cultural forces to justify criminal acts and control the future by controlling the past.

-- I wish to be most clear now: The parallel which I draw between the Holocaust and the JFK assassination relates solely to the manners in which their respective true natures are being denied by the heirs of their respective perpetrators.

If tomorrow the Holocaust were to be proved to be exactly what, say, David Irving says it was/wasn't -- and in the spirit of full disclosure I must state that I have not the slightest expectation that such proof ever will be offered because it simply does not exist -- the truth of conspiracy in JFK will not somehow be "less true."

-- Your take on contemporary historians is on the money.

-- You wrote -- and it's worth reprinting -- "Humanity is, IMO, on the brink of a very serious mistake [by criminalizing Holocaust Ddenial], a mistake that would, in effect, help perpetuate the worst legacies of the Second World War ad infinitum. It should be resisted - especially by historians, whose very subject matter is at stake."

Agreed. And I would further argue that we who champion the conspiratorial truth of the JFK assassination have a special, heightened responsibility to fight against all such laws -- whether or not they are passed.

-- Any reasonably informed, free-thinking, unimpaired individual who would respond to criticism of Zionism by leveling against the critic an unsubstantiated charge of anti-semitism is a fool, a cad, or both.

Charles

Sid,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

1. You wrote: "After all, how can one know what's truth denial and what isn't - until one knows what the truth actually is? How can one know the truth without free debate between differing beliefs and perspectives?" --

Indeed, we are in basic agreement: One simply cannot know the truth absent the exchange of viewpoints you describe. But in the case of the conspiratorial murder of JFK, decades of free debate have settled the issue, the truth is known in terms of the "how" of the event, and further debate can serve no useful purposes other than to prolong the protection and further the balance of the goals of the conspirators.

2. You wrote: "Also, while it has become fashionable in recent decades to declare War on just about everything (Poverty, Drugs, Terror etc). what grounds do you have for believing that a War against 'Untruth' will be any more successful?" --

There were no tender mercies extended in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63. Shots were fired not just at a single man, but at a government, a people, a way of life. I will resist to the end any notion that we must do less than return the fire. Failure is not an option. And failure, I submit, is what we're about if we content ourselves with polite exchanges of viewpoints.

3. You wrote: "Given its inherent circularity, please explain how this notion (truth denial) helps advance understanding in any way at all?" --

Conspiracy in the death of JFK is historical truth. Those who are in a position to understand this yet who continue to deny the truth are complicit in the conspiracy. Understanding of the "who" and "why" of the assassination conspiracy cannot be advanced absent acceptance and spirited championing of the basic "how" truth. Endlessly debating same plays into the hands of those for whom existence depends upon endless debate. Do you have any doubt whatsoever that conspiracy in the death of JFK is historical truth? If not, say so and act accordingly.

4. You wrote: "Do you have any evidence for the claims you make in the first two paragraphs?" --

I am at a loss to explain the acceptance of nonsense by sensible people except as a tactic in a larger ... wait for it ... war.

A final word about my position on Holocaust Denial may be in order. Acceptance of the historical truth of what has come to be known as the Holocaust in no way absolves those who would trade in that truth for personal and/or nationalistic advantage. I see no moral difference whatsoever between what the state of Israel inflicts upon the Palestinians and what the Nazis inflicted upon the Jews of Europe.

One need not deny the Holocaust in order to decry predatory Zionism. Netanyahu drinks from Goering's gilded chalice. A plague on all their houses.

Charles

The function of Fred Leuchter is to provide scientific context for the Holocaust denial (HD) position.

The imagined strengths of Leuchter's arguments and the methodologies and data that inform them are irrelevant to this operation. The goal all along had been to apply the imprimatur of science to HD, which in turn now serves as a source of respectability for subsequent like-minded "scholars."

In terms of the subject of this forum, we can cite Alvarez, Lattimer, Guinn, and Specter as being chief among first-generation science deniers and the role models for Rahn, McAdam, Posner, Russo, Myers, and now Bugliosi (at least one of whom is known to embrace HD and to treasure his collection of recorded Nazi marches -- no kidding!).

Theirs and their masters' is a war for the minds and hearts not of our generation (we were lost no later than late morning, CST, 11/24/63), but of those to come. It matters not that all of these charlatans have been revealed for who they are and what they represent. Their work has been done.

Don't agree? Then why does the wholly discredited SBT/fiction and the wholly discredited "science" and "evidence" upon which it was predicated continue to wreak havoc with truth and justice?

We can't kill it, first because it has been allowed to be presented as science, and now because we continue to show collegiality and respect for the liars and/or fools who would mire us in endless debate of the long-settled howdunit question.

(When I write "we" I surely generalize; know that I know.)

On another thread there recently was an attempt to restart the Occam's Razor operation. I was one of many who pointed out the stupidity of such an approach to analysis of the intel op that was/is the JFK assassination and coverup. But to my knowledge I'm the only contributor to state that I treat the OC argument with utter contempt in the JFK case, I harbor disrespect and scorn for its proponent, and to respond in any other fashion would be to play into the hands of truth deniers.

I am not arguing that we must avoid responding to the truth deniers. Rather, I am urging all of us to characterize our responses with a mixture of well-deserved ridicule and contempt. Don't merely point out how, for instance, the SBT has been proven to be a fiction; further indicate the true motivations of those who would continue to embrace discredited, wholly ridiculous theories in service to the darkest imaginable poltical, cultural, and social agendas.

This is war.

Charles

Friends,

If I may reiterate an earlier post: Blind testing of a control subject seems to me to be the key to establishing the bona fides and refining the processes of this technique and, for that matter, facial reconstructions from skulls.

As a student/researcher of the Little Bighorn battle, I've followed, quite closely, the efforts to accomplish the latter from remains unearthed at the site of Custer's demise -- the end result of a political conspiracy, I submit, that would be all too familiar to contributors to this site.

When forensic artist Lois Gibson presented at a series of Dallas JFK conferences, she failed to demonstrate how her work on skulls had been falsified/verified through the scientific method.

Until and unless we have such data in hand, we are grasping at straws.

Charles

Myra,

A "handle on" McNamara?

A bucket of steam?

I tend to think of him as an expression of ultimate efficiency: a doppelganger in and of himself.

What do we make of Noel Twyman's access to and interview of The Secretary?

And in light of John Newman's problematic research, is it fair to think of Howard Burris as McNamara's evil twin?

Endlessly fascinating.

Charles

Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the case of the murder of JFK who does not conclude that the act was the result of a criminal conspiracy is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

There is no morally acceptable course of action other than to disengage from this inane, destructive dialogue.

Good luck with the rubes.

Charles

Mr. Lamson writes:

"Occam’s Razor is the idea that when confronted with competing theories that explain certain data equally well, the simplest one is usually correct. It’s called Occam’s Razor, and not Occam’s Hypothesis, or Occam’s Theorem, or Occam’s Bit of Useful Advice, because it is a razor – it cuts cleanly and with great efficiency."

Not quite.

The principle of parsimony, or the principle of unnecessary plurality, holds that one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

Sir Isaac Newton asserted it thusly: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."

And herein lies the rub. William's cutting instrument is shattered when it strikes the granite that is an intelligence operation's cover story or an intelligence operative's legend -- "appearances" or fictions reverse-engineered, if you will, from the great principle precisely to meet its standards -- fictions designed to appear to be simple explanations for events that are by definition complex in the extreme -- fictions created to obscure the underlying truth.

The lone nut fiction/conclusion is dependent for its "proof" on carefully selected "supporting" data (itself for the most part contrived: LHO the loner, the SBT, etc,), carefully rejected conflicting data (where to begin?), and the purposeful confusion of the concepts of "simple" and "simple-minded."

Occam's Razor is WORTHLESS as a tool for direct analysis of intelligence operations, but remains of value when utlilized as a negative template for our investigations.

The SBT would bring a smile to William's face; it is simple, elegant ... and indefensible when viewed in the context of the evidence. But wait ... why look beyond what is elegantly simple ... why dig for, discover, and disseminate the evidence that renders the SBT inoperative when it would be so ... simple ... to accept this simple-minded "theory" and move on?

Any argument for the Lone Nut position that is based upon the validity of the application of Occam's Razor to this case is by definition a sophistry -a "deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone."

So can we please move on from these elaborately sophistic, egregiously worded "arguments"?

Charles

Scan from POTP

Does anyone see the fake "ledge" in front of the 5th floor window (middle), obscuring the windows partially?

There is also a "ledge" painted similarly to the above mentioned, partially obscuring the Oswald window in the Hughes Film.

This is certainly proof of photo alteration.

Kathy

In re the "ledge" -- It can be interpreted as a horizontal appendage that spreads from the top right of a vertical artifact that may be an automobile antenna (on the advance car?) or a lamp pole. It is not part of the building, yet does seem to mirror vertical structures on the TSBD facade. If this is evidence of image tampering, then perhaps we have to consider Robert Morningstar's theory of gestalt editing -- which we might also think of as a sinister trompe l'Oeil.

Perhaps a clearer version of the full frame would help resolve this issue.

Charles

Terry,

Thank you for taking the time and effort. I am most pleased to have struck in chord with you.

Charles

The following was written for presentation at the 1996 JFK Lancer conference, and published in "The Fourth Decade" in 1997. So yes, it is dated, and yes, I cringe at the less-than-artful language with which it often is plagued.

But I believe that the core questions herein raised remain unanswered.

If you struggle through, I would be most interested in your comments.

Charles

____________________________________________

In the Blossom of Our Sins:

An Eleventh Hour Plea for War and its Absolutions

by Charles R. Drago

(The Fourth Decade, Volume 4, Number 4, May 1997, pp. 3–8)

I say we had better look our nation searchingly

in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease.

-- Walt Whitman

O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful.

One knew nothing … And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired

was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing

happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew

old and look cunning … or wise … and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still

waiting and listening.

-- Hermann Hessse

* * *

INTRODUCTION

Why do we decline at all cost to know, and instead choose merely to believe – in seemingly limitless, mutually exclusive, self-serving variations – the truth about the genesis, planning, execution and cover-up of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

Why, 33 years after our initial self-anointings as investigators and court and jury of record in this case of 20th century regicide, do we remain incapable of defining, let alone serving, justice?

Are our sins, our indefensible failures of judgment and will, attributable to the subconscious fear that, as a consequence of the attainment of knowledge of truth and the effecting of justice, we shall bring about the destruction of the self? Destruction of the nation?

Are we prepared to declare total war on our blood enemies: the assassins and their accessories? Should we impose moral constraints on our strategies and tactics in such a war? What would constitute victory? Can we unite to overcome the egotism and greed that from the beginning have divided us and rendered us defenseless?

Who are we? Should we define ourselves as warriors? Scholars? Victims?

Whither our passions?

WHY DO WE DECLINE TO KNOW THE TRUTH AND FAIL TO EFFECT JUSTICE?

Know that I define justice in the case of the assassination of President Kennedy as the utilization of the attainable absolute truth to cleanse or, if necessary, literally deconstruct and rebuild the corrupted system responsible for the assassination and related crimes.

We must accept the notion that, as this late date, justice will not be served by sending anyone to prison. Indeed, I herein restate my original call for the extension of a broad and legally binding immunity to all surviving conspirators, contingent upon their coming forward and telling the truth (the offer to be made by an independent special prosecutor as appointed by the Congress of the United States; for reasons having nothing to do with the moral standing of that body, and in full recognition of the fact that I am asking the criminal system to investigate and indict itself, there yet can be no meaningful healing of America’s most grievous self-inflicted wound that is not self-administered).

Justice will come about only as a function of the revealed truth. And that truth is at once our last remaining weapon, our most powerful weapon, and the weapon we seem least willing to wield in the war in which we are engaged.

Why do we hesitate? When in the words of Vincent Salandria, one of the first Warren Commission critics, the truth has been “blatantly obvious … all the time.” Why?

Are our individual and collective identities symbiotically linked to the roles we play as Kennedy Assassination Researchers/Investigators/Gadflies to the degree that the termination of those roles, a certain consequence of our ultimate victory, is perceived to be tantamount to the termination of the self? As sufferers of such a fear, we would be in exalted company.

Writing in The End of Science of what he perceives to be scientists’ fear of reaching for absolute answers, John Horgan notes: “ … after one arrives at The Answer, what then? There is a kind of horror in thinking that our sense of wonder might be extinguished, once and for all time, by our knowledge. What, then, would be the purpose of existence? There would be none … Many scientists harbor a profound ambivalence concerning the notion of absolute truth. Like Roger Penrose, who could not decide whether his belief in a final theory was optimistic or pessimistic. Or Steven Weinberg, who equated comprehensibility with pointlessness. Or David Bohm, who was compelled both to clarify reality and obscure it. Or Edmund Wilson, who lusted after a final theory of human nature and was chilled by the thought that it might be attained. Or Freeman Dyson, who insisted that anxiety and doubt are essential to existence … ”

And if not death of the self, then what of that of the nation, a necrotic body politic that – as we witness in, among other tableaus, Zapruder film frame 313 – long ago suffered the demise of its moral authority to govern and command allegiance?

Allow me a metaphor that will take a moment to develop. The Mt. Rushmore National Monument is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. To the indigenous North American tribal peoples commonly referred to by their Caucasian conquerors as the “Sioux,” the Black Hills, or Paha Sapa in the language of the Lakota, remain the holiest of places – like the Vatican to Roman Catholics. Assayed and determined to be worthless wilderness by the high priests of Mammon-on-the-Potomac, the Black Hills were magnanimously acknowledged to be sovereign Sioux property in a formal, legally binding treaty ratified by Congress. Shortly thereafter, in 1874, a certain young conquistador named Custer led a U.S. Army expedition into the area for a second look. Two millionaire miners were with that merry band, and they discovered gold in them thar hills.

Faster than you can say Eureka! the treaty was unilaterally abrogated, war was manufactured , and the Sioux were cast out.

Then – this is rich – to add insult to the injuries of grand theft, genocide, and cultural annihilation, one of the most sacred peaks of Paha Sapa was desecrated with the carvings of the likenesses of the leaders of the cutthroats and thieves.

It is as if barbarians had occupied post-Renaissance Rome, put its citizens to the sword, looted the Vatican, and on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, over Michelangelo’s masterpiece, painted craven images of their chieftains.

Some years later, a Polish immigrant decided to balance the books by carving on a nearby summit the gigantic likeness of the Lakota war leader Teshunka Witko, or Crazy Horse. Today the artist’s heirs struggle to complete his daunting project. Tourists visit the site each year, although in nowhere near the numbers who regularly flock to Mt. Rushmore. Which I’ve visited. Where the symbolism and savage irony hang thick and dank in the poisoned air.

As dusk falls, hundreds gather in the amphitheater at the foot of the monument to watch a documentary film about the great sculpture’s creation. At the appointed time all rise and sing their national anthem, and as the lyric “brave” echoes through Paha Sapa, immense searchlights illuminate what I prefer to appreciate as the memorialized prototype for a later, equally portentous (if understandably less overtly celebrated) summit meeting of true American power-brokers: the Appalachin Conference.

With the labors of our intellect and, I pray, the furious manifestation of our passions, we are sculpting a Crazy Horse Monument of our own: the popularly labeled “Conspiracy Theory.” We do so to counterbalance the suffocating psychic weight of the Mt. Rushmore of officially created and sanctioned assassination myths. But will we ever complete our work? Do we dare to complete it? Could we have achieved our goal years ago? Have we given sufficient consideration to the dynamiting of our Mt. Rushmore as the first in a series of actions that would perforce be described by targeted groups as “terrorist” in nature? Acts of war?

The illusion that is projected as Mt. Rushmore is a sine qua non for the survival of America as a morally defensible political entity. So too are the officially created and sanctioned assassination pulp fictions.

Without the succor offered by these and related lies-as-history – which is to say, with their long-denied counter-realities (the genocide of North American aboriginal populations by the developers of the USA, the disenfranchisement of the American electorate that took place on November 22, 1963, et al) broadly accepted in their stead – no rational, moral citizen could do less than plot the drastic overhaul, if not the overthrow, of a national entity clearly revealed to be without legal and moral justifications.

So perhaps our illusions are more important to that most sacrosanct of crusades, the preservation of the union, than is the truth. More important than is justice. Perhaps truth and justice once again must be sacrificed on the altar of National Security. – no matter the nation’s worth.

Not to worry. We can preserve the self and America with it while continuing to play the role of super sleuth in this case. And when, inevitably, push comes to shove, when belief must either metamorphose into knowledge and action or be abandoned, all we need do is scurry backward into our voting booths like light-panicked lobsters seeking the safety of the trap. Nothing sacred will have been damaged. And maybe, someday, if we manage to save enough blood money to afford a real vacation, we can visit Mt. Rushmore or make the pilgrimage to Dallas and get that oddly familiar, forbidden thrill – the kind experienced when, walking down Main Street with the spouse and kids, an almost forgotten extra-marital paramour appears on the next corner.

Or we can fight!

A PLEA FOR THE DECLARATION OF WAR

We are at war with the murderers of John F. Kennedy.

And I am sickened by the mercy we extend to a merciless enemy each time we treat with collegiality their disgraced surrogates.

But before we can know our enemy, we must know ourselves. Define ourselves. Be at peace and possess the courage of our convictions. Unite in a common crusade, the substance of which would render our superficial stylistic differences meaningless.

How many of you occupying high-profile positions in the community of assassination researchers are prepared to stake your professional reputations and, in certain cases, the reputations of the journals you edit and/or the organizations over which you preside, on your public endorsement of the following statement: CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY RESULTING IN THE DEATH OF JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY IS HISTORICAL TRUTH.

How should any of us who care about truth and justice in this case treat the well-respected newsletter editor who writes (I paraphrase), “We have to be prepared to accept the possibility that Oswald did it alone.”?

Or the influential and celebrated author, ostensibly on the side of the angels, who, at the Boston public meeting of the Assassination Records Review Board, graciously greets and caters to the needs of the infamous, wizened madam of the Warren whores?

Or the controversial writer/activist who is driven to slander and otherwise sabotage the work of researchers and organizations not under his influence?

We can condemn them as cowards, traitors and/or dupes. Or we can labor to find a common ground for all willing to accept the tenets of our crusade. Liberate ourselves from the debilitating manners, misconceptions, petty jealousies, and greed on which our enemy depends for advantage. Draw strength from the very diversities of intellect and passion that today factionalize us.

E pluribus unum the bastards to death.

Who are we? Who are our role models? A process of elimination prompts (troubling) answers.

I shall now put forth—only to dismantle—as fine an argument as I know for the perpetuation (and there’s the rub) of our collegial treatment of the enemy’s pimps, behavior that commonly characterizes “gentlemen’s disagreements” between scholars.

The historian Gordon Craig, in his New York Review of Books analysis of David Irving’s controversial biography of Josef Goebbels, wrote, “It is always difficult for the non-historian to remember that there is nothing absolute about historical truth. What we consider as such is only an estimation, based upon what the best available evidence tells us. It must constantly be tested against new information and new interpretations that appear, however implausible they may be, or it will lose its vitality and degenerate into dogma and shibboleth. Such people as David Irving, then, have an indisputable part in the historical enterprise, and we dare not disregard their views.

“Recently,” Craig went on, “when Christopher Hitchins talked with Raul Hilberg, author of the classic text The Destruction of the European Jews, he found him unambiguous on this point. ‘If these people want to speak,’ Hilberg said, ‘let them. It only leads those of us who do research to re-examine what we might have considered as obvious. And that’s useful for us. I have quoted Eichmann references that come from a neo-Nazi publishing house. I am not for taboos and I am not for repression.” [7]

Nor am I. But would Hilberg join or in any other way dignify an effort to “re-examine” the historical truth of the Holocaust that would compel him in advance to acknowledge the Deniers’ position as an intellectually honest, academically sound, reasoned point of view? Or is his point simply that the arguments of Holocaust-deniers are useful so many years after the established historical truth of the event insofar as they may unintentionally further reveal the nature of the beast?

Could Messrs. Craig or Hilberg or any of us, in good conscience, have entertained the arguments of apologists for Goebbels and the rest of the Bunker Boys at a time when the gas yet hissed and the piano wiring yet tightened?

In our time we dare not be about the historical enterprise, except as a tactic in a greater campaign. Unless, of course, we are willing to concede that the battle for justice in the case cannot be won. Unless we are willing to concede that the case has indeed, as Anthony Summers feared, “toppled over the boundary between current affairs and history.” [8]

I for one make no such concessions. We are fighting a war about which future historians can in good conscience argue with professional detachment. But be advised: Their judgments of our acts today will be harsh and even damning if we do not comport ourselves as warriors engaged in what is truly a life-and-death struggle. If, instead of making a stand, we fade away without commotion, with all of our failures and all of our sins in full blossom.

I am decidedly not about the cold study of history when I ponder the murder of John F. Kennedy. And I am not, by the way, advocating the elimination from our arsenal of the potent weapons of the historian. Rather, I am pleading for our reconsideration of the collective self, and for our unanimous adoption of a more contextually valid and at the same time emotion-driven self-image.

Who are we?

We are the Lakota—of AIM. We are the Jews—of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We are the Viet Cong—of Tet.

We must know ourselves to be freedom fighters. [9] We are warriors who will not hesitate to use pages of the Geneva Convention treaties as kindling for the execution pyres for our enemies. With victory will come the spoil of defining “war crimes.”

Let us not fear to know our enemy with equal certainty, even if the enemy too closely resembles us. America is not the enemy. America is the enemy’s victim. Your patriotism is suspect only if you decline to do battle with the brute wrapped in your flag.

We are at war, yet consider: Who do we most often choose to engage? When we level our guns on the Warren/HSCA apologists, proceed to annihilate their arguments to the smug satisfaction of our little squad of irregulars, and then insanely decline to press the advantage, we are in effect shooting the messengers while allowing the true enemy to escape unscathed. Worse, we permit the enemy unimpeded use of its most powerful weapon: time.

Journalists did not kill John Kennedy. Historians did not kill America. Contrary to what you are asked to believe, our enemy is not Gerald Posner and his ilk. How many divisions does Posner have?

Posner’s masters did not set out to sway public sentiment with their manufacture of Case Closed. At least not directly. Rather, their immediate objective was to conscript (and in many cases re-up) into the ranks of lone assassin touts a majority of the world’s most influential journalists and scholars, whose own co-opted “opinions” could in turn continue to preserve and encourage the impotent beliefs of, and deny knowledge to, an undereducated, hapless citizenry.

In essence, this operation was a variation on the intelligence operative’s classic so-called “honeypot” blackmail maneuver, wherein a target is “doubled” after having been lured into a compromising situation (most often sexual in context, but in this case intellectual).

To wit: Once on record as a proponent of the no conspiracy fiction, any one of these movers and shakers inspired to recant by a confrontation with the truth would in effect be confessing prior professional incompetence and personal naiveté. Further, such an act (requiring, alas, reserves of courage and conviction not exactly overflowing from the ranks of the Fourth Estate and academia) would be construed as treason by compromised colleagues left behind in the enemy camp. Retribution no doubt would be swift and terrible.

The degree to which this strategy has succeeded may be measured by cataloging Posner’s dust jacket endorsers. Who should know better. But those original testimonials remain unrescinded (at least publicly). No matter that Peter Dale Scott, Harold Weisberg and others have proven Posner to be a xxxx, plagiarist and traitor to his Constitution.

Once stuck in the honeypot, there is almost never a way out.

But I say that, as the first campaign in our newly declared war’s secret theater, we can and should “redouble” these agents. The truth is on our side. The truth is the most powerful of weapons. Let us hold it, safety off and round in the chamber, to a few temples.

If this tactic is to succeed, our bellicose posturings must leave no doubt as to our mission, strength and will. And they must be backed up by the application of creditable threat: Be warned! We know the truth, and with it we intend to empower former victims who will not find charity in their hearts for their tormentors’ propagandists.

At the same time, we promise meaningful reward: Be saved! All prior sins can be forgiven. If not forgotten.

We extend our own form of blanket immunity to William Styron and Stephen Ambrose and Tom Wicker, not to mention Norman Mailer, Dan Rather and the rest. We rehabilitate them. We commiserate with them, let them off the hook. Stipulate that they were “jobbed” by the most fiendishly clever of foes, that anyone in their position would have behaved similarly. We educate them. Then we force them to choose a side. In other words, we use them. Shamelessly.

Imagine the strategic advantage afforded by a press conference at which Posner’s early champions come forward en masse to tell the world not just that their initial endorsements of Case Closed were the wrongheaded products of gross manipulations, but also that they now will devote themselves tirelessly, on behalf of the public they have served so poorly for so long, to the search for the whole truth in the open case of President Kennedy’s assassination.

The most important benefit of this campaign? We will have established a precedent for the adoption of that tactic most unpalatable, yet indispensable to victory, in armed conflict with a ruthless foe: utilization of the enemy’s own darkest methods. For total war cannot be waged victoriously by a combatant whose actions are burdened by self-imposed moral restraints not suffered by the opposition.

Were any pieties in evidence in Dealey Plaza that day?

Next, we must become master shapers of public opinion. Noam Chomsky has observed that propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. We must appeal to the hearts and minds—in that order—of the people. We need another JFK, another great work of propagandistic art to get the juices flowing. But this time, instead of contenting ourselves with Take that! victory celebrations, premiere galas, and public television debates of semiotic minutiae, we must storm through the gates that such art will have battered down. Use the truth to liberate the townsfolk. Demonstrate kinship with them. Educate them. Enlist them in our crusade. Promise, and be prepared to deliver, great rewards for their service, including meaningful re-enfranchisement and true ownership of their country.

Thus armed with a terrible resolve, certain of our enemy, emboldened by our newfound allies, let us take the initiative and choose the field. And that field is not Dealey Plaza, where the enemy would have us fight ad infinitum the conspiracy/no conspiracy battle. Which we have won, but which will not amount to a true victory until we demonstrate the courage to accept it as such and press the strategic advantage it offers.

We outnumber the enemy. We outgun the enemy. We can be defeated only by our closely held fears and self-deceptions. And by our unwillingness to feel.

A CALL FOR PASSION

We must understand that, as far as our work is concerned, the repression of passion assures ultimate failure.

In his memoir, A Drinking Life, Pete Hamill recalled the reactions of the Irish to the news of President Kennedy’s death. Hamill was touring Ireland when the word came.

“I let out a wail, a deep scary banshee wail, primitive and wounded, mariachi wail, Hank Williams wail, full of fury and painkids were wailing nowbut I turned, ashamed of my pain and my weeping, and rushed into the night. All through the Catholic neighborhood called Andersontown, doors were opening and slamming and more wails came roaring at the sky, wails without words, full of pagan furies as old as bogs. I wanted to find my father, wanted to hug him and have him hug me. But I careened around dark streets, in the midst of the wailing. I saw a man punch a tree. I saw a stout woman fall down in a sitting position on a doorstep, bawling. I ran and ran, trying to burn out my grief, my anger, my consciousness. I found myself on the Shankill Road, main avenue of the Protestant district. It was no different thereI saw a man kicking a garbage can over and over and over again in primitive rage. I saw three young women heading somewhere, dissolved in tearsThere was a documentaryabout Kennedy’s trip to Ireland in May, smiling and laughing and amused, promising at the airport to come back in the springtime and I thought of the line from Yeats, What made us think that he could comb gray hair?” [10]

We are as obliged by our special knowledge—and by the very fact that we are alive to comb gray hair—as was John Fitzgerald Kennedy obliged by his privilege, to do the good that others have not the power to do.

We can begin by looking the nation searchingly in the face. By treating its deep disease.

By kicking over a garbage can.

1. A word may be in order concerning Keats’ currently fashionable Negative Capability “of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without irritable reaching after fact or reason.” The usefulness of this quality as an editing medium for the refinement of our investigative focus is defensible: so many possibilities, so little time. Yet it is the very discomfort of which the poet wrote that gives rise to the resolve required to overcome the clever bastards who would mire us in false mystery. And since both “fact” and “reason” as Keats would accept the terms remain firmly within our reach, the adoption of Negative Capability as a defining principle of our efforts would be morally unacceptable. We have no right to the luxury of not knowing.

2. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation. (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 1993, p.29).

3. John Horgan, The End of Science. (New York: Addison-Wesley Melix, 1996, p. 266).

4. Was there a “Gulf of Tonka” resolution?

5. Korczak Ziolkowski, a self-taught sculptor who had worked on the Mt. Rushmore abomination. The idea for the Crazy Horse monument originally was proposed to him in 1939 by Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear. Work began in June, 1948, and continues today, more than 20 years after Korczak’s death, under the direction of Ruth Ziolkowski and seven of their 10 children. With some of the $20 million raised through donations and tourist fees, they have purchased the mountain and 328 surrounding acres from a semiotically-challenged U.S. government. Yet continued funding is by no means assured. Korczak twice declined $10 million in federal funds, unwilling to give up the nonprofit status of his work and thus jeopardize plans for a medical training center and university for Native Americans envisioned for the base of the fully realized monument. Not to mention the fact that to have taken the cash would have permitted the original thieves to assume legal control of the project. Estimated time of completion: 2050.

6. It should be painfully obvious by now that public debates of multiple version of the Kennedy murder please the murderers no end. The State ultimately is as well-served by fostering the Mob-did-it, Castro-did-it, and/or even CIA-did-it fables as it is by propping up the lone gunman lie. These straw man scenarios amount to so much firewater – grossly effective soporifics that numb the mild but potentially ominous discomforts of an increasingly skeptical electorate and keep all but the most incorrigible of renegades on the reservation. Where they can grow old, look cunning and wise. And know not a damn thing.

7. Gordon A. Craig, The Devil in the Details. The New York Review of Books, September 19, 1996, p. 8.

8. Anthony Summers, correspondence, 1994.

9. Then againRiffing on the Contras, George Carlin mused, “If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?”

10. Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life. (New York: Little, Brown, 1994, pp. 241–242).

I'm going to take the liberty of posting, on a new thread, an essay that I wrote and published in 1993.

"In the Blossom of Our Sins", although dated, addresses many of the points raised recently on this thread.

Charles

While the following is not "about" the assassination, it does speak with simple poetry to the fleeting nature of our time here, and in so doing chastens and hastens us to effect justice.

By the way, jazz singer Jon Hendricks maintains that the lyric is an intentional description of the so-called NDE -- near-death experience.

"Dancing in the Dark"

by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz (from "The Band Wagon")

Dancing in the dark 'til the tune ends

We're dancing in the dark and it soon ends

We're waltzing in the wonder of why we're here

Time hurries by, we're here and we're gone

Looking for the light of a new love

To brighten up the night, I have you love

And we can face the music together

Dancing in the dark

Charles

Charles Drago

I feel you are absolutely right on. I have been criticized constantly for continuing to repeat this Z film, is why this "investigation" has not been concluded.

Charlie Black

To be clear: I do not argue that the Z-film and the controversy it was produced (again, according to my hypothesis) to engender are greater detriments to our efforts than, say, the forged/not forged autopsy photographs, multiple Oswalds, the backyard photos and the subsequently discovered cut-out version, etc.

The altered Z-film is of zero significance to the "howdunit" question, but of critical significance to the "whodunit" investigation.

Further, and as I have asked from numerous podiums before audiences comprised of many of the best and brightest among us, what will constitute closure for us?

Seriously, I can think of no more important question.

I have suggested and published my own answers, and I am keenly interested in how members of this forum would respond.

When will we be done?

When justice is meted out?

What constitutes justice in this case?

Charles

1. We must constantly differentiate between the howdunit and whodunit questions.

Charles,

I agree with your line of thinking and I believe you've brought an important approach into play. For me, the Zfilm alteration topic has always been a distraction. A long time ago, I came to believe that it simply couldn't be done, given the variables on site. So every time it's brought up, it feels more like an unproductive tangent.

imo, Could there have been a shot from the front? Yes. Could there be conspirators? Yes. But could the Zfilm have been altered (along with dozens of other still and motion films? No way.

Again, it's just my opinion and I'm well aware that many people have brought tremendous experience and effort to bear in investigating that film. But if the effort that went into the Zfilm had been directed toward other areas, who knows what we may know by now?

Mark,

Permit me to suggest an alternative phrasing for your question: "Could the Z-film have been altered without subsequent detection of the alteration?"

The answer: NO!

And the alterationists (sounds like the title of a Caleb Carr novel) knew it, altered it anyway, and facilitated our detection of their fraud.

Their goal, at least in terms of my hypothesis, was to conceal the truth by allowing us to discern their efforts to do so, and as a consequence mire ourselves in decades of argument over a long-settled issue: conspiracy as historical truth.

Charles

Another possibility:

The Z-film has been manipulated brilliantly and with devastating impact as a generator of what I've termed "cognitive dissonance" within the investigative and so-called critical communities. It is one of the paralyzing darts fired into our collective system on Day One.

I submit that it was created to do just that. And more.

I submit that there is no more effective way of covering up the true story than by providing evidence supporting any number of "true" stories. Thus the Z-film may have been altered in ways both subtle and overt, the former yet to be discerned, the latter designed to be discovered and debated ad infinitum.

I submit that the conspiracy was conceived and produced as a drama, with main and supporting (always more interesting: Ruby as Falstaff? Angel and Leopoldo as Rosencrantz and Guidenstern?) characters, sub plots galore, and dramas-within-dramas. The Z-film falls into the latter category ... or perhaps it's our tale's dream sequence.

(This is why "JFK" was so effective an instrument of counter-propaganda: It is high drama, aimed more at the viscera than at the intellect.)

Can I prove any of this? Only indirectly.

I submit the obvious: that the strategic goal of the cover-up was to prolong the howdunit aspect of official and civilian investigations. This task was daunting, given that a multi-assassin ambush would be obvious to all present as it took place and to all who had access to the best evidence (in the Lifton sense) in its immediate aftermath. The most important tactical means to achieve that goal were the production and timed releases of materials crafted to support both main points of view simultaneously.

The Z-film has created significant rifts in the critical community. The public debate over its authenticity has prompted countless opportunities to heap derision on alterationists -- and, by extension, all advocates of the conspiratorial truth. It has helped keep the focus on seemingly endless, repetitive efforts to resolve the long-answered howdunit question, and in so doing insulated the conspirators from serious threats of retribution that would be the products of a subsequent whodunit focus.

We are engaged in a war for historical truth. The Posners and Bugliosis and McAdams and Rahns are tasked with providing intellectual and academic bona fides for the great lie, and thus insuring that a majority of historians will conclude that pro- and anti-conspiracy forces engage on a level playing field.

I submit that the keys to our ultimate success remain as follows:

For the public at large,

1. We must constantly differentiate between the howdunit and whodunit questions.

2. We must declare the former to have been answered beyond reasonable doubt and to the degree of metaphysical certitude.

3. We must reverse engineer, if you will, the proof of the howdunit solution to exclude false sponsors and move as close as we can to the necrotic core of this disease.

Charles

John, you are quite right: YouTube is proving to be an invaluable teaching resource.

From its jazz archives, a few (of many) examples of overt political statements within the music:

John Coltrane – “Alabama” (written in the wake of the Birmingham bombings)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j_TDoOPnIA

Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, Clifford Jordan – “Driver Man” – Part One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iePwDhUGzp0

Part Two

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDhkuT2bhbc...ted&search=

Max Roach and MLK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRbrKSHWAo

Charles

My basic premise: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the JFK assassination who does not conclude that the crime was conspiratorial in nature is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Well stated.

Which category would you put Vincent Bugliosi in?

Well, it cannot be argued the Bugliosi's access to the evidence has been "unreasonable" in any sense.

Not so, alas, his conclusion.

In my Constitutionally protected personal opinion, Vincent Bugliosi is fully aware of the truth of conspiracy, and has chosen to support the lone nut fiction for reasons about which I can but speculate.

Said reasons may include some or all (or none) of the following: he is a victim of blackmail; he is emotionally incapable of turning against the father state; he is paying off an old debt; he has been threatened; he is an egomaniacal contrarian; he has been hypnotized by Charlie Manson.

And before anyone makes the charge: No, I have not read the book I am condemning. Rather, I am condemning its author's baseline presumption of LHO as lone nut, and thus the book is, at best, sophistry.

Charles