Don Jeffries

Jim,

I think this is another reason Trump appeals to a lot of Americans. They are fed up with globalization, jobs being outsourced, factories leaving our shores. While the msm parrots a pro-globalist slant 24/7, the vast majority of the public wants their roads and bridges repaired, and jobs created in their communities. Ross Perot rode an anti-NAFTA wave of support back in 1992, when this "America First" sentiment was even stronger among the public.

Now, I believe Trump is, in fact, a committed globalist/free trader/warmonger like the rest of them. But he's thrown the public enough meat to get their attention. Just imagine what a real populist could do, without holding back at all, and with more sincerity.

JFK's Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress were both designed to enable citizens of sovereign countries to determine their own fates. As he said about Vietnam, "In the final analysis, it's their war to win." That kind of internationalism inspires instead of intervening. I think he truly appreciated George Washington's advice about "friendly relations with all, entangling foreign alliances with none."

We absolutely need to keep the case current, and connect the dots between what happened in Dallas, to what happened in the Ambassador Hotel, and in the air near Hyannisport, on 9/11 and every significant event of the past fifty years. This is what I tried to do in my book. The JFK assassination didn't occur in a vacuum. We are dealing with massive, organized corruption.

I would be shocked to see anything out of Hollywood that doesn't strictly adhere to the official narrative, or at best only deviates slightly (and inaccurately), in the manner of a Lamar Waldron.

The more times goes on, the more I appreciate the courage it took for Oliver Stone to make JFK.

Cliff,

I doubt either Trump or Bernie get nominated. And as I noted in my blog article, while I agree with a lot of Bernie's rhetoric, he loves the military and our perpetual wars way too much for my liking.

We never have any true pro-peace candidates.

Trump saying Oswald acted alone was about as predictable as it gets. No candidate is going to be allowed to say otherwise, or to express doubt over the official story of 9/11 or any other event. Like Jim D., I suspect Trump knows there was a conspiracy. After all, Roger Stone was running his campaign and Jesse Ventura is a long time friend who said he'd be proud to be Trump's V.P.

As I wrote recently on my blog https://donaldjeffries.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/our-bipartisan-foreign-policy-is-all-war-no-peace/ once the concept of a "bipartisan foreign policy" was sold to the sheeple, any pro-peace candidate from either of the major parties became an impossibility. After all, if we're perpetually at "war," and all politicians swear to a "bipartisan" approach on foreign affairs, no candidate can be expected to criticize that "war." Look at what happened to Bradley Manning, for simply exposing wrongdoing.

I've agreed with much of the populist-tinged rhetoric from Trump, but have a hard time taking him seriously. The only candidate in either party who is not an extreme warmonger is Rand Paul. Coincidentally or not, Paul's poll numbers have been the most negatively impacted from Trump's ascension to the top of the heap. I've never trusted these pre-election polls, and simply refuse to believe that Paul has less support than the likes of Carson, Kasich, Fiorina, Christie, etc.

As always when it comes to elections, we really have no choices.

Thanks for the kind words, Douglas. I really appreciate your support.

Thanks, Douglas, for spreading the word.

Pat, of course the back wound on the Fox photo is lower than the throat wound, but the location best supported by the evidence is even lower, and thus demolishes the official shooting scenario more effectively.

The only evidence for the higher back location is highly suspect, because it also shows the intact back of JFK's head. I know you discount all the medical people who reported seeing a huge blowout in the back of JFK's head, but not that many researchers (outside of LNers) do.

There is no logical reason for researchers to abandon the most obvious indicators of conspiracy. We have already seen how so many pro-conspiracy witnesses have been dismissed by those who claim to doubt the official story. If we place misguided trust in the autopsy photos and x-rays, while ignoring the testimony of so many witnesses, we are discarding some of the strongest evidence that there was a conspiracy.

Why are we trusting these tainted sources? Nothing about JFK's autopsy was legitimate. Harold Weisberg wrote Post Mortum on this theme alone, and David Lifton devised his body alteration theory based upon it. Pat has done some good work, but his willingness to downplay all the medical personnel who reported a huge hole in the back of JFK's head (something we don't see at all in the official photos) and use the higher back wound location, when the holes in JFK's clothing, the death certificate, and the original autopsy face sheet all place it at T-3, is something only he can explain.

We should be skeptical about everything in the official record of the assassination, and no aspect of this case is more suspect than the medical evidence, which as Cliff has noted was not prepared properly, to put it as politely as possible.

Mark's point is well taken. The original Tea Party was inspired by the Libertarians who supported Ron Paul. Once the Sarah Palins and Scott Walker-types climbed on board, it was obviously not for the same purposes.

In my view, a legitimate Leftist would be a Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney, rather than a Bernie Sanders (who has supported our foreign escapades far too often) or Elizabeth Warren (big banking "foe" who voted against auditing the Federal Reserve). A Ron Paul would be a legitimate Right-Winger, rather than any of the neo-cons fighting it out among the Republican presidential candidates.

We've seen this for decades. Huey Long would have done things quite differently than FDR. Robert Taft would have been far different from Eisenhower. RFK's candidacy was a much bigger threat to the establishment than McCarthy's was, as I delineate in my book. The powers-that-be take legitimate protest efforts, from the Vietnam anti-war movement, to Occupy Wall Street, to the Tea Party, and twist them to suit their own purposes.

I think there are varying degrees of "extremism," on both the Left and Right. As I describe in my book, much of these movements have been infiltrated and effectively controlled by government agencies like the FBI for a very long time. Certainly, there were legitimate zealots in the counterculture movement of the '60s, for instance, but the fact that Timothy Leary and Gloria Steinem, among other Leftist leaders, were connected to the CIA ought to give us pause for thought.

My point is that groups on both the Left and Right are used for the typical nefarious purposes by the powers-that-be. An undercover FBI agent, for example, was one of the four "Klan" members riding in the car where the shots that killed Civil Rights worker Viola Ziuzzo originated from. Malcolm X's bodyguard was an undercover agent, so was Fred Hampton's. The list goes on, and many more examples can be found in my book.

If the JBS, or any band of anti-Castro Cubans and "rogue" CIA agents had tried to assassinate JFK, I don't believe they'd have been successful. This is primarily because the Secret Service would have been doing their job. Did Walker and co. really have the power to force all those agents to stand down in Dealey Plaza? To write books still promoting lies about JFK and his assassination fifty years later? The JBS has never been powerful in terms of influence on public policy, and neither has any other "extreme" right wing group, for a very long time. Former Klan members like Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and Senator Robert Byrd had to change their politics entirely, and disavow any ties to them, in order to achieve their notoriety.

We have some obvious suspects who must have been involved in the assassination of JFK. We know that J. Edgar Hoover directed the cover up. An honest government official, even if he despised the Kennedys (as he did), wouldn't have gone to the trouble of re- copying all those documents, in an obvious effort to make them less legible, unless he was overtly suppressing information. McGeorge Bundy should be suspect on two fronts; first, for drafting NSAM 273 while JFK was still alive, when he had to have known it contradicted his policy on Vietnam, and also for telling all the cabinet members flying back to Washington, D.C. that there was no conspiracy, at a time when no investigation at all had been conducted, and he was far from the scene, in the White House Situation Room. Emory Roberts, Bill Greer and Roy Kellerman, along with the other Secret Service agents, should have been grilled mercilessly by any honest investigators.

This is not a simple "good" liberal killed by "bad" conservatives type of Hollywood script. If that were the case, the other "good" liberals, the supposed friends of the martyred Kennedy, would have left no stone unturned in exposing the culprits. They would have been led by his close cronies in the press, like Ben Bradlee, childhood friend of Richard Helms. Instead, all those "good" liberals continue to cover up the truth, while still clearly opposing the JBS, the Tea Party, or any other right-wing group. Unless every alleged liberal is completely phony, then their loyalties would like elsewhere. Are they really covering up for their political enemies? Because either they are incapable of understanding the data here, or they are covering up. What else explains Stephen King, a lifelong liberal from JFK's neck of the woods, defending the lone assassin nonsense? What else would motivate a young actor like James Franco to suddenly declare that he thinks the Warren Report was great? I can tell you emphatically that it wasn't the John Birch Society, the Tea Party, or any other band of right-wingers.

There are deep forces at work here, and in all important political events. I hope I demonstrated that in my book. We cannot have an honest culture when our leaders and our media continue to misrepresent the facts about all these issues. Fingering the Mafia, or Castro, or "rogue" elements somewhere, or racist extremists, just plays into their hands.

The notion that radical right-wing groups, anti-Castro Cubans, or "rogue" CIA elements were behind the JFK assassination is contradicted by everything that followed it.

We live in a politically correct society now; the msm and our pathetic politicians would love to be able to pin JFK's assassination on out of touch, racist elements. I don't think the ghost of Edwin Walker inspired Peter Jennings and ABC, for instance, to produce that monstrosity of disinformation 40 years after the event. I don't think the extreme right-wing is influencing typical liberal celebrities like Tom Hanks and James Franco to publicly proclaim their faith in the long discredited Warren Report.

We can't look at the JFK assassination in a vacuum. A crime of that magnitude required a slew of other crimes (MLK and RFK assassinations, deaths of witnesses, etc.) in order to perpetuate the cover up. If the far Right killed JFK, they didn't accomplish anything, as the Civil Rights Act and other liberal pieces of legislation were passed. If getting rid of Castro was the motive, that didn't work, either, as Cuba effectively disappeared as an American political issue after the death of JFK.

As I wrote in an article for Penn Jones' The Continuing Inquiry over thirty years ago, the John Birch Society and similar right- wing groups have long been marginalized in this country. They didn't have the power in 1963 to get virtually the entire liberal establishment behind the bogus official story, and they certainly don't have the power now to get every television network behind their impossible fairy tale.

Oddly enough, while "liberals" from Stephen King to George Clooney continue to perpetuate the ridiculous myth about what happened in Dallas, the John Birch Society and other far-right groups believed there was a conspiracy from the get-go. Of course, they thought the commies were behind it, but few of them bought the official narrative. Looking at the phony Left-Right paradigm, in my view, sends us scurrying down paths that lead nowhere.

At this point, it should be obvious that the forces who killed the Kennedys are still in power, even if the names are different. This is demonstrated by the manner in which the subject is presented by every organ of the mainstream media, approached by lauded historians, and how all politicians of both parties toe the official line.

Maybe it was just semantics, Pat, but I have a hard time accepting any qualifier less than "impossible" in regards to the SBT.

We have indeed debated the location of the back wound before. And I still have a hard time understanding why you think the HSCA's T-1 location is more credible than the T-3 location, which is supported by the holes in both JFK's shirt and his coat, the death certificate signed by Burkley, and the original autopsy face sheet.

Sure, T-1 is still too low for the SBT to work (setting aside the impossible nature of the theory due to the condition of CE399), but T-3 is where the evidence logically leads us.

Pat thinks it is "highly unlikely" that CE399 caused all those wounds in JFK and Connally? Please produce another bullet anywhere that caused seven wounds, including the shattering of a human wrist (one of the thickest bones in the body), and came out looking like this bullet did. The evidence in the Exhibits, consisting of identical test ammunition fired into various substances, completely contradicts their own untenable conclusion. It is not highly unlikely, it is scientifically impossible.

For whatever reason, good researchers want to ignore or downplay some of the best evidence; the holes in JFK's clothing, for instance. The testimony of all the medical personnel in Dallas. The strong indication by Dr. Perry and others that the throat wound was an entry wound. The list goes on.

I do agree with the statement about the ego-driven nature of the research community, but that doesn't explain or justify anyone studying the evidence thoroughly and still believing in the completely impossible official story.

Thanks for sharing this important article, Jim.

I recent years, there has been a willingness on the part of many supposedly pro-conspiracy researchers to accept these obviously forged photos as legitimate. This epitomizes what I refer to as "neo-con" belief. Oswald's posture alone, the problems with the shadows, and the impossible overkill of posing with both alleged murder weapons and commie literature to boot, should have discredited these fakes a long time ago in the eyes of any credible researcher.

To quote from my book: In 1970, researcher Jim Marrs interviewed Robert and Patricia Hester, who worked at the National Photo Lab in Dallas. They told Marrs that they’d been very busy developing photographs for both the Secret Service and the FBI on the night of the assassination. They particularly recalled seeing color transparencies of the backyard photos, including one in which there was no figure in the picture. A “ghost image” backyard photo was discovered in the 1980s, featuring a surreal white outline of Oswald’s body. This photo, along with ten others that were taken in the backyard without a figure, was found in the files of the Dallas Police Department....

One cannot imagine any other president delivering this kind of speech.

Jim D. has done great work on showing how JFK's record has been misrepresented by the media, establishment historians, and politicians of both major parties. As Jim has also noted, JFK's record even on Civil Rights has been distorted. His televised speech on this subject is still stirring to listen to, but the establishment continues to chant the mantra that he was too pragmatic, too timid to move on the issue.

As I revealed in my book, JFK has been attacked relentlessly not only by the Right, but by most of the Left as well. Few people misrepresent his Vietnam policy more passionately than Noam Chomsky. NSAM 263 appears irrelevant to Chomsky, and to most prominent historians. It's hard to find stronger evidence of his intentions than that directive, combined with all the anecdotal accounts of those who knew him best.

It's ironic that JFK's independence regarding Middle East affairs is now being recognized by most researchers. Michael Collins Piper, who recently passed away, was the first to focus attention on JFK's disagreements with Israel, which were going on behind the scenes in the time period leading up to the assassination. He was shunned by the research community.

I'm glad that Jim is keeping this subject alive. There has been a concerted effort to smear JFK's reputation, and to minimize the importance of his life. The clear inference is; if his life wasn't significant, then why should we even be investigating his death. This can also be seen in the books published by surviving Secret Service agents, attempting to essentially blame JFK for his own assassination, when they should be feeling immense guilt over their failure to protect him.

Not after any prizes or recognition. I do like things to be kept honest and factual and I have an inbuilt distaste for plagiarists.

I did ask Jim to post a link to his essay which he said proved his claim. He hasn't done it yet. How about you? Can you post link showing YOU or ANYONE else denied the 2nd floor encounter ever happened that is dated pre-2001? Can you give a citation from a book published prior to 2001 where the alleged encounter is denied to have taken place?

See... now it's more about you guys insinuating I'm trying to take credit for something I shouldn't and not being able to back up your claims.

Put up or shut up.

The classic voice of the bully shines through in every one of your posts. I doubted the Baker story before I started posting on the internet, Greg. Sorry, I can't retrieve and print out twenty five year old memories. I also have no way of documenting when these doubts first arose in my mind, and I hadn't been published yet, beyond an article in Penn Jones TCI, which didn't touch on this. In your world, this somehow means that I'm trying to steal your thunder. If there are archives of the old DellaRosa forum, my thoughts on this should be there.

Now, IF I am mistaken about when I first expressed doubts about this online, I am perfectly willing to admit that my memory was faulty. Unlike you, I can admit a mistake. It's certainly possible that I wrote about this first on the Lancer forum, for instance. I've written a lot of posts over the years on various forums. If I did so after you'd already talked about it somewhere, then I did so without any knowledge of that, or of you. Like Jim, I had no idea who you were at that point. Of that I am certain.

You really have some hubris, to tell others that YOU know their beliefs, and when they expressed them, better than they do. I'm not claiming to have made some great discovery here; in fact, Vincent Salandria probably ought to get the credit for all of this, because he was the first to suggest that the shoddy cover-up was shoddy on purpose. I don't think anybody is claiming credit for this except you.

Greg,

This is getting ridiculous. I know better than you or anyone else just what I was questioning about the Baker story. I realized, as we all did upon reading the first books on the subject, that the timing of the incident was always a plank in the critic's platform, as Oswald could not have fled from the sixth floor and appeared calm and collected, and probably drinking a coke, four floors below the sniper's nest barely ninety seconds after the shooting.

I had doubts about everything associated with this case by the 1990s, including the alleged Baker/Oswald encounter. It wasn't based exclusively on any testimony; I was simply skeptical that such an encounter seemed credible, based upon the reasons I've listed previously in this thread. I'm not claiming to be the first to doubt it happened. Evidently, you are.

You won't win any prizes for it, but if it makes you feel better, keep claiming credit for being the first to doubt Baker encountered Oswald. But you diminish your credibility further when you continue to maintain that people are mistaken about their own beliefs, and when they first espoused them. Is getting some kind or recognition for this really that important to you?

It sure doesn't sound like anything David Healy has ever written, does it, Jim?

Greg,

Again your responses have the unique ability to ignore what the person you're responding to actually said. My doubts about the Baker encounter obviously do center around it never happening, as indicated by my 1990s-era questioning of why Baker would stop a decidedly non-suspicious-acting Oswald, or why he happened to be the only police officer concentrating initially on the TSBD, while everyone else was rushing to the knoll area. I never mentioned anything about timing.

It's laughable that someone welded so firmly to his own beliefs, and his own curious mission to destroy someone else's theory, can refer to those who disagree with him as being in cages. In over 40 years of researching this subject, I've never encountered anyone else outside firmly committed LNers that is more entrenched in his own cage/box than you.

Greg,

My doubts about the Baker story had nothing to do with timing. As I said, I always found it strange that he would have seen something in Oswald's very innocuous behavior to cause him to pull his gun and confront him. Baker also appeared to be the only law enforcement officer in Dealey Plaza to concentrate on the TSBD initially, while everyone else was focusing on the knoll. You should be credited for your research- I assure you that I would credit you in such cases.

We have steered this thread off-course, as was mentioned earlier. And I agree that Greg Paker rattles a lot more cages than DVP, or any other lone nutter does.

Weisberg and Meagher the only worthwhile early critics? That's ignoring a lot of important people. Without Mark Lane's WC testimony, early support from the likes of Bertrand Russell, and his best-selling book, it's doubtful that the critical community would have received much attention from the mainstream media. Vincent Salandria, without writing a book, remains the dean of the research community in my view. Do you cavalierly dismiss him, too? Shirley Martin, as a simple housewife, devoted untold hours to sifting through the morass that is the official record, and clearing the way for the rest of us to follow, decades later. Their names and their contributions will be remembered long after you've gone. There were plenty of others.

Your arrogant "sure, you did" response to my post about questioning the Baker/Oswald encounter is characteristic of you. What is your obsession about the Baker incident anyhow? If it happened, it represents pretty good evidence that Oswald wasn't in that sixth floor window, doesn't it? What motivation would Baker have to lie, to concoct a story that critics would focus on; here we had the alleged assassin, encountered barely 90 seconds after the shooting, acting calm, cool and collected. That doesn't mean I think it happened; as I indicated, I questioned Baker's story a long time ago, primarily because it made little sense that he'd pull a gun on an employee who was doing nothing suspicious and was hardly the only one left in the building. With or without the Baker story, Oswald wasn't a shooter. Much like your anti-Harvey and Lee crusade, your vehemence about being the original skeptic on this issue seems pointless.

Your admiration of Weisberg, which I share, is fitting. Your personality seems very close to his. Of course, you haven't written lots of important books on this subject, or trudged every day into courtrooms in order to extract documents from unwilling government agencies, like he did. But you are just as enthusiastic as he was about demeaning the contributions of others, and like him yearn to claim credit for yourself where it isn't warranted.

I questioned the Baker/Oswald encounter back in the 1990s on Rich DellaRosa's old forum. I wasn't alone. This isn't something Greg Parker or anyone else recently came up with. The same thing goes for Lee Farley questioning Oswald's alleged bus ride. I questioned that, along with every other aspect of Oswald's supposed post-assassination actions, long before he even started researching this case. And again, there were others who felt the same way.

The original band of critics missed some things, but overall they did a remarkable job of exposing the impossible nature of the official story.

Gary used to email me regularly some years ago. These emails were always responses to my forum posts, and invariably attempted to "correct" me on whatever aspect of the case I'd commented on. Without fail, Gary's "corrections" were of an anti-conspiracy nature. I told him to stop emailing me after he tried to persuade me that the Babushka Lady had not even been filming the motorcade, but merely taking still pictures.

Jack White, who was at the time very close friends with Gary, alleged that he and Dave Perry combined to really disrupt Jim Marrs' class on the assassination back in the early '90s. In fact, it seems that Gary's sudden close association with Perry was instrumental in breaking up his long time friendship with Jack, something that clearly bothered Jack and often this contention flowed out in public, on Rich Dellarosa's old JFK forum.

As Jim D. noted, Gary was an integral part of numerous misleading television documentaries, which each could have been produced by CBS News in the 1960s, and hosted by Walter Cronkite. He did indeed express his belief in conspiracy to me privately, but he never did anything on those shows but promote the Warren Commission's fairy tale.

On the other hand, as others have said, Gary was unfailingly polite and very helpful. Like many of you, I suspect his job at the Sixth Floor Museum influenced his alleged change of opinion quite significantly. Regardless, he was way too young, and my sympathy goes out to his family.

You are the one who sides with the WC on Bogard, not me. I believe the guy.

The Warren Commission believed that Bogard encountered an Oswald imposter? That's what I believe.

And the document that was found by Griggs was not testimony. It was from an early interview. She lied on a number of fronts to the WC, but if you are going to discount everything she ever said because of that, then she also must have lied early on when protesting her husband's innocence. Maybe she was just a compulsive xxxx - but I thought the usual take on Marina was that she lied to the WC because of threats made to her while she was under a form of "house arrest/protective custody". You want to paint her as a compulsive xxxx on everything now simply because it suits your agenda.

Marina's credibility will always be suspect with me, because her testimony was so damaging to Oswald. I can understand why she cooperated with the authorities, and I'm sure she was frightened. But that doesn't explain why, even after she finally went public with her belief that there was a conspiracy, she continued to maintain that she'd taken the obviously fake backyard photos.

The Paines also lied about some things. That doesn't mean they lied about everything, and there is no discernible reason for them to lie on the matters I raised. Again - you dismiss them on this simply on the grounds that it ruins your agenda.

No reason for them to lie? Maybe you're the only researcher out there who thinks that clear indications of Oswald being impersonated aren't strong evidence of conspirators framing their patsy in advance. And the Paines weren't interested in any evidence of conspiracy.

You keep harping about Jack White. Suck it up buttercup. He gave three different stories - 2 to me and yet another to Armstrong. You want to harp about Marina changing her stories and making stuff up, yet give Jack White a free pass. Hypocrite.

I can honestly say I've never been called "Buttercup" before. This is the second time you've used that one on me, but then again you are incapable of making your points without some kind of name-calling. And White didn't give three different stories. But that won't stop you from misrepresenting him at every opportunity. You've very fortunate that he doesn't appear to have any lawsuit-happy relatives that survived him, because your attacks on him border on slander.