John Kelin

Hi all, I learned today that the e-book version of my 2007 book Praise from a Future Generation is now available on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Future-Generation-Assassination-ebook/dp/B00DY0GTVM/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1380209592&sr=8-1&keywords=praise+from+a+future+generation The book is a nonfiction account of the grassroots response to the JFK assassination; i.e., the story of the first-generation critics.

Hi all, I wrote a few words about today on my blog: http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2011/11/jfk-another-anniversary.html

According to my notes of May 24, Moorman said the first shot was followed by two more in quick succession. This is a fusillade that was over in seconds. So, while it might seem like your points are logical, I think they overlook the rapidity of events. True. But that doesn't change the points I was making in my previous post re Mary Ann hearing multiple shots after the head shot.

Mary Ann Moorman did not state in the May 24 interview that the head shot was the first shot. She stated that the head shot was the first one that she heard. Big difference.

I don't find the iantiques site very intuitive or easy to navigate. Go here: http://www.iantique.com/videos ...and most of the JFK shows, including the Moorman one, should be in a group of about ten videos. For some reason the first JFK show is not there. You might have to join the site. I think I did. It's free. Alternately, Joe Backes has linked to the Moorman show from his blog: http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2011/05/mary-moorman-interview.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JusticeForKennedy+%28Justice+For+Kennedy%29

David, I started setting my replies in a distinctive font, but I think that could get messy very quickly. So I've deleted previous remarks and am starting fresh. I agree that there is more here than meets the eye, but I don't really know the details. I first heard about this event the same way everyone else probably did -- an item on the PRNewswire dated May 5. As soon as I realized it was near my home, I made a few phone calls and was soon talking to Gary Stover, the show's host. The whole thing seems rather incongruous, I said: does Mary Ann Moorman now live in the Denver area? No, he said, she's still in Texas (Dallas I think). As I understand it, an antiques dealer associated with the Brass Armadillo met her over the holidays, the most recent ones I gather. How he happened to meet her, I don't know. (I can't think of his name offhand, but if you have seen the other iantique.com JFK shows that have run through the month of May, he's the camera expert in the very first one.) So that's the apparent connection. One thing, I guess, led to another. They paid for Mrs. Moorman and her husband to come up here, but frankly I'm not sure who "they" is. But yes, she wants to sell the original print. Without checking my resources -- a risky thing to do -- I think Ray Marcus wrote in his #5 Man monograph that Josiah Thompson saw the original around 1967 and noted there had already been some degradation. During the interview, Mrs. Moorman said that Jean Hill had the fixative "gel" in her pocket. She took off across Elm Street almost right away and so the fixative was not immediately applied. I think she said they finally applied it once they got to the press room in the Criminal Courts Building. Elapsed time? Maybe 15-20 minutes, but that's my guess. She didn't say that. Mrs. Moorman also says during the interview that the Sixth Floor had the original photo in a vault for about 15 years, but that she has since retrieved it and has it stored in another vault elsewhere. As for why she's selling it now, and whether it is to coincide with the 50th anniversary...I don't know. I heard her use the phrase, "They say the fiftieth anniversary is coming" several times (as if there were some doubt about it), but there was no apparent linkage. As I noted previously, Mary Moorman's location in Dealey Plaza has never been an interest of mine. With that caveat, and not knowing whether her statements the other night contradict anything she might have previously said...her remark about the street not being a safe place to be certainly seems reasonable. Wherever she was at the moment she took the picture, she would not have known she was in the line of fire. (And I don't think there's any "if" about a grassy knoll shooter.) She said, and Jean HIll said, and I think photos bear out, that after taking the picture, she fell down. She addresses this in the video. She said a cop came up to her and said something like, "I thought you were the young lady who had been hit." As far as I know, there were no "representatives" from the Sixth Floor Museum on hand. As for Mrs. Moorman's "current living situation, physical, medical, etc"...she still lives in Texas, as noted. Her husband was with her and I met him, too. Mrs. Moorman seemed like an average 78 year old woman: no obvious health issues, but no spring chicken, if you will. During our post-interview chat, when I was one of several people hovering about trying to get a word or three in edgewise, I mentioned Richard Trask's book -- and dang, I'm sorry, I can't remember the context now. But she unhesitatingly recalled his name, adding something like "He sent me a copy of his book." Earlier she had said that she does not read ANY assassination books, and reiterated that now -- pointedly including Trask's. I think it's worthwhile that Mary Moorman has gone on the record again, since there have been so few instances of her doing so. (She says in the video that she didn't testify to the WC because she twisted her ankle. She called her WC contact and cancelled a scheduled deposition, and then never heard from them again. Implicit in this, though she didn't say it, is that she would have been a willing witness.) I think the most important things to come out of this May 24 interview include her statements that she heard three shots -- and that the first one she heard was when she took her picture. Officially, of course, two shots had already been fired. (In her 11-22-63 statement she said "I heard three or four shots in all," but no mention of when she heard the first.) Even so, this is hardly earth shattering. Equally important is her observation on May 24 that the limo slowed almost to a stop right after the fusillade. At the end of the interview Mary Moorman said, "I believe there's a whole lot more to the story than has been told," but then, the polls show us that most people think that.

The following is presented for whatever it may be worth. The Brass Armadillo, where Mary Ann Moorman’s interview took place on May 24, is only about half an hour from where I live, so I went down there for the webcast. By now the interview has been posted to the iantique website, so I won’t belabor any of that. But I did get to talk with Mrs. Moorman for a few minutes afterward. First, though, I should point out I’ve never been interested in where she was standing when she took her famous photo, so my questions about that were probably not too incisive. During the webcast, Moorman told Gary Stover that she stepped into the street twice, to take pictures of two motorcycle cops in the motorcade, both of whom she knew. Stover then asked if she stepped into the street for her famous photo. My scribbled notes have her replying, “I’m pretty sure I stepped back just on the very edge of the curb to get on the grass.” I thought that was a little ambiguous. She stepped back before or after taking the picture? Stepped back after taking one of the cop photos? So after the webcast, I asked her about this explicitly. She answered that she took the picture from the curb, adding that between the presidential limo and the motorcycle cops there wasn’t a lot of room in the street. It wasn’t safe. One of the themes of the May 24 interview, it seemed to me, was discrediting Jean Hill. I know many find her a problematic witness. I don’t have a strong opinion about her. Haven’t read The Last Dissenting Witness. I was especially interested in comparing the Hill and Moorman accounts of being taken to that press room by Jim Featherstone. In particular, I wanted to ask her about Jean Hill’s statement, which I’d just re-read in the WC volumes. I’d scrawled an abridged version into my notes, which I read to Mrs. Moorman. Jean Hill is telling the WC about her encounter with a man she took to be a Secret Service agent. “They keep saying three shots,” she testified telling this man. “I said, I know I heard more…he said, ‘Mrs. Hill, we heard more shots too, but we have three wounds and we have three bullets, three shots is all that we are willing to say right now.’” [WC vol. 6, pp. 220-21.] Moorman told me she had no recollection of this exchange. But she acknowledged the scene was very chaotic. She could have missed it.

I got the same email, although it just said "Bernice" -- no last name. I didn't take the bait. A year or so ago I got a nearly identical message, this time using the first and last name of a well known person within the JFK community. I didn't take the bait on that one, either, although this email was slightly more convincing. Within a few hours the JFK person found out, and sent around a message saying no, he hadn't been mugged in Europe, beware of the fraud. I second that. Beware.

I had not known that The Realist is online now. For anyone who (like me) is interested in early assassination criticism I would suggest you check out "The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald," from the September 1964 issue. http://www.ep.tc/realist/53/12.html The issue contains some other interesting stuff, too. (See "The Crackpot and the Evidence" on page 4.) You can access its cover page by omitting the "12.html" from the above URL, then click through the issue page by page. I called Paul Krassner when I was researching the early critics, because the copy I had of "Unsinkable" was truly horrid. He hinted that he had all issues up in his attic, or in storage, something like that -- accessible, but a major inconvenience for him to get to. Eventually I got a better copy from the UC Santa Barbara library's rare books room. But this online version is even cleaner.

Hi all, I seldom post here but lurk almost daily, and have been following this thread with interest. Insofar as what to call this new effort, I have two cents to throw in. With all due respect to the AIB and everything it accomplished, I would suggest that after thirty-something years, it has no real name recognition with the general public. So I don't think there is any compelling reason to use it. Likewise, with all the known differences of opinion between existing organizations, I don't see any reason to use COPA, Lancer, or whatever for this purpose. I would propose some new name be dreamed up -- the Fiftieth Anniversary Coalition, or something along those lines. Something baggage-free, to reflect what I hope would be some new sense of at least temporary unity. Beyond that, I think Roger Feinman's initial comments are excellent, in particular his "two general concepts." John Kelin

Hi all, I drop by this forum on an irregular basis, so I don't know whether the following has been posted. My apologies if it already has. Ray Marcus, an early WR critic, called me this afternoon (12-17) with the news that Hal Verb died a couple of weeks ago, on December 4. He had been in a hospice for the last six months or so. Like Ray, Hal Verb was an early WR critic. He lived in San Francisco. I met him on several occasions, but when I was researching the early critics a few years back he did not reply to my query letters, so I don't know much about him. He worked with Harold Weisberg for a time, I think, and is mentioned in "Oswald In New Orleans." I think he taught a class about the assassination at San Francisco State College...? Not sure about that though. I remember Hal speaking on the grassy knoll at a remembrance ceremony a number of years back. He modified a familiar quote usually associated with the CIA: "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you MAD." John Kelin

The following is an excerpt from a letter to the New York Times Book Review, written in response to a review of Reclaiming History. It was signed by Jefferson Morley, Norman Mailer, Anthony Summers, and David Talbot, and published on June 17, 2007. <quote> Bryan Burrough’s laudatory review of Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the Kennedy assassination (May 20) is superficial and gratuitously insulting. “Conspiracy theorists” – blithe generalization – should according to Burroughs be “ridiculed, even shunned ... marginalized the way we’ve marginalized smokers.” Let’s see now. The following people to one degree or another suspected that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy, and said so either publicly or privately: Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon; Attorney General Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy’s widow, Jackie; his special adviser dealing with Cuba at the United Nations, William Attwood; F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover; Senators Richard Russell (a Warren Commission member), and Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart (both of the Senate Intelligence Committee); seven of the eight congressmen on the House Assassinations Committee and its chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey; the Kennedy associates Joe Dolan, Fred Dutton, Richard Goodwin, Pete Hamill, Frank Mankiewicz, Larry O’Brien, Kenneth O’Donnell and Walter Sheridan; the Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who rode with the president in the limousine; the presidential physician, Dr. George Burkley; Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago; Frank Sinatra; and the “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt. All of the above, à la Burrough, were idiots. No so, of course. <end quote>

Hi all, The Feb 2009 issue of Sojourner magazine has an article called "Tackling the Unspeakable," about the incoming Obama administration and James W. Douglass's "JFK and the Unspeakable." It can be found online at: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magaz...the-unspeakable There is an accompanying video interview with Jim, which can be found here: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magaz...or-jim-douglass John Kelin

Hi all, H.C. (Harry) Nash, who wrote the Penn Jones biography "Citizen's Arrest," and who also wrote the Foreword to my own book, sent me a poem he wrote in the aftermath of Barack Obama's election. He said it would be okay if I posted it here. John Kelin GRANT PARK, CHICAGO, 40 YEARS LATER a grandmother named Madelyn Dunham could not be watching, & Rosa Parks could not be watching, & Jack Kennedy could not be watching, & Goodman, Schwerner, & Cheney could not be watching, & Malcolm could not be watching, & Martin & Coretta could not be watching, & Bobby could not be watching, & Fred Hampton could not be watching, & John Lennon could not be watching, but hundreds & thousands of millions were watching from wherever they find themselves around the globe, & old men & women of all colors & faiths were watching, & young women & men of all faiths & colors were watching, & children whose faces shone as naturally as unpolluted sunlight were watching, & what is radiant in the hearts of disenthralled & oppressed people everywhere brought fresh beauty to their faces, & in countless cases tears to their eyes, & what has been bottled up in their minds will from this moment constitute new auras from villages to reservations to towns to impossibly populated cities around the globe when they awaken the very next time, when they rise & shake off their downtrodden resignations & foolish failures & proclaim their identities & their dreams of solidarity & justice the very next time— the mornings at hand, the noontides at hand, the pregnant afternoons at hand, the early evenings at hand, the nights resonant of desire & agape at hand, the midnights with sleep or sleeplessness at hand, their food & tools at hand, their calling out of births & (natural) deaths at hand, their animals & pasturelands at hand, their mountains at hand, their rivers & streams at hand, their lovers & companions & even their distant relatives at hand, their past & present & futures at hand. Grant Park 40 years later— a man of Kenya & Kansas, Hawaii, Chicago, reason & peace, will & warmth, ways & means, here & now, & you & me . . . --hcn (11-5-08)

Thanks for your reply. If I'm not mistaken, I posed this same question about Dulles to another JFK forum some years back, and Martin gave me the same answer. Obviously, Dulles's statement, or alleged statement, is one of those that has a lot of potential weight attached to it. And it troubles me that I've never seen a source for it. In a similar vein, I looked a long time for the JFK quote about splintering the CIA into a thousand pieces -- finally found it in a 1966 New York Times article. As I recall, it was unattributed, which likewise makes me uneasy. Both quotes may well be accurate, but without proper sourcing start seeming more like urban myths.