David Andrews

Non-prescription, clear-lens glasses have been available a long time - for "fashion," for disguise, for actors to wear. I own a pair, acquired in the 1980s. Lansdale's hair looks like Dealey Man's hair in this 1979 interview, Lansdale is 16 years older here. Does Dealey Man look older than Lansdale in1963?

I can't swear that it's Lansdale in Dealey, but that has never looked like Maxwell Taylor from the back to me. No offense to any other opinion. What we need is some good Max-Taylor-from-behind photos. There has got to be a 3/4-shot among press photos somewhere. Max Taylor seems to have been a little shorter than Kennedy, Allen Dulles was about the same height as Kennedy, and looks perhaps four inches taller when photographed beside Lansdale, who was apparently not as tall as that long head makes one imagine he is. "Lansdale" in Dealey Plaza is a few inches shorter than Tall Tramp, especially if TT had lifted his head for the photo. Where does that leave us? P. S. - Lansdale's famously "deformed" left hand can be seen in a photo on the page linked to below. Depending on which Windows version you have, you may need to do some mouse-clicking to see the whole large image, which is a film frame grab: https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=12412.0 A thought: Fletcher Prouty may have been very used to sitting at a desk and watching Lansdale exit a room.

I know, but my point is, every film mentioned in my post was a a box office bomb, including Jackie, for which there were high expectations in the MSM. A trend? Re: your 2.5 x the budget rule - All the figures I had at hand were the IMDB scores, and those are best described euphemistically as approximations, which I presented for comparison. Parkland would have had a negligible ad campaign compared with Jackie, yet they both flopped. Absent worldwide box office and DVD figures, even the whitewash United 93 failed to make 2.5 x its budget, with ticket sales declining after opening weekend: Budget: $15,000,000 (estimated) Opening Weekend: $11,478,360 (USA) (28 April 2006) Gross: $31,471,430 (USA) (30 June 2006)

To put Parkland's attendance figures in perspective, Jackie, budgeted at $9,000,000 (from IMDB - and probably an understatement), made only $13,958,679 (USA) as of 14 April 2017, four months after release. By Hollywood standards, this is not rank failure, but it's a "box office failure," considering that the additional $4 mil that brings it to break-even point was spent on TV and print ads, theater trailers, etc. IMDB lists Parkland as budgeted at $10,000,000, but it made only $652,355 (USA) as of 1 November 2013, one month after release. Presumably IMDB's budget announcement dates reflect the day the picture last played in theaters. The figures do not take in worldwide box office, nor DVD sales and rentals, which the industry depends on to recover the production costs of non-hit movies. Oliver Stone's studiously inoffensive World Trade Center also only broke even. The bland film about RFK's assassination, Bobby, didn't make back its $14 mil production budget, scoring only $11 mil and change, USA. I wonder if there is a general trend here. Would people go to the theater to see conspiracy-minded historical films of the JFK type faster than conventional history/biography? It's something you can't prove, since no US production company is going to buy those type scripts. All conspiracy films now have to be ads for the glamour and necessity of conspiracy.

I've been watching the Jason Bourne movie series for tips on how modern surveillance plays out in fiction/film. The whole series reads like one long ad for how rogue agents and rogue ops penetrate intelligence from the very top to the very bottom, and always will - because good or necessary programs, once developed, go rogue. As I've tried to point out in other posts, with perhaps too much comedy, if rogue ops are ubiquitous and tolerated, what is the difference between rogue ops and actual policy? For instance, what was the distinction between the arms dealing of Ted Shackley and Edwin Wilson in North Africa and the policy-making arrogated to itself by CIA? That Sheckley skated and Wilson was punished as a rogue? The situation repeated itself with different dimensions in the Central America contra war. I don't know the precise history, but I doubt the Bourne series rose to film supremacy without intel consultation and approval. Paul Greengrass, the series' principal director, directed the arguable whitewash United 93.

For what it's worth, Noel Twyman's interview with Roy Hargraves has Hargraves identifying Adrian O'Hare as "Bishop" (pp.22-23 in the .pdf below.) So if it wasn't a migratory alias at the Agency, it was thrown around a lot as disinfo after the assassination. http://larry-hancock.com/roy_hargraves_interview.pdf

Look at the photos of Walker's house in the Kennedy years. Then look up the house today on Zillow. That's rich. That's Clay Shaw rich, and more. A dozen years after the assassination, instead of becoming POTUS or Texas governor, or even mayor of Dallas, Walker wasn't allowed to skate on two lousy morals beefs, even though the complainants were DPD. The fact that he did it twice says something. So does the fact that he had to do it at all. Clay Shaw never had to go that far for a thrill. Nobody even gave Walker high office in the JBS. All the chasing he did to get his once-renounced military pension restored is telling of his financial need. Getting it was a sop thrown to him so he'd slink back into obscurity. P. S. There's two components to "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" The predetermining one is smart.

I think they have this saying down in Texas, which applies to Edwin Walker: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Visual FX breakdown reel from the movie Jackie linked below. "Warning: Contents are graphic." And debatable.

(Re: the article link posted by Doug Caddy above:) Was Roy Cohn a "genuine anticommunist." or an opportunist? Could he have been blackmailed into the anticommunist crusade through the same type sexuality-based extortion that Cohn/Rothstein described? Not that Cohn deserves any excuses.

I would say that a dozen years later Walker couldn't get arrested in Dallas, but...

Once upon a time, I admired The Man who Knew Too Much very much, and dreamed of buying the option so I could write and pitch a screenplay. (A thankless and unprofitable task in the Mockingbird universe ruled by Bob Baer.) I still give the book the benefit of the doubt, as I do Richard Case Nagell, his obfuscations notwithstanding. However, the portrayal of Oswald in the book is infuriatingly vague, and at odds with some of the later scholarship on Oswald in Mexico City, Oswald contra Kostikov, etc. That's a timeline and a set of intentions that needs to be aligned with later research. Dick Russell: Who was Oswald? Did Nagell really confer with Raul and Fidel in Cuba because of him?

Delete, please - posted incorrectly.

As Bob Dylan might say: "How many rogues must a man walk down Before he discovers a plan? How man rogues does it take till he knows Not to blame it on the Ku Klux Klan? How many rogues will it take till he sees That it's CIA to the last man?" The answer, my friend....

As Christopher Walken might say, "You...you got a lotta rogues here, fella. I mean -- a lotta rogues."

There were a few rogues at CIA who worked in a plot to kill JFK. There were a few rogues in Army Intelligence who worked in a plot to kill JFK. There were a few rogues in the Mob who worked in a plot to kill JFK. As Al Pacino might say, "You got a LOTTA ROGUES, FELLA! We are UP TO OUR @#% IN ROGUES, HERE!"

Wait - were LBJ, Cord Meyer, and William Harvey civilians? My remark was to qualify a possible explanation: Sturgis spoke (if it happened this way) for Morales to give Morales deniability. Who the hell would give the world to Frank Sturgis? Only notoriety saved him from a hole in the head.

Detectives Rothstein and Rosenthal appear quite frequently in the past threads on Sturgis on this Forum.

I believe that Hunt's confession admits that he was involved in Dallas, but totally denies the actual circumstances and drags in a combination of plausible villains, some of whom were involved in ways misrepresented by Hunt. I think the line of descent here is: Dulles - Helms/Harvey - Hunt/Morales.

One would think that Sturgis would be subordinate to Hunt, as in the past, and not empowered to offer deals to a CIA officer. An explanation is that Sturgis is now Morales's operative, and Morales left the room so that Sturgis could communicate the offer, giving Morales deniability. Apparently alliances with Sturgis would have been fluid, and Sturgis would again be Hunt's soldier in the Watergate break-in period. A more plausible explanation would be that this incident did not occur, or did not happen as reported, and that Hunt went to work on the Dallas 1963 project under Dick Helms' authority.

Being on the payroll implies conditional ownership. Ask Alex Rorke. However, an agent is - by the CIA book - strictly a foreign national. Because, of course, CIA does not operate domestically. I prefer the word operative. I don't know what the Company prefers.

Frank Sturgis was a gun for hire. Anti-communism paid the best, and he absorbed the Ideology. Why do you think Sturgis fought beside Castro? Because the CIA backed Castro over Batista until Castro rejected us for the Soviets. Where's Gerry Hemming's paperwork? Roy Hargraves'? Bill Seymour's? Nonetheless -- all paymastered by...the company. Like I said, Fiorini was no CIA officer. He didn't need no stinkin' paperwork.

I was speaking generally, Doug. I understand that the ops at the hotel were arrested much later, after police and press investigation. I am not knocking Marita's deposition per se, only asking Jim Hargrove what he makes of the "Oswald" described on the Miami-Dallas car trip, the dates of which Marita is conspicuously vague about.

Paul: Sturgis is arrested at the Watergate with Howard Hunt and James McCord, plus Cuban CIA flunkies. Of course Sturgis/Fiorini isn't a CIA officer, but how is he not "company"?

So, an "Oswald" who drove up from Miami and stayed in a motel with Lorenz, Pedro Diaz Lanz, Orlando Bosch and Frank Sturgis. Jim Hargrove?