David Andrews

I have a fondness for "Executive Action," having seen it in high school just before my Social Studies class took a field trip to hear Mark Lane speak and present the extant Zapruder film. The last time I saw it, earlier this decade on DVD, it still held up as inquiry, and as an alarm against the involvement of financial interests in Kennedy's death. It's an imperfect film, but I think it's as important a bit of revisionist-history cinema on its topic as "A Man Called Horse" and "Little Big Man" are upon the portrayal of the Native American genocide. Plus which, the major actors involved - Burt Lancaster, Will Geer, Robert Ryan - agreed to star because of their own doubts about the Warren Commission.

Mr. Purvis, I am sorry to have wasted your time and that of anyone else who loathes to see a "dead horse" suffer. I merely recounted that, in watching a stabilized Zapruder and consulting the Costella edit frames for the original topic of this thread, I became most convinced that JFK was not paralyzed by a toxin, at least not in the sense of our common experience of paralytic toxins. Doped by a chemo slug? I'd consider it. But this paralysis that people think of is actually dignity, bravery, and responsibility to the office; Kennedy was going to hold himself upright as long as he was conscious. He does not clutch his throat, but involuntarily defends it. Another rifle hit, shocking pain, or nervous system trauma clench his fists, but his hands clearly drop and relax, only to rise and re-clench as pain brings him back to consciousness. Before I joined this forum, I saw some verbal punch-ups here, and some low blows and snide cutting - none of it as divisive as in several recent threads. I swore to myself - being among the unpublished - that I would back away diplomatically and deferentially from anyone who sought a quarrel, even from low comments by middling players with agendas, in order to maintain some dignity beside people whose work I respect. In this case, however, I am going to suspend those fine considerations. Lyndal Shaneyfelt, FBI, Warren Commission? JFK reaching for his lapels with fists clenched in pain? Tripe, all of it. Have it for your own supper. "Antiquated questions' is an able description of the interests that you have promoted over years of posts. I apologize, however, to anyone who thinks that I have diverted this thread.

My earliest knowledge of Judyth came with Haslam's book. Is he aware of the Vary contretemps here, and does he have any comment? Loaded question. I am, though, glad that Haslam's book alerted readers to the Ochsner connection to Dallas, surely highly questionable due to Ochsner's involvement in the "Portrait in Red" LP of Oswald's sheep-dipped broadcasts - a smoking gun if ever there was an event worthy of the metaphor. Re: Bill Kelly. In another thread I waggishly suggested a new book, Judy and Judyth. But it is odd to have these two secret sharers of an identity dropped into a milieu rife with Maurice Bishops, Nagell/Hidells, Harveys & Lees, and dueling Marguerites. Odd? Or at par for the course?

Cliff - of course he's grabbing at his throat. I believe he's hit there, frontally, just after the Stemmons sign. Why are his fists clenched, instead of clutching the throat? Possibly a near-simultaneous back wound. My point is that he is not paralyzed as if by curare. His hands descend, he turns toward Jackie. The hands go back up to throat level. Upon the head wound, the right hand flails forward, resembling a reach forward (it isn't one). I don't find these motions, nor his head and body movements, showing what others describe as paralysis. Let's not forget that this was the leader of a country, on parade. Dignity in movement would have been self-programmed in him. This was also a brave man, who knew the dangers he was heading into. Did he fail to shield his wife? So did Connally. Kennedy's throat and back wounds were more traumatic - thus more shocking to him - and the throat wound more debilitating, causing him to fight for consciousness and forget all but his duty before the public. He stopped grabbing for his throat because he was losing consciousness. That's when the right arm descends, and the wrist begins to go limp. Fighting for consciousness, both hands come up as if to protect the throat, and he turns to Jackie for support and attention. Consciously, and perhaps more unconsciously than even he might have predicted, he bore his wounds with dignity, and held himself upright until the fading of sensation. That's the only "paralysis" that I see. The hand and body motions demonstrate not only continued ability to move, but also a reticence to move too much as the bullets struck him in front of a crowd.

Double post - very sorry.

Item: in looking at the stabilized Zapruder and Costella's edit for this thread, it seems to me that the motions of JFK's hands and arms, especially the right hand between (circa) frames 240-320, give lie to the notion that JFK is paralyzed by a toxin. Watch as Kennedy's right hand unclenches, drops limply through reaction to trauma, then rises to the level of his throat again - as if the pain there is so intense (possibly felt more as his head declines), he is guarding the area in a childlike expression of woundedness. The right hand remains throat-high until the head wound, after which it seems to reach out involuntarily. Hardly the motor behavior of a man paralyzed by more than painful and shocking wounds.

Is JFK's head not significantly declined at the moment of the rear head wound (frame 313 in extant Z-film), making a frontal throat entrance difficult just then?

For general discussion: Has Ed ever done any photo investigation, or other research in Tulane University's records, to try and ID or get info on the couple who impersonated Judyth Vary Baker and her "husband" when he met them there in the early 1970s?

Mr. Lane, I also first saw the extant Zapruder film at one of your college co-presentations on Dallas in 1974. Your pioneering book is one of the proofs that some of the very best and most resourceful works on historic events are written soon after them. You are an exemplar, and a catalyst.

Clint Hill, What are you up to? Don't you know What you saw So close? So...

Thanks, Tom, and sorry for the misnomer.

B. A. Copeland points out the DIA link in its representative, Capt. Edwards. From the organizational apparatus below the text - apparently there was no meeting between Bush and Edwards, and the information was conveyed by them orally to an FBI subordinate, not Hoover. So, I admit, any insult or threat motivating the memo would be indirect. Still - do we often see Bureau documents released to investigating committees without significant redactions of covert operatives' names? Street-thug informants get more protection under black Magic Marker cover. What protection did DIA officers get in FBI memos? Are their names redacted, if recorded at all? This is why the memo's appearance in the HSCA records, unredacted, has to be evaluated, hopefully to determine time of placement, and formal consonance with other documents in which covert sources are named. If genuine, we have to look for consonance with Hoover's behavior in other memos. The "substance of the foregoing information" that Bush and Edwards provided seems to refer only to paragraph 3, in which either CIA or DIA reveals it has an informant in the pro-Castro movement. Information in earlier paragraphs seems to be attributed to FBI sources. Link to memo: http://www.tomflocco.com/Docs/Jfk/HooverFbiMemo.htm I corrected an error in post #31: Len Colby wanted more explication, not Tom Scully. Mea culpa. Len asks what we "know" about Bush's Zapata-CIA connection? Admittedly, much is inferential, much anecdotal. I have to check William Pawley for comparison. Do we call him an "operative," in the sense of being an unpaid associate for mutual interest? Was Bush, like Pawley, a financier or facilitator of covert ops? (Did they each loan out some boats?) How much of what we accept about Pawley are we accepting by inference and unevidenced anecdote? That I'm going to look at, since I called for a methodology of consonance in textual matters.

For Len Colby: "If the memo stands up, I'm betting that Hoover was covering his chips against the Agency, or that Hoover felt insulted or threatened by something Bush had to say during his visit. Why else blow someone's cover that way?" I should have explained what I meant by "that way." I know that the memo didn't see daylight for many years. But why would Hoover commit Bush's name and affiliation to paper at all, in an FBI organizational document, unless he suspected some risk to himself or to the Bureau in letting the contact with "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" go unreported? That's why this document needs more scrutiny - to judge if it is genuine (unlike the Dallas PD hoax memo leaked to Mark Lane, e.g.). Once that is decided, we can better judge if the hypothesis of risk protection is a plausible motive or not. Based not on any documentary film, but on Bush's Zapata Oil activities, involving BOP or not, I'm inclined to answer the question that started the thread by saying, It's my opinion that Bush was a CIA operative, officer, or both, during the 1960s. I wonder if the memo will someday bear up my opinion. I tried to give a plausible hypothesis for Hoover taking the effort to "out" Bush - like Valerie Plame - within the FBI, and possibly for extramural application of the memo to disarm a future threat.

The "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" memo ought to be investigated stringently for fraud, especially in light of the other allegation that Bush turned in to the FBI a right-wing acquaintance who supposedly threatened JFK. If the memo stands up, I'm betting that Hoover was covering his chips against the Agency, or that Hoover felt insulted or threatened by something Bush had to say during his visit. Why else blow someone's cover that way? It is ridiculous, in knowledge of the Zapata Oil involvement with BOP, to think that GHWB was not an Agency operative, or officer, in the 1960s.

Just a thought, upon watching Ed Haslam's interview filmed by Daankbaar: Why not a photo-investigative search for the woman who impersonated Judyth Vary Baker, to Haslam and others, at Tulane University in 1972? Colleges have always been photo-happy over their visiting faculty and other temporary associates. Perhaps Tulane yearbooks and promo materials for the U. and its affiliated programs could turn up a picture for Haslam to ID, unless she and her "husband" - another intel Fun Couple like the Hunts and Paines? - were under deep cover. A new book - Judy and Judyth?

I have never been in the services, but in a lifetime of looking at war photos, I have many times seen in shots of casual or tired soldiers, of many nations and eras, examples of them holding their rifles in cavalier manner - by the barrels, with the butts angled behind their boot heels, as if the weapons were being dragged; or in this potentially hand-endangering pose, which I plucked from much earlier in this thread: I'm not going to debate the superior firearms etiquette of the Marine, but neither this nor the hunting photo rifle grip seem new under the sun, after seeing a hundred or so shots of GIs during lulls in Pacific island fighting during WW II. Stuff happens. Soldiers get careless, and even wound themselves. Oswald's .22 pistol wound?....

Post moved to "JVB in Exile" thread.

Excellent piece, though no one should pin money on Patrick Fitzgerald as the Garrison of our time. All prosecutors work for systems, after all. Let this not detract, though, from the fine material above.

FYI, Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo was named, some time previous to 1963 (and, I believe, prior to the Roswell UFO incident), Roswell Park Hospital, in honor of turn-of-the-century surgeon Dr. Roswell Park, who had founded this early cancer research and treatment facility under another name in 1898. Park's other claim to fame lay in being pressed into service to tend the dying president William McKinley, assassinated in Buffalo in 1901.

Was the upright shape in Hughes a torso in an Oswald-style white T-shirt, standing just behind the gun-rest boxes, with the two blurred together? (See post #33. I meant to put the second image in here.) I'm suggesting that the next photoanalytical steps are to look for torso/T-shirt indices, and to determine if this body and face align realistically. Other people may have wiser suggestions. NB from the Devil's Advocate: If you're planning to peg one window as the sole sniper's nest, and can count on no intrusion by security, it's not a bad idea to stand up a man-sized stack of boxes to provide some trompe l'oeil confusion.

What is the light-colored columnar shape in the easternmost window (as seen from the street in Hughes), in the foreground behind the window frame, and thus below the face depicted? EDIT: I'm just trying to determine if people believe that this perpendicular shape (in image at top of post #1 and at top of post #27 just below) is a standing person's torso in the window frame, and if people feel that it aligns with the face image.

It's a tempest in a teapot, and the charge is a formality. It was just another art event, somewhere beneath Philip Petit wirewalking between the Twin Towers.

Perhaps the literary solution would be for the research community to compile a response book: letters (posthumous, of course), to Jackie and Jack, representing our perceptions and questions and wishes for truth and peace. If some of the people on this Forum could not pull this off with seriousness and tact - who could?

It's strange - some of the people in that video look like hired extras, in that they don't seem to be responding to the strip, unless it's the cameraman following her that seems to make it "legit" and not some desecration or lunacy. Lending some credit to a staged-shoot theory is the apparent early hour, when traffic and pedestrians would be at a minimum. Movie scenes on city streets frequently appear in the same quality of daylight, because crews are forced to shoot then so as to cause minimum obstruction. Maybe Jack White could analyze the light and shadow, and help us Free Erykah.

Good'un, Bill - Happy Easter.