David Von Pein

26 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

DVP logic:

I would never hit her for you see she is my wife.

Non sequitur.

19 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

That is not logical.  

What I said about Katzenbach is perfectly logical.

Some additional logic:

CTers think that Katzenbach's words "in a way which will satisfy people" indicate that Katz was up to no good and that he couldn't have cared less what the true "facts" were--he was only interested in pinning the whole thing on Oswald.

But to think that Katzenbach had such a "cover-up" mindset is (IMO) ridiculous, particularly since he worked so closely with his boss, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Does anyone really believe that Nicholas Katzenbach would have wanted to aid or assist, in any way at all, a plot or cover-up that would have allowed the real killer or killers of RFK's brother to get away unpunished? Katzenbach merely wanted to keep FALSE rumors about Oswald and conspiracy from spreading.

19 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

I disagree.  

Gee, there's a surprise.

More discussion about the Katzenbach memo here.

Excerpts from above link:

GARRY PUFFER SAID:

Nick [Katzenbach], don't you think it's important that all the facts be made public without any thought as to how the public will regard it? If the public is not satisfied with the facts, so be it, but facts are facts. It's not really our job to put out the facts while worrying about whether the public will be satisfied with those facts, don't you agree? This is not a political issue, it's a criminal investigation.

I suggest you rewrite the first sentence of your memo. If you don't, it leaves you open to criticism that you have an underlying motive for revealing the facts and thus might want those facts tweaked to attain your motive.

I am glad you let me see this before you sent it. I wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Good post, Garry. And very good points indeed.

As Vincent Bugliosi said in his book, Katzenbach's memo is "clumsily written". The way it was written can most certainly be interpreted by many people as being the words of a man who really DIDN'T want "all the facts" to come out.

But, as I said in my last post, I find it impossible to believe that Deputy AG Nick Katzenbach had any thoughts in his head of "cover-up" or suppressing the facts when he wrote his memo on 11/25/63.

Interpretation is everything when we attempt to evaluate Mr. Katzenbach's "clumsily written" memorandum. CTers look at it and see signs of whitewash and cover-up in every paragraph. But I see the words of a man who doesn't want a bunch of FALSE rumors to start spreading to the public.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

David,

Thanks for your compliment. I guess the satire was too subtle, though, huh? That's the trouble with satire sometimes.

I believe Katzenbach knew exactly what he wanted to say and said it. I'm willing to bet that never in his life did he write a "clumsily worded" memo. Guys like him just didn't operate that way.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

So, Garry, you're suggesting that Nick Katzenbach was promoting the following idea:

*** I don't care if the real facts indicate that twelve other people were involved in the assassination of JFK, I think the American public should be told that it was Oswald who did it ALONE. And I don't care what my boss, Bobby Kennedy, might think. I don't care if the killers of Bobby's brother get away and are never caught. I'm only concerned about pinning the whole thing on Lee Oswald--and to heck with the facts and the truth. ***

Is that about the size of it, Garry? It sure sounds as if you are saying Katzenbach had the exact frame-of-mind that is spelled out above. And I couldn't disagree more.

13 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

Reading that memo from a legal standpoint really shows the old saying “you can polish a turd and put sprinkles on it, but it’s still a turd”.   That memo set the tone for what was to follow.

But if Katzenbach's November 25th memo had, indeed, truly been "conspiratorial" or "covert" in some fashion, then the big question all conspiracy theorists should be asking is this one (which no CTer ever seems to want to ask):

Why on Earth would Nicholas Katzenbach write such a crazy memo in the first place IF he had truly been part of some kind of a cover-up operation that was in place after JFK's murder?

Do CTers really think Katzenbach was so stupid (and brazen) that he would memorialize on paper his very own cover-up plan?!

That's nuts.

Therefore, since it couldn't be more obvious that only an insane man would want to WRITE DOWN (and have RETAINED) his conspiratorial thoughts and cover-up plan for everybody to read for decades to come, then that means that the words we find in Mr. Katzenbach's 11/25/63 memorandum must have a meaning other than the conspiratorial and covert meaning that JFK conspiracy theorists are constantly applying to the Katzenbach memo.

More:

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/07/The Katzenbach Memo

14 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

There is nothing in the Katzenbach memo about  accuracy.  Anyone can see that by reading it.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62268#relPageId=29

You're wrong.

The following paragraph from page 2 of the memo certainly doesn't sound like Katzenbach is part of any kind of cover-up or conspiracy to me:

"I think...that a statement that all the facts will be made public property in an orderly and responsible way should be made now. We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort."

I guess Jim DiEugenio must think that when Katzenbach wrote "all the facts", Katz really meant "all the [fabricated] facts..."

Right, Jim?

And I completely agree with Vincent Bugliosi's assessment on this topic. That is, when Katzenbach said he wanted to "head off public speculation...of the wrong sort", he was talking only about "heading off" UNWARRANTED speculation and FALSE RUMORS concerning the assassination. That's the "wrong sort" of stuff that Nicholas Katzenbach was talking about there.

12 minutes ago, Miles Massicotte said:

This is getting off topic, but the thrust of that article, that Katzenbach is somehow committed to making public "all the facts" related to Lee Harvey Oswald, is undercut not only by the tone of the rest of the memo, but by the very next words that follow. Quote: "...made public in a way which will satisfy people in the United States and abroad that all of the facts have been told..." (emphasis mine). The  Katzenbach memo lays the groundwork for a whitewash that delivers facts that "satisfy" the public (much like how it says the public must be "satisfied" that LHO was the lone assassin), as opposed to a true fact-finding commission. 

In addition to Katzenbach's memo itself, there's also these remarks written by C.A. Evans that appear in this 11/25/63 cover letter that was sent to Assistant FBI Director Alan Belmont concerning the Katzenbach memorandum:

"It is Katzenbach's feeling that this matter can best be handled by making public the results of the FBI's investigation. He thought time was of the essence, but that the report, of course, had to be accurate."

To repeat (with emphasis):

"...the report, of course, had to be accurate."

1 hour ago, Mark Knight said:

DVP, I must commend you on finding a way to call those who disagree with your conclusions NOT "reasonable" [twice] or "sensible."  By not mentioning anyone by name, you avoid being called out for an ad hominem attack. But your intentions are quite transparent.

I'm both a moderator and an administrator, but I won't sanction you at this point. Instead, I'll let your words speak for themselves, and if another mod or admin chooses to act, it will be up to them to handle at their discretion. I'll simply let your words serve as witnesses to your intent.

Just by merely stating my own opinion that the theories of CTers are not "reasonable" or "sensible" (in my opinion) is cause to be slapped on the wrist with a moderator's ruler?

You must be kidding.

I know I have to walk on eggshells here, but my gosh!

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I may be interpreting this incorrectly, but isn’t that photograph, labeled 28, the photograph taken from camera angle 28 in the diagram, which is in room 200 pointing east towards Campbell’s office (door at end of photo) - so not in SW Publishing Co.? 

Yes, Tom, you're correct. According to CD796, that is not the SW Publishing office, it's the open office space north of SWP.

The reason I said it was South-Western's office is merely because Karen Westbrook herself identified that picture as being a photo of her office during her 2017 interview with Stephen Fagin of the Sixth Floor Museum. Westbrook said this when she was shown that photo during the interview:

"This is my office; I remember it well."

So, either Karen was mistaken or the FBI labeled it incorrectly in their picture for CD796. My opinion is that Karen Westbrook (after 54 years) was simply not remembering exactly what her TSBD office looked like, even though she did say she remembered it well.

The main reason I think Karen is mistaken and the FBI's floor plan has it right is because of the long vertical column that extends all the way to the ceiling in the "No. 28" FBI photo. That is probably the "Dumbwaiter", which is labeled as such in the second-floor diagram. It's in the right location at any rate.

The floor plan says the Dumbwaiter goes only to the "1st floor", which I guess means it doesn't extend through the ceiling of the 2nd-floor offices to go to the 3rd floor. But that wouldn't necessarily mean it wouldn't go from floor to ceiling right there on the second floor, right? It just doesn't extend through the ceiling to the floor above.

It's not really all that important, but a puzzle like this to solve every now and then is always kind of entertaining. ....

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

The problem is that Acquilla Clemons’s testimony does just that all on its own. It doesn’t require any manipulation of her testimony by Lane to do it – which is why he didn’t do so.

Oh my. You must therefore be totally unaware of Dale Myers' warranted excoriation of Mark Lane concerning his treatment of Mrs. Clemons:

http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-october-jfk-assassination-file.html

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

It's obvious from all of this that you’re desperately grasping at non-existent straws in order to keep afloat your belief in the lone-nut theory.

My belief in Lee Oswald's lone guilt in the JFK and J.D. Tippit murders is based on the evidence in both of those cases, plus Oswald's very incriminating actions and movements (and the lies that he told) on both November 21st and November 22nd of 1963.

If certain conspiracy promoters choose to believe that all (or most) of that evidence against Mr. Oswald is fake or fraudulent or manufactured evidence (and many do)....well, that's their choice. But, IMO, it's not a reasonable thing to believe at all.

And if those same conspiracists also choose to interpret Lee Harvey Oswald's Nov. 21-22 actions and movements as "normal" actions (or, alternatively, as actions that were "coerced" in some fashion, and thus Oswald was innocent of shooting anyone in Dallas and was merely being used as a "patsy" on 11/22/63)....well, again, that's their choice. But, in my view, that is certainly not a choice that a reasonable and sensible person would choose to make.

End result/conclusion: Lee H. Oswald was a double murderer. And he very likely acted alone.*

And here are my thoughts regarding the 11/25/63 Katzenbach memo.

* http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/Leaving-The-Door-Of-Conspiracy-Open-Just-A-Crack

18 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

(Do I have this analysis right?)

Could be. I can't really tell.

Here's the 2nd-floor diagram again. It might help when comparing it to the photo. I noticed that the caption of the original FBI photo in CD496 (below) says the photo is "looking east"....

A South-Western Publishing Company Addendum....

Re: whether or not the office of South-Western Publishing was searched or not....

In this 2017 interview with South-Western TSBD employee Karen Westbrook (at the 27:55 mark), Karen talks about how the police came into her office after the assassination and pulled out all the filing cabinets. So that certainly implies that a "search" of at least a portion of the second floor did take place.

BTW, in that same 2017 interview (at 27:20), Karen Westbrook also said that after she returned to her office after seeing the President get shot, "the phones went dead" while she was on the phone talking to her mother, which must have been at least several minutes after the assassination had occurred, because Karen was out on Elm Street watching the motorcade during the shooting itself. She didn't say anything about the lights going out or a power failure, however.

BTW #2, the photograph below shows the South-Western Publishing Company office in early 1964. [EDIT -- It's actually not the SW Pub. office; see later posts for clarification.] The photo is part of Commission Document No. 496, a booklet of FBI photos and floor plans of the Book Depository. The picture below is a high-quality cropped version of this original photo from the CD496 booklet:

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

David,

I posted the message with attached link below to you about a week ago and I posted a reminder two days later. I have received no reply. Perhaps you can now reply.

This short video by EF member Gil Jesus proves beyond any doubt whatsoever that there was a JFKA conspiracy and that there was an official cover-up of the conspiracy.

Since I understand you’re a proponent of the “lone nut” theory, how can you justify that position in light of this video?

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28242-the-2nd-floor-bakeroswald-encounter-has-been-debunked/?do=findComment&comment=475708

Well, John, I don't believe for one second that all three of those FBI reports that Gil Jesus talks about in his video are filled with nothing but lies. There's no way that's the case (IMO). Your mileage may vary, of course.

I know that conspiracy believers wouldn't trust J. Edgar and his FBI boys any further than they could toss them, but I just don't believe that the FBI decided to tell one bald-faced lie after another in their written reports concerning those three witnesses (Richard Dodd, James Simmons, and J.C. Price).

Similarly, I also don't believe for one second that the FBI just made up a bunch of lies in their multiple reports concerning Stretcher Bullet CE399 in Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2011. But whenever I dare to imply that I think the reports we find in CE2011 are truthful FBI reports and interviews, most conspiracy theorists scold me mercilessly and tell me I'm as nutty as a fruitcake.

And I wouldn't trust Mark Lane to tell the truth about anything relating to the JFK assassination. His track record for honesty and for fairly evaluating the evidence in the John F. Kennedy and J.D. Tippit murder cases couldn't be much worse, in my opinion.

Yes, those three witnesses (Dodd, Simmons, and Price), in 1966, did indeed say the things that we can hear them say in front of Mark Lane's cameras in the film "Rush To Judgment", but I also know that another part of Mr. Lane's track record is that he didn't always quote a witness properly, or fairly, or fully. Lane's treatment of Charles Brehm and Helen Markham and Acquilla Clemons are three of the more blatant examples of how Mr. Lane could—and would—manipulate the words of a witness to suit his "conspiratorial" desires.

So I truly think that Mark Lane somehow got those three witnesses (Dodd, Simmons, and Price) to voluntarily "improve" their memories about what they saw and heard in Dealey Plaza, so that when Lane's film came out in 1967, the things that each witness told the FBI in 1963 and 1964 suddenly morphed into the things that Mark Lane wanted to hear coming from the mouths of those witnesses.

It's a shame that people like Dodd and Price and Simmons can be manipulated so easily by snakes like Mark Lane, but I have little doubt that Lane was most certainly capable of twisting and totally distorting the words of a witness. Just listen to how he did that very thing when it came to the words of Helen Markham---Click Here. It's despicable.

And, perhaps more importantly for Mark Lane's purposes, Lane was sometimes able to get witnesses to add things to their stories that they had not said previously. [See the excerpts from Vincent Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History" below.]

And here's another example of Mark Lane's disgraceful habit of mangling and warping the words of a witness. His victim on that occasion was Acquilla Clemons.

Here's what Dale Myers had to say about Mr. Lane and his treatment of Mrs. Clemons:

"Heralded by a generation unwilling to confront his deceptions, dishonesty, and repeated cover-ups, [Mark] Lane’s handling of the Acquilla Clemons story should serve as the primary exhibit of what lengths dedicated propagandists are willing to go to twist the simple, uncomplicated truth into a pack of fables that serve their own deceitful ends." -- Dale K. Myers; November 1, 2017

Click to enlarge:

2 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Hughes' office is never searched...

That's probably not true, Ben. I just noticed THIS FBI INTERVIEW with TSBD employee Otis Williams. In that March 1964 interview, Williams said this:

"After returning inside the TSBD Building just after hearing the three shots on November 22, 1963, I assisted a police detective in making a search of the second floor of the building."

I would assume that the "search" referred to by Mr. Williams included searching the office of the Southwestern Publishing Company.

But we must also keep in mind that by the time the police detective searched the second floor on Nov. 22nd, Mrs. Carol Hughes could very well have already smuggled any number of high-powered rifles and their associated spent shell casings out of the building. Hughes more than likely had two Mausers and an Enfield hidden in her stockings as she left the building that day. And the 14 spent bullet shells were undoubtedly concealed in her purse too.

Why on Earth Mrs. Carol Hughes of 510 Glenfield Street, Garland, Texas, was never arrested and properly charged with conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy is beyond me. I've never in my life seen such an obvious case of conspiracy to commit murder!

⬇️

⬇️

⬇️

🙂

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Kostikov met with an imposter, just like Duran and Azcue did in the Cuban Consulate. Oswald wasn't even there.

Oh boy. You're swimming a mile deep in conspiracy excrement, aren't you Sandy? That's a shame.

How can you possibly ignore all the signs (i.e., proof) that indicate LHO was in Mexico City in September and October of 1963?

For one thing, there's Oswald's 11/9/63 letter that I already mentioned. I guess you think that letter (and LHO's signature on it) is a fake, right?

More....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/09/Oswald In Mexico City

3 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I already said that the evidence was fabricated. So of course I don't believe it.

Yes, that's why I edited my last post and deleted that part about the money. But you saw it before I could delete that part.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The CIA fabricated evidence in Mexico City that clearly links Oswald to the Cubans and Russians in an assassination plot to kill Kennedy. With things like Oswald meeting with KGB assassinations chief Kostikov.

Lee Oswald definitely did meet with Kostikov. Oswald's 11/9/63 letter to the Russian Embassy in Washington proves that fact.

But he encountered Kostikov in Mexico only because the Russian Embassy there was being staffed by KGB agents in 1963. It certainly doesn't prove that any assassination plot or "plan" was in effect when Oswald was in Mexico City.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You forget the plan to blame the assassination on Cuba and Russia. If the Dallas assassination fails, all that work is down the drain too. All the more reason to plan the Dallas shooting well.

I love the way conspiracy theorists talk about the imaginary "plans" that their imaginary plotters were constructing in order to rid the world of the 35th U.S. President. And the CTers often speak of these "plans" as if such covert/conspiratorial "plans" were proven facts that are rooted in stone.

But the evidence that exists to show that any such conspiratorial "plans" took place on 11/22/63 is....what now?

Answer:

No such evidence exists....and never did. The only "evidence" for such "plans" exists exclusively in the minds and vivid imaginations of a whole bunch of conspiracy believers.

Friendly reminder....

Here's something odd about the floor plan of the 2nd Floor of the TSBD....

According to this diagram of the second floor [pictured below], there is no wall or divider of any kind separating the Southwestern Publishing office from the Lyons & Carnahan office. That seems very strange (and unlikely).

Plus, this floor chart shows no wall separating the ladies room from the Southwestern office either. And there's no wall between the Men's Room and the Ladies Room either. (That would have made for some interesting bathroom visits, huh?) 🙂

Errors of omission? I would certainly think so.

Plus....these bathrooms look way too big. According to this chart, the 2 restrooms take up almost the entire length of the building on the west end. That's highly doubtful. There must be something else there on the west side besides just the two bathrooms, especially when comparing the size of those two 2nd-floor restrooms to the much smaller bathrooms that were on the first floor [here].

And here's something else....

The way this chart is marked, it leads me to think that there is actually a third separate room (marked "Private" on the diagram), which is situated between Southwestern and Lyons. Which would mean yet another wall is absent from this chart. Kind of curious indeed:

6 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

From reading online, an FD-302 report is a summary of an FBI interview. But seeing how the interviews of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza were so short anyway, there would seem to be no need to create a separate report summarizing an already short interview.

FYI / FWIW ----

Among the 73 interviews with the TSBD employees found in CD706, exactly three were done on "FD-302" FBI forms. And 70 of the interviews did not utilize the official "FD-302" form. The three that were done on FD-302 forms were the interviews with these people:

Yola D. Hopson

Judith L. McCully

Steven F. Wilson

-----------------------

Side Note Regarding FD-302 Forms....

In 2011, I went a few rounds with Jim DiEugenio and other CTers on the topic of why no official FD-302 reports have ever turned up in relation to the dozens of individual interviews the FBI conducted in Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2011:

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2011/12/dvp-vs-dieugenio-part-76.html#The-Lack-Of-FD302s

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Hughes indicated she left at 1 pm.

No, she didn't. She said she left at "about 1:30".

37 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Sheesh, is [it] possible a large fraction of the TSBD was never searched? And that publisher's employees left, even at 1 pm, without being searched?

I don't think any of the TSBD employees were "searched" before being allowed to leave the building.

My guess is that the mindset of the police on Nov. 22 was that it wasn't very likely that any assassins and/or accomplices would still be inside the building an hour or two after they had just murdered the President.

But, you never know, if the (alleged non-Oswald) killers had been really slow at making their escape, perhaps some of them would have still been inside when the building was sealed at about 12:37. They would have been pretty stupid and reckless to have not been able to make it out of the building after a seven-minute escape window, however.

Benjamin,

To quote from the cover letter that accompanies the CD706 FBI document, the 73 statements that appear in that document focused mainly on "six specific items in each statement". The two most important of those items, it seems to me, was to find out if each TSBD employee had seen any strangers in the building on Nov. 22 and whether those employees had seen Lee Harvey Oswald around the time of the assassination.

The CD706 interviews were obviously not meant to provide a detailed grilling of each of the 73 witnesses. The FBI, at the request of the Warren Commission in March of 1964, was only wanting to find out certain specific things in each of those interviews in CD706 (aka CE1381).

46 minutes ago, Tony Krome said:

I gather you [DVP] don't consider the lady on the phone as suspicious.

Fair enough, you have the TSBD employee list, who is your candidate?

After searching through many of the statements of the Book Depository employees that can be found in Commission Document No. 706, it would appear that the girl who was on the telephone in the second-floor TSBD office of the Southwestern Publishing Company just after the assassination occurred on 11/22/63 was 27-year-old Mrs. Carol Hughes of Garland, Texas.

In her March 20, 1964, statement to the FBI which appears on Page 47 of CD706, Mrs. Hughes says she "was alone in the office" at the time of the Presidential shooting.

Mrs. Hughes did not appear as a witness before the Warren Commission. And I don't think she gave any testimony to the HSCA either.

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The girl in the Southwest Publishing office was talking on the phone in the moments after the JFKA and loud "cannon" shots in the TSBD, but refusing to answer the door.

No one at the WC seemed interested in what was going on in the Southwest Publishing office. 

Who else worked in Southwest Publishing? Warren Caster, the guy who brought rifles into the TSBD a few days before the JFKA. 

Odd, just odd. 

I'm glad I brought up the topic of the girl on the phone and the locked door at the Southwestern Publishing office (in this other thread). Because it looks like I inadvertently provided some of the conspiracists here at the EF with yet another person that they can add to their ever-expanding "Suspicious Persons" file when it comes to their search for JFKA suspects and co-conspirators.

No need to thank me. I'm always glad to be of service.