-
Posts
1,185 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Store
Everything posted by Joseph McBride
-
https://ochelli.com/joseph-mcbride-politics-jfk-media/?fbclid=IwAR2W-8qQ0zl4dWk78Af80pDMfO422-Ewq0JrmWvg1KHs6rhmMaCogvkKvUs A podcast with Bob Wilson on his program I'M LOOKING THROUGH YOU, produced by Chuck Ochelli, dealing primarily with my new book POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY as well as with my three other new books (on Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, and the Coen Brothers).
-
Thanks, Vince. Your work on the Secret Service is seminal and opened up new vistas of understanding of the case. I am glad you keep at it. You exemplify the advice Penn Jones gave me and other researchers: "Pick one aspect of the case, one that hasn't been studied enough, and research the hell out of it." That's one reason I gravitated to the Tippit murder, which is the Rosetta Stone of the case, but not for the reasons David Belin called it that.
-
When I interviewed Henry Wade, he indicated he didn't think there was sufficient evidence to pin the Kennedy murder on Oswald. Jim Leavelle gave me the same indications and told me that's why Will Fritz told him to try to pin the Tippit murder on Oswald. I discuss what Wade and Leavelle told me in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. I also wrote about Wade in an article on the KennedysandKing website dealing with the Dale Myers book, which I consider the Warren Report of the Tippit case.
-
Robert Groden's coffee-table-sized book THE KILLING OF A PRESIDENT has a sharp, two-page spread of the Altgens panoramic photo. You can clearly see Senator Ralph Yarborough and Lady Bird Johnson in the back seat and the driver, Texas state trooper Hurchel Jacks. The area where Lyndon Johnson (in the back seat) and Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood (in a front seat) are sitting is a blur. I have seen enlargements that also show that area as a blur; you can make out what appears to be that leaning shape of Johnson. Yarborough told me that Johnson was leaning over the gap in the front seat and listening with Youngblood to his walkie-talkie and that Youngblood never left the front seat, contrary to what Johnson claimed, that the agent jumped over the seat and shielded him with his body in the back. The film Dan Rather described on CBS Radio and TV was the Zapruder film (see Richard B. Trask's PICTURES OF THE PAIN for transcripts), but it may have been the original, unaltered film, since he described seeing things that aren't on the extant, altered film. And I write in POLITICAL TRUTH, while analyzing the photographic coverage by amateurs and professionals, "With one possible exception, the rest of the fifteen professional photographers riding in the motorcade failed to document the actual moments of gunfire. That exception was said to have been a 16mm color film, possibly showing the 'complete assassination' including a closeup on Kennedy, which was shot by an unidentified 'TV newsreel man' in the motorcade and impounded by the Secret Service, according to an ABC-TV broadcast on November 23, 1963. No such film was entered into evidence by the Secret Service." Rather has claimed that he was waiting on the motorcade route for a film to be thrown in a bag by a CBS cameraman from the motorcade, although Rather has given conflicting reports of where he was during the shooting, and his CBS colleague Robert Pierpoint said Rather was actually riding in a car in the motorcade and bolted when the shots were fired. I found a document identifying the 16mm film as having been shot by an unidentified CBS cameraman. Rather arranged for CBS to have five full camera crews accompanying Kennedy in Dallas, including the only live hookup (at the Trade Mart); NBC and ABC each had only the usual single camera crew.
-
Noam Chomsky vs. Oliver Stone
Joseph McBride replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
As I point out in POLITICAL TRUTH, Chomsky belligerently claims that the two subjects he refuses to discuss are the assassination of President Kennedy and 9/11, yet he has published books on both subjects. His book on JFK and Vietnam is really an attack on Oliver Stone and his film JFK. Chomsky once "joked" that his salary since 1955 has been paid by the military-industrial complex. I assume he means that he has worked all those years for MIT (for which he is still an emeritus professor, even though he is also a professor at the University of Arizona now). That comment by Chomsky reminds me of Freud's observation that there is no such thing as a joke. -
Thanks for the kind words, Roy. I am glad you also appreciate Penn Jones, who was a mentor to me and an example I cite in POLITICAL TRUTH of an honest, uncompromising journalist. I disagree that Oswald fired a gun. There's no evidence to indicate he did. He didn't own the rifle or pistol entered into evidence (etc.). His words to his brother Robert while in jail on November 23 are worth recalling, "Don't believe all this so-called evidence."
-
I have taped a lively show with Len Osanic about my new book, POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION, to air on January 20 on Black Op Radio. It is good to be back on Len's invaluable program after having his guest several times in 2013 to discuss my earlier book on the case, INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT. Len asks me about many aspects of the mainstream media's falsifications of the assassination coverage over the years as well as about why and how I came to write POLITICAL TRUTH, which is an outgrowth of my decades of research for INTO THE NIGHTMARE. I had thought of including a chapter on the media's lying in that book but realized it was too big a topic and needed a whole book; instead I included a chapter in INTO THE NIGHTMARE on what I call the four-day docudrama on TV about the assassination from Nov. 22-25, 1963, the trial and execution by television of the patsy and an attempt to lull the public into accepting the cover story. I began studying the case at that time and more methodically in 1982 and started outlining the book that became POLITICAL TRUTH in the 1990s. In 2013 I did a segment of Len's series FIFTY REASONS . . . FOR FIFTY YEARS entitled "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination," which can be seen on Vimeo and is a 13-minute précis of the eventual book and a good introduction to it. Rather than aiming to be an encyclopedic chronicle of the media coverage, like some earlier books on the subject that in my view become scattered and unfocused as a result, my book POLITICAL TRUTH is analytical and a sharply pointed work of media criticism, drawing from my career as a professional journalist since 1960. I sold my first magazine article shortly after I served as a volunteer on Senator John F. Kennedy's Wisconsin presidential primary campaign (he quipped when I answered a question he asked about PROFILES IN COURAGE at one of the campaign events, "I hope I don't have to run against you in 1964"). POLITICAL TRUTH is now available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.
-
Jefferson Morley on JFK Revisited
Joseph McBride replied to Douglas Caddy's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
While watching the trial-by-television and televised execution of Oswald from November 22-24, 1963, I first realized that in our country, despite what the Constitution says, people accused of crimes are guilty until proven innocent. As I write in my new book POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY: My interviews for Into the Nightmare with former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and Detective James Leavelle, who was in charge of the Tippit case and participated in Oswald’s interrogations (which were not tape-recorded), indicated similar doubts they did not share with the public. Leavelle told me that Captain Will Fritz, the chief of homicide who was in charge of the investigation, told him that Friday to concentrate on the Tippit murder, because the evidence for the assassination was relatively weak. Fritz said, “Well, go ahead and make a tight case on him in case we have trouble making this one on the presidential shooting.” A little-noticed FBI document from November 25 indicates that Oswald was never even arraigned for shooting the president: “No arraignment on the murder charges in connection with the death of President KENNEDY was held inasmuch as such arraignment was not necessary in view of the previous charges filed against OSWALD and for which he was arraigned.” Oswald was arraigned only for shooting Tippit, a case in which the evidence was also weak. When I asked Leavelle why he thought they had a better case in the Tippit murder, he replied that unlike in the Kennedy shooting, they had “witnesses.” In fact the Tippit witnesses varied widely, with some reluctant to identify Oswald as the killer, some doing so only considerably later, and some saying two men had committed the crime and that the shooter did not resemble Oswald. And there never were any credible eyewitnesses produced to implicate Oswald in firing at Kennedy. -
Noam Chomsky vs. Oliver Stone
Joseph McBride replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Large parts of my new book POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY are devoted to analyzing the stark failings of Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alan Brinkley, Eric Foner, Richard Hofstadter, and other celebrated historians (some of whom have done good work in other areas, such as Foner on the Reconstruction period) in dealing with the assassination. I explore why this failure came to be, why they, despite having time to reflect and do actual research, instead have chosen to follow the cover story fabricated in the first weekend by the mainstream news media with the help of the CIA and other government agencies, working together in what film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has called "the media-industrial complex." -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Sorry, but the button kept telling me I wasn't posting, and I was, so I removed the copies. -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
edit -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
edit -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
edit -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
edit -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
And as I note, Kennedy while in Texas did seem aware of some of the threats against him but still fatalistically disregarded them. -
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
Joseph McBride replied to Denny Zartman's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
From POLITICAL TRUTH: President Kennedy had always seemed fatalistic, to a fault, about the possibility of assassination. When my father [Raymond E. McBride] spoke briefly with the president at a Milwaukee reception in May 1962 while covering a political dinner for the Journal, he asked Kennedy a question rarely posed to him: “Do you ever worry about being assassinated?” Kennedy replied that he realized that could happen, but he could not to afford to think about it, since he wouldn’t be able to do his job if he did.