Joseph McBride

Letter to DOJ and FBI from AZ State Reps. Athena Salman and Reginald Bolding et al:

Sherrill letter.pdf

DEVELOPMENTS RE THE ALLEGED 1/6 PLOT: Trump's attempt to kill his own VP is another first in American history (Pence also had his wife, daughter, and brother at the Capitol while the mob was chanting "Hang Mike Pence!" and he was whisked to safety by the Secret Service, although he refused to go to Fort McNair and stayed within the Capitol). Politico and other outlets -- even the Washington Post -- are full of information about alleged plotters from within the Republican ranks in Arizona to plan the 1/6 assault on the Capitol (evidently also intended to hold as hostage and/or kill members of Congress) as part of the ongoing coup attempt. Alleged conspirators who have been named include AZ Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, State Rep. Mark Finchem, and former Rep. Anthony Kern. Kern was photographed at the event outside the Capitol and Finchem is alleged to have been there, although he denies involvement in the plot and blames it on the nonexistent "antifa." An organizer of the event, "Ali Alexander," who organized the "Stop the Steal" movement and is now supposedly in hiding (https://www.thedailybeast.com/stop-the-steal-organizer-in-hiding-after-denying-blame-for-riot), has said the attack was planned with Gosar, Biggs, and US Rep. Mo Brooks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/13/ali-alexander-capitol-biggs-gosar/). This is from the Business Insider about Alexander: "'We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,' Alexander said in a since-deleted Periscope video. He added to The Post that the plan was to 'change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.'" And this is from The Daily Beast: "Alex Jones claims that he and Alexander had some 'deal' with the White House about their protest outside of Congress. 'We had a legitimate deal with the White House,' Jones said in an InfoWars show filmed after the riot with Alexander. '"Hey Jones and Ali,' literally, they let us out early, we were supposed to lead a peaceful deal.' Video posted by InfoWars in an apparent attempt to distance Jones from the riots shows Jones and Alexander on the west side of the Capitol as tear-gas canisters went off in the distance and Trump supporters mounted MAGA flags on the inauguration risers. Jones unsuccessfully tried to convince rioters to move to the east side of the Capitol and attend their rally on the other side of the building instead. 'As much as I love seeing the Trump flags flying over this, we need to not have the confrontation with the police, they’re going to make that the story,' Jones said. But Alexander refused to disavow the riot. 'I don’t disavow this,' Alexander said in a video filmed overlooking the Capitol. 'I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks like, so far.'” Arizona state politicians have written a letter with detailed allegations (https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/arizona_politics/arizona-democrats-ask-feds-to-investigate-role-of-some-gop-lawmakers-in-capitol-riots/article_a4ee5c26-55e8-11eb-a25f-5b92114325a5.amp.html), and 30 members of the US Congress have written the Capitol Police and the sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate demanding further information and providing some documentation. Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy helicopter pilot, put out a video and headed the effort to send the letter. That letter is attached below in PDF format. Her video can be seen on the Politico site.

He wasn't actually on the scene of the assassination.

Much has been written about that topic. To quote Casey Stengel, "You could look it up." And the DPD sent Tippit and Mentzel to Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination, knowing Oswald would go to that area, where he lived.

The DPD had been tracking Oswald for quite some time and knew his Beckley address. They sent Tippit and Mentzel out to get him in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination, about an hour and a half before Oswald's identity was "officially" known by the department following his arrest in Oak Cliff and his transportation to the police station.

The DPD sent Officers Tippit and Mentzel out to track down Oswald in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination. So the department knew where he lived well before his arrest and where he would be going. Oswald met repeatedly with the FBI that November. They would have known where he lived.

Oswald was an FBI informant who infiltrated the plot and reported on it to them and then found out after Kennedy was shot that he was being made the patsy in the plot. The Dallas Police Department also knew who he was before the assassination. Both agencies knew where he lived -- and the FBI clearly knew he was going by the pseudonym of O. H. Lee. Gladys Johnson gave me a tour of the house on one of my research visits to Dallas.

Secret Service shakeup replacing agents who are Trump loyalists and stooges with those who have worked with Joe and Jill Biden: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-to-make-changes-to-presidential-detail-to-bring-on-agents-who-worked-with-biden/2020/12/30/d6fb8fe8-49ce-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html

What a shame we don't have the Babushka Lady film shot facing the Zapruder area and the rest of the Grassy Knoll, while panning with the presidential limousine. Or the 16mm film shot from a car in the motorcade by a CBS-TV photographer focusing on JFK at the time of the hit and then panning to the right and tilting upward to the TSBD corner window. If Oswald had been in the window, we surely would have seen that film.

When I was a high school student in Milwaukee, I listened to network radio reports on 11-22-63 from 12:40 p.m. onward. For twenty minutes, the reports all said the shots came from the front, from the railroad bridge area or the hill to the right of the motorcade. At 1 p.m., the radio networks started saying all the shots came from behind, from a building called the Texas School Book Depository. No explanation was offered for the change of direction or for the lack of mention of the previously reported shots from the front. I listened to the radio in a drugstore until I had to leave at 1:30 to go back to Marquette University High School (where the scheduled topic in our junior Religion class was "The Ethics of Murder"; the class went on as planned with only a brief interruption at 1:40 when the principal came on the PA system to announce that the President was dead, and we said a brief prayer). I was not fully conscious of the significance of the change of reporting of the shots at the time, but as the day went on and I watched the live TV reports, that early switch contributed to my realization by night's end that Oswald was telling the truth and that he had not shot anyone.

It's sad and outrageous that the argument of innocence carries no weight with the parole board, but the alternative to trying to argue that in letters is acquiescing in letting Sirhan die in prison, which would be intolerable. I remember reading that John F. Kennedy said when he was in Congress that if he received eight letters from constituents on an issue, he would take notice, and it would influence him, because few people take the trouble to write their congressman. Writing, printing, and mailing a physical letter to the parole board may make an impact on them.

Laurie Dusek adds in a Facebook post, "Sirhan needs letters in support of him being granted parole. This isn’t about retrying the case as the Parole Board won’t listen to anything about the underlying crime. This is about Sirhan being in prison for over 52 years and denied parole 15 times even though he has a clean record in prison and both State and defense psychologists say Sirhan poses no threat to himself or society. "Please, even just a short letter saying 'I support parole for Sirhan' would help. Sirhan deserves justice."

Thank you, Ray. He needs all the help we can give him.

I am glad you will write one, Chris. A physical letter is required.

JUSTICE FOR SIRHAN SIRHAN To forum moderators and fellow members, I am posting this here so JFK researchers can read it and hopefully take action and because relatively few people visit the RFK assassination section of this forum. Attorney Laurie Dusek, who has been diligently representing Sirhan Sirhan and trying to free him from prison, tells me he has another parole hearing scheduled for March 12, 2021. His attorney for that hearing will be Angela Berry. It will be his sixteenth parole hearing; what a long struggle it has been trying to bring justice to his case. Laurie tells me that letters from informed people who are U.S. citizens would help his chances with the parole board and that he “NEEDS letters of support.” Those of us in the JFK research community who also care about the RFK case and about Sirhan and about justice can do a civic duty by writing a letter to the parole board; I will be among those doing so. Most of us here understand that Sirhan did not shoot Senator Robert Kennedy, although he did shoot other people, and that he genuinely has no memory of those events but is regretful that they occurred and that he had a role in them. He was a patsy who was programmed to be involved. And he has been in prison now for fifty-two years for wounding other people. If he hadn’t been falsely accused of killing RFK, he would have been freed long ago. But as Laurie Dusek tells me, and as I have understood from watching his parole hearings and reading about the case, that argument does not convince the parole board. Even the passionate pleas of one of the shooting victims, Paul Schrade, who understands that Sirhan did not shoot RFK, have gone unheeded by the board. It is also not beneficial to Sirhan at this point to bring up the other probable shooter, Thane Eugene Cesar, or the actions of Kamala Harris in keeping Sirhan in prison. So another approach is called for in writing to the board about Sirhan urging that he be paroled from prison. Laurie Dusek suggests, “People can raise the question of his innocence but it would be better if they focus on his age, 76, the fact that after more than 52 years in prison he has paid his debt to society, Covid19 issues, outrage at spending taxpayers $ to keep him in prison, his clean prison record, the fact that both the State psychologists and Dan Brown [Dr. Daniel Brown of the Harvard Medical School, an expert on hypnosis and coercive persuasion, who has worked pro bono with Sirhan to try to recover his memory of the shooting] agree that Sirhan is not a threat to himself or others, and the issue of JUSTICE. As many people you can reach would be appreciated. Letters do not have to be long — they can simply state the writer's name and say ‘I am an American citizen and send this letter in support of parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan.’” Letters should be mailed to: State of California, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Board of Parole P.O. Box 4036 Sacramento, Ca. 95812-4936 The salutation is “Dear Parole Board.”

I wil never forget when I was working as an orderly in my college years and had to go to the morgue with a body, as was part of my duties. An autopsy was in progress, and I had not seen one before. Just as I entered the doctor lifted the brain out of the skull. I almost passed out, but after that I was OK with anything at the hospital. It was a good education -- for a salary of $1.40 an hour. I quit after six months when a nurse ordered me to cut off my goatee and cut my hair. Later the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional, but too late for me.

You can add Clint Hill to the list.

Again, "peculations" is not the right word in David's latest post. He evidently meant "speculations," as in his earlier correction. Those are very different words.

Thanks for the correction, David. I am an admirer of BEST EVIDENCE, one of the paradigm changers for me in this case I've been studying since it happened (and before).

I look forward to reading the book eventually for further clarification and amplification on your theories about this question. (BTW, I assume you mean "inferences and speculations" rather than "inferences and peculations," since the latter is quite a different word and not applicable in this exchange. Please correct that in your post.)

Thanks, David -- I am glad to hear some of your thoughts from the book. But if the body, as you argue, was unaltered in the coffin during the hallway confrontation, I am confused by what you first wrote above, implying that if Dr. Rose had done the autopsy, he would have examined an altered body (and where and when would it have been altered?). Perhaps I misread what you wrote. I gather from what you've written that you think the alteration took place on Air Force One. Douglas Horne found witnesses to its taking place at Bethesda.

Various times are given for when Kennedy arrived at Parkland, but I drove that route many times at 70 mph (the time given for the limo ride) and always arrived in four minutes. So 12:34. That means he was there for 94 minutes. They stopped treating him about 12:50. They declared him dead at 1.

For what it's worth, Rupert Allan, Marilyn's longtime publicist, when I asked him how he thought she died, told me she had little bottles of Champagne around her room and would guzzle them. He said the night she died, he thought she drank them with too many pills. He said she told him she was upset because Peter Lawford had invited her to his Santa Monica house along with a bunch of call girls and that she thought Lawford and his set thought of her as in the same category. Rupert's account of the drink and pills doesn't explain the absence of drugs in her stomach. Rupert told me an interesting story she told him: When she was in the New York hospital after her "miscarriage" when she was married to Arthur Miller, she was thinking of committing suicide by jumping out of her eighth-floor window. But she looked out and saw a woman in a green coat standing at a bus stop and decided not to jump because she might land on the woman and kill her.

Manchester's THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT gives the time of "JFK removed from hospital after row" as 2:08 p.m. Dallas time (he assumes Kennedy was in the coffin at that time). Oswald was arrested at about 1:52. Allegedly he was not identified as LHO until they took him downtown to the police station by about 2:10, but as we know there are holes in that story having to do with different pieces of identification. But the Dallas police knew who Oswald was before the assassination, and my research found that Officers Tippit and Mentzel were sent to hunt him down in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination, which proves they were involved in the conspiracy. I don't know for sure who may have told whom at Parkland about Oswald. DA Henry Wade, when I interviewed him, took the responsibility for allowing Kennedy's coffin to be illegally removed from Parkland. JP Theron Ward had called him during the fracas in the corridor when Dr. Earl Rose tried to uphold the law that an autopsy had to be performed in Dallas. Wade joked to me that the worst that could have happened from letting the body go was a hundred-dollar fine for violating Texas law. We know that was not the worst thing that happened.