Joseph McBride

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.

Vince, thank you again for the major work you have done on the Secret Service aspects of the plot, some of the most important and illuminating research on the case. BTW, the RTE did a wonderful documentary on JFK's Irish trip, JOHN F. KENNEDY IN THE ISLAND OF DREAMS, released in the US on VHS as JFK IN IRELAND. My Irish wife, Dr. Ruth O'Hara, at age two years and ten months in June 1963, was upset her parents didn't take her with them to the Dublin motorcade, so she insisted they drive to Galway so they could see him in Eyre Square on June 29. He gave a memorable speech there. She thought he was an imposter because she had only seen him on black-and-white TV, and the man she saw speaking had auburn hair. It is haunting that he said in his speech, "So I must say that though other days may not be so bright as we look toward the future, that the brightest days will continue to be those in which we visited you here in Ireland." I've visited Eyre Square a couple of times to see the site of the speech. The home of Nora Barnacle (James Joyce's wife) is nearby, as is the Spanish Arch.

I await your book for what you write about "the original Dallas plan" -- I hope we see the book soon. Dr. Rose surely would have done the JFK autopsy right away, however. Dr. Rose did the Tippit autopsy in midafternoon, but Kennedy would have taken precedence. That would have the conspirators given only a short time to alter the body -- and where in the hospital? I suspect the coffin was empty, the reason for the nearly violent confrontation in the hallway; there was a tunnel exit from Parkland out of sight of the media. I discuss this possibility in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. Have you considered that?

This TV footage of JFK's 1963 Dublin motorcade on O'Connell Street shows the standard flatbed truck with still and film photographers preceding the presidential limousine, motorcycle policeman riding en masse before the limousine and flanking the limo on both sides, etc. In Dallas, as we know, the motorcycle cops were removed from the sides of the limo by the Secret Service, and the flatbed truck was removed from the motorcade at Love Field by Secret Service Agent Roger Warner. https://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1722-john-f-kennedy/391584-president-kennedy-motorcade-through-dublin-city/?fbclid=IwAR3hTRdpZe_WK83jQYIVjZO7o9DCXB2o91Eo--kNpLDpxNezOY3JRT_CY98

Carl Oglesby has a brilliant analysis of Ruby's WC testimony in THE YANKEE AND COWBOY WAR, dissecting what Ruby was desperately trying to tell Warren between the lines, with Warren refusing to hear his message of involvement in the conspiracy or take him to Washington where he would feel safe to talk more freely than in the Dallas jail.

How does one order a copy of TWO DAYS OF INFAMY? I tried on the website, and there seemed no way to do so. It's also not on Amazon.

The first thing a constitutional convention would do would be to throw out the First Amendment, which is widely unpopular on both sides of the political spectrum but is all that keeps us having at least a vestigial democracy.

I wrote extensively about Poppy Bush in INTO THE NIGHTMARE (35 pages). Russ Baker in FAMILY OF SECRETS has a section on the Tyler episode that includes his interview with Aubrey Irby, then VP of the Tyler Kiwanis Club and later president of Kiwanis International, who attested to Poppy's presence at the Blackstone Hotel in Tyler to give a speech that had to be canceled due to the assassination. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/809170258040357823/

I tried to post a photo of Bush at the luncheon in Tyler on 11-22-63, but the site said it was too large to post. I write in INTO THE NIGHTMARE about where Tippit may have been over the noon hour that day (the evidence is not conclusive re his whereabouts).

None of the Dealey Plaza photos shows a man who looks close enough to G. H. W. Bush, in my view. He was in transit from Tyler to Dallas that afternoon and reported he went to the Sheraton, where the Secret Service and White House communications station were located.

Why would the plotters have wanted a Dallas autopsy, since it would have been performed by Dr. Earl Rose, who did the exemplary autopsies on Tippit and Oswald? Dr. Rose could not be controlled. He would have recorded evidence of wounds caused by shots from different directions.

The footage shows that the MDW team didn't carry the casket off the plane and catering truck as they wanted and expected to do but were stopped twice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNpq3HbTB0M

Yes, Rather made that improbable claim on numerous occasions. It was Garner's 95th birthday, and JFK called to wish him well. "Bucket of Warm Piss" Garner loathed his boss, FDR.

That does not look like Poppy Bush to me.

Ferrie's story about his trip never made sense. Nor did it make sense that Dan Rather claimed to have been interviewing Cactus Jack Garner in Uvalde on the morning of 11-22-63. For one thing, Uvalde is 372 miles from Dallas.