Joseph McBride

The people who fabricated the backyard photos (probably at the DPD) were idiots for not getting the shadows and dimensions right and for having the "Oswald" figure leaning at an impossible angle and for laughably thinking those two newspapers were of similar ideology. Then Life magazine admitted it retouched the scope on the rifle for its infamous cover. I recommend Jack White's video on the backyard photos.

That's a reference (as it says in the story) to the report of a Secret Service agent being killed that day. This is a mysterious loose end that has always intrigued me. I discuss what it could mean in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE.

I write in INTO THE NIGHTMARE about how LBJ's Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood testified to the Warren Commission that after the shots were fired, he switched from the "Baker" to the "Charlie" frequency, but I speculate that he actually did the opposite. The Secret Service was communicating on those two frequencies in Dallas. The Baker frequency was more limited, for transmissions between cars in the motorcade, but Charlie had much broader links among the cars in the motorcade, the Trade Mart, and Air Force One and Two, via the temporary White House Communications Agency Center setup at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas, which was itself linked directly to the White House. LBJ and Youngblood evidently were listening to the agent's walkie-talkie. Johnson's "ducking" that Penn Jones talked about (i.e., why he is barely visible in the Altgens photo, seemingly leaning forward) was possibly to listen to the walkie-talkie. Johnson lied about Youngblood supposedly jumping over the front seat to shield him when the shots were fired, which Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the back seat with LBJ and Lady Bird, told me did not happen.

A great book is Gar Alperovitz's THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB (1995). It goes into fine detail, thoroughly researched, to debunk the myth about the huge number of deaths expected in a US ground invasion of Japan, a figure that was used to justify the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima (no one has ever come up with anything close to a plausible explanation for dropping the bomb on Nagasaki beyond crass bureaucratic/war crimes inertia). After the war, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and his young amaneunsis McGeorge Bundy in Stimon's memoirs pushed the inflated expected death/casualty figures for a land invasion. The news media followed suit, and some still do out of ignorance or reliance on war propaganda long after the fact. The New York Times long ago ran a scoop about a document that was unearthed quoting General George C. Marshall with a far lower expected casualty figure for a land invasion of Japan, but that story is still largely ignored. The lies about the bomb are one of the key myths about postwar American life.

Coup de Ta?

Hang out on and behind the Grassy Knoll. Crouch behind the concrete retaining wall in the firing position. Explore the overpass and the parking lot. Look at the possible firing position from the storm drain next to the overpass. If possible, go in the drain on Elm Street, as Penn Jones helped me do, though I doubt there was a sniper there, even if the shot was possible. Look at Lee Bowers's tower. Look at the other buildings around the plaza. Stand in the Mary Ann Moorman and Babushka Lady positions. One thing I never understand is people going to Dealey Plaza who say, "It's so much smaller than I expected." It was exactly the size and dimensions I expected from seeing the photographs and films. The Sixth Floor Museum is a farce. It's worth visiting to study the basic (remaining) layout of the building and the propaganda, but the last time I went I zipped through it so fast that a security guard asked me why I didn't linger longer, and I said I knew it well and saw all there was to see. The alleged sniper's nest is inaccessible behind Plexiglas. Before they made it inaccessible, comedian Bill Hicks said the most honest part of the floor display is the window, because Oswald is not in it. The convoluted angle from that window is part of what they don't want you to see. Hicks describes it hilariously in his video on YouTube.

Billy Wilder said that THE GODFATHER PART II is one of the five best movies ever made in America. I agree with him.

Yes, and Goodwin had to make a settlement with the author of the Kathleen Kennedy biography, Lynne McTaggart. Goodwin's excuse for the plagiarism was beyond feeble -- shameful. Read this piece by Philip Nobile on Goodwin also plagiarizing from David McCullough's TRUMAN and on McCullough's own egregious falsehood about the A-bomb: http://mobylives.com/Nobile_Pulitzer_speech.html McCullough was also caught rewriting a quote from Thomas Jefferson about John Adams to embellish Adams's reputation for his biography of the second president. As you probably know, McCullough is a Bonesman, and it's no accident he was the "historian" chosen by Dallas to give its keynote speech in Dealey Plaza during the 2013 whitewashing ceremony held behind police lines.

I was doing that research back in 1984, and as I say they were shocked, shocked! that I asked to see Joe Kennedy's papers, and at first the person I requested them from at the library didn't recognize his name. It was comical. Later they started opening previously secret files to selected researchers, including that much-honored plagiarist and hagiographer and LBJ intimate Doris Kearns Goodwin.

You surely know Joseph Kennedy was and is a highly controversial figure. USIA = United States Information Agency. I went through Edward R. Murrow's papers on the USIA and some other materials while I was at the library frustrated at not seeing Joe Kennedy's papers, etc.

I find it hard to believe the library didn't have his post-Nov. 22 schedue. His trips and appointments had to be planned long in advance. On that same visit I asked to see Ambassador Kennedy's papers. The person I asked said, "Who??" I said, "Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy Sr." "Oh!" she replied with alarm. "We don't let people look at THOSE!" (They later have shown some to some scholars.)

i discovered in my Frank Capra research that JFK had invited him and other film community leaders to a luncheon at the White House on Dec. 10, 1963. The invitation, postmarked Nov. 21, arrived the day of JFK's funeral. I checked at the Kennedy Library to see what this was about, but they told me they did not keep records about plans he had beyond Nov. 22 (if that is true; perhaps they have some records they weren't sharing when I went there in the 1980s). I asked George Stevens Jr., who had been director of the USIA's Motion Picture Service during the Kennedy administration (after JFK died, it produced JOHN F. KENNEDY: YEARS OF LIGHTNING, DAY OF DRUMS, the agency's first full-length feature, one that contains color footage of the funeral procession shot expressly for it), and he said that 1963 meeting in effect would have been about the creation of what became the American Film Institute (of which George became the founding director). But that founding was delayed until 1967, under LBJ. George said Richard Goodwin was writing a press release about the Dec. 10 event on the day JFK was killed. I write in my Capra biography that the planned event was "regarded in Hollywood as a long-overdue official recognition of the growing cultural status of motion pictures."

I agree, Bart, I turned down an offer last year to speak at the Judyth Baker event. She is a fraud. It hurts the cause of truth for people to give her credibility. Beverly Oliver is another fraud. As we know, from the first, studying the truth about this case has been made more difficult by imposters and false "evidence" (or what Oswald called "this so-called evidence") and other forms of disinformation, as well as people using the assassination for their personal benefit. We have to be wary of all that and study each piece of alleged information and each person's account with great care and compare it with other information. It's the way all history should be approached, and for me since the first afternoon, it's been an invaluable study in epistemology.

Ron, see pp. 168-72.

I discuss all the details in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. The tunnel is discussed in the WC 26 volumes as well in a Nov. 27, 1963, report by Parkland Hospital administrator Charles Jack Price on his activities on Nov. 22.

I think it's a strong possibility that the coffin that left Parkland and caused a heated confrontation in the hallway with guns drawn to prevent the Dallas medical examiner from doing an autopsy was empty and that the body had been removed through a tunnel. It was worth a gun battle with Mrs. Kennedy present to prevent the coffin being taken by Dr. Rose, as was legally required, because that would have exposed the conspiracy. I write about this in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. Lifton seems not to have considered this possibility, which would have facilitated the body alteration.

Thank you, Paul and Rob. I am glad it came out well. The host does a good job, and he let me cover a lot of topics. Here's from INTO THE NIGHTMARE, the portion of my interview with Sen. Yarborough in which he talks about the shots: Senator Yarborough, who had “a lifetime of handling arms,” described for me his reactions to the shots fired in Dealey Plaza, giving an eyewitness and earwitness account that matched that of numerous other witnesses but is, like theirs, at odds over some details with what can now be seen in the altered Zapruder film: The first shot I heard I thought was a rifle shot. The second shot, the motorcade almost came to a halt. They said later that the president‘s car slowed to something like five miles an hour. I wondered what the hell they were stopping for when somebody is shooting. People were jumping out of the car in front of me [the Secret Service followup car] and running to the president‘s car. I thought maybe somebody had thrown a bomb in there. The third shot I heard was a rifle shot. When I asked Yarborough if he thought there was a gunman on the Grassy Knoll, he said, I believe I would have heard or picked the shot up. I just don’t [think so]. I didn’t think so at the time. There’s one possibility -- I don’t think there was a second gunman, but if somebody else fired a shot at the identical time as the gunman in the School Book Depository, if two shots were fired instantly, it would be hard to differentiate them. I know that when I’ve gone deer hunting, if I fire my rifle at the same time as somebody else fires his, you can’t tell the two shots apart. I agree with John Connally that it’s foolish to say that only two shots were fired [Yarborough apparently is alluding to the single-bullet theory, which Connally never accepted].

My October 1961 writing about the assassination (which I discuss in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE) was a short story for my freshman English class at Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, "The Plot Against a Country." Although one could say it was the first fictional treatment of the assassination, it was pretty bad. It deals with a Soviet plot to kill the president (I was brought up with a Cold War indoctrination) and steals its methodology from a Superman comic (JFK is poisoned by licking a stamp smuggled into the Oval Office by an Eastern European cleaning lady; in the comic book the bad guys used Kryptonite). My only excuse for that embarrassing plot hook was that I was fourteen at the time, but that's not a very good excuse. But on the plus side, the story does show concern that President Kennedy could be killed in office, it recognizes that a political plot would most likely be involved to kill a president and that infilitration would be necessary, and I mention the autopsy and some other realistic details. I had done some studying of the Lincoln assassination as a kid (I had done a lot of reading about the Civil War, and that was the centennial year), so I knew about political conspiracies. And I had witnessed at close hand how vulnerable Kennedy was from talking with him twice during the Wisconsin primary campaign; he had no visible security except for a few cops around at the Milwaukee event, not guarding him closely in a crowd of 3000 people; at the Wauwatosa Kids for Kennedy event, attended by about 100 people in a small meeting room at the Civic Center, he came with only an aide, a photographer, and a reporter [Theodore White?], and no security). I think that concern about his vulnerability was why I wrote the story. I also may have known about the Richard Pavlick assassination attempt. The close friendship between LBJ and Hoover, his neighbor, is well-known, and Hoover supplied him with dirt from his files that LBJ used against other politicians. Re Sylvia Meagher, I just suggest you read her exhaustive, brilliant, lucid book, which I consider the best book on the assassination. We had about a dozen students in the Film and Society class this year at San Francisco State. Some years we have more. I do one class session on PRIMARY and JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE (for contrast to show how things have changed with politics and the media), and another showing the Zapruder film, the WFAA interview with Zapruder, the section on the Z film and the reconstruction of events by Garrison in the Stone JFK film, parts of RUSH TO JUDGMENT (Acquilla Clemmons and S. M. Holland, the opening with Oswald and Wade, and the ending with Penn Jones), and parts of WAG THE DOG and BLOWUP to show how photographic history is altered. The students this year seemed fascinated and receptive -- as I find young people tend to be, more than older people on this subject -- and asked good basic questions about the how and why of the assassination. I talk about the alteration of the Z film and refer them to Doug Horne's fourth volume and other good books.

Yesterday on the 56th anniversary of the JFK assassination, I did a twenty-five-minute interview on Jim Engster's radio talk show in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, on the NPR affiliate WRKF. Jim is a knowledgeable interviewer who is open-minded on the assassination, unlike many in the mass media. We had a couple of the expected irate calls but mostly calls from people who care and are well-read on the subject, and we covered a lot of ground. I am still volunteering for JFK, as I did in his 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary campaign. https://www.wrkf.org/post/friday-november-22nd-stephen-handwerk-joseph-mcbride-rene-coman

I am not sure how Cliff means his post, but I think part of our responsibility as researchers is to remind the public of the issues and foster discussion and education on the subject. And to stand witness to injustice.

During the shooting of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, I had an interview lined up with Alan J. Pakula for Daily Variety, or so I was told by a publicist. I went to Pakula's home at noon on a Saturday and found him distracted; he did not realize I was coming, and he apologetically said he had no time to talk. So I figured I had time for one question. A friend of mine who was investigating the RFK assassination had told me that Bob Woodward was CIA (actually, as we know, he was/is ONI). So I asked Pakula if he had heard Woodward was CIA. He said he had, "but if I think about that while making this movie I'd go crazy."

It's worth noting that Mentzel, who was part of the plot, weighs in quickly. Well before Oswald was captured and officially identified, Mentzel was sent with Tippit to hunt down Oswald in Mentzel's district (Tippit was out of his district).

Thanks much, Douglas, for posting my contribution on the Tippit murder for FIFTY REASONS . . . FOR FIFTY YEARS, Len Osanic's fine series. I also contributed an episode called "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination" (#46). Jeff Carter was the excellent videographer on both episodes. Here is the link to "Political Truth.""

I've never understood the claim that McCone could not have been involved in the JFK assassination (or any other assassination, for that matter) since he was a Catholic. Many Catholics seem to have no trouble murdering people. And it seems illogical that if McCone actually believed murder was morally wrong,he would be head of the CIA at all. And how often do political figures' personal beliefs actually affect their actions? This obfuscation is one reason reason McCone gets so little scrutiny. McCone was also one of the Republicans JFK appointed to high posts (McNamara was another; his actions on Nov. 22 are the subject of suggestively contradictory stories; another was Dillon, who as Secretary of the Treasury had responsibility for the Secret Service). There's also RFK's supposed question to McCone the day of the assassination in what was reported as a long conversation while they were walking the grounds at Hickory Hill. RFK is reported to have demanded to know if the CIA killed his brother, and to have asked it in a way that made it impossible for McCone to lie to him (what way could that possibly be?), and was supposedly satisfied by the denial. That story doesn't pass the smell test.

See next post.