Ron Ecker

Jack, While Flight 175, which hit the South Tower, may have been a remotely controlled aircraft, it would certainly appear from the photographic evidence that it was not a Global Hawk, such as you postulate for the Pentagon hit, but a larger aircraft, if in fact not a Boeing 757. The photographic evidence also reveals an anomaly, some sort of attachment on the fuselage of the plane that hit the South Tower. It has been speculated that this attachment could be related to a missile possibly fired by the plane just before impact, to create a larger explosion. If true, this would not be the aircraft that took off that morning as Flight 175. Here are two links clearly showing some anomaly on the fuselage: http://www.rense.com/general41/moreev.htm http://www.rense.com/general41/fus.htm

Jack, What is your source of the surveillance image of the first plane just before it hit the first tower? I have never seen this image nor heard of it. I thought the only image of the plane just before hitting the tower was in the French videotape, which shows the actual hit.

Do your homework before making unsupported statements. Jack White I have a thick file on Flight 77 and the Pentagon hit. I have done my homework. You are the one making unsupported statements. With respect to my quoted post, the statements I made are supported by plain common sense.

Jack, In the second of the two photos, the collapsed wall (and therefore the hole) looks to be more in front of the firetruck on the right than the one on the left. That should therefore hold true for the first photo, in which the trucks appear to be in the same positions. In any case, why would anyone fake a plane crash into a building and forget to make a hole? Once realizing their mistake ("Damn, we forgot to make a hole"), wouldn't they have to bump off all the firemen who arrived on those trucks and observed that Flight 77, or whatever hit the building, didn't leave any hole? Isn't it much more likely that the top of the wall collapsed because there was a hole underneath it?

James Bamford has a new book on 9/11 and its use by the Bush regime as a pretext for war against Iraq. Appropriately entitled "A Pretext for War." The book's Amazon.com page (link below) includes a lengthy favorable review from the Washington Post. Bamford's previous book "Body of Secrets" made news for drawing public attention to Operation Northwoods, the U.S. military's proposal in 1962 for terrorist attacks against American citizens to be blamed on Castro. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038...0231992-2723255

There is strong evidence that individual anti-Castro Cubans were involved in the assassination, just as there is strong evidence of individual Mafiosi involvement. There's a big difference between that and saying that "Cubans did it" (or "the Mafia did it"). Those who "did it" used Cubans and Mafiosi among others.

The 12/14/01 "confession" videotape of Usama bin Laden was faked, presumably by U.S. intelligence. Details are in the link below. Here are frames from the tape: Here are photos of bin Laden, compared with the man in the tape (E): Does anyone here believe that these pictures are of the same man? http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osamatape.html

One theory I recall reading is that Ted stopped the car and got out after spotting the law officer behind them. He told Mary Jo to drive on ahead and he would join her on foot after hiding from the officer. Mary Jo took off and, not even aware of the bridge, drove straight off of it. I find it hard to believe that her death was deliberate murder. How could someone possibly plan for the car to go off the bridge, either with Ted and her both in it or Mary Jo in it alone? Is there any evidence that someone moved the bridge? And didn't Ted take a wrong turn in the first place, else we never would have heard of this bridge?

Jack, How do you account for the Old Tramp looking older than Hunt was in 1963? I believe the picture of Hunt posted for comparison with the tramp is from the Watergate days, some 10 years after Dealey Plaza. There is a strong resemblance between the pictures, but that's due partly to Hunt having aged 10 years. What kind of disguise could Hunt have been wearing to have an older face? And what would be the point of him looking like himself except older? On Holt, there is similarly an age problem. Holt was too young in 1963 to be the tramp. Unless, of course, he borrowed some kind of disguise from Hunt to look older.

Lee, I'm not Jim Marrs but can direct you to info relevant to your question about CIA offices at the WTC. I'm not aware of any CIA offices in the towers, but the NY Times reported the fact that the CIA's undercover New York station was in WTC Building 7 (a 47-story building that collapsed even though it wasn't hit by any airplane), and the CIA station was of course destroyed when WTC7 collapsed. All the CIA employees were safely evacuated before WTC7 fell (in the same symmetrical fashion as the towers fell), which leaseholder Larry Silverstein has indicated was the result of controlled demolition. Silverstein stated on a PBS program about 9/11 that the decision was made "to pull" WTC7 because of the damage, "to pull" being an established term in the profession for controlled demolition. The FEMA investigation of the collapse concluded that the cause is undetermined. That remains unchanged, so I guess FEMA didn't watch the PBS program or else just hasn't gotten around to talking to Silverstein. As for the 9/11 commission, it couldn't care less. Here's a link to the NY Times article: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1104-04.htm

To me the clearest evidence of foreknowledge of 9/11 can be seen in the inexplicable behavior during the attacks of all four men who would be most likely among high government officials to have such knowledge: the president, vice president (in this administration anyway), secretary of defense, and chairman of the joint chiefs. When told the first WTC tower was hit, Bush reportedly assumed it was some pilot’s error. But when told the second tower was hit and America was under attack, he did nothing but continue to sit in a reading lesson with schoolchildren. Why didn’t he get up within at least a reasonable time, excuse himself, and go act like a commander in chief? For a full seven minutes (all excruciating seven of them are recorded in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11), Bush just sat there, when it was conceivable that lives could have been saved through quick presidential decisions. When VP Cheney in the White House heard about the first tower being hit, he sat in his office and watched the tower burn on TV. We are supposed to believe that it never occurred to either Cheney or Bush that it could have been a terrorist incident, despite their familiarity as part of their jobs with terrorist threats and potentialities. When the second tower was hit, and it finally dawned upon Cheney that this must be terrorists attacking, we have been led to believe that the Secret Service grabbed Cheney up and hustled him into an underground shelter. But that apparently is not the case. The second tower was hit just after 9 a.m., and Cheney did not get to the shelter, as best the 9/11 commission has been able to determine, until just before 10 am. We know that he stopped in the tunnel along the way to call Bush, who authorized shoot-downs of any more hijacked planes, though of course the Pentagon had been hit by then and the attacks were already over. Aside from that call, what did Cheney do for a whole hour that is completely unaccounted for? Watch CNN? Rumsfeld, after learning that both towers had been hit, went right on with ordinary business, talking with a daily CIA briefer in his Pentagon office, until the Pentagon itself was hit. I don’t know what comment needs to be added to such inexplicable, and still unexplained, behavior. Doesn't it speak for itself? Rumsfeld glossed over it in his 9/11 commission testimony, and no one on the commission asked him a single question about it, nor has anyone from the media. Thus another of the many unanswered questions asked by the frustrated 9/11 Family Steering Committee will likely remain unanswered, like most of the others: “Why did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was in the Pentagon when it was struck, remain in his office despite knowing the country was under attack?” Almost equally inexplicable is the story told by General Myers, then Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In a November 2001 interview he stated that he was on Capitol Hill that morning for a meeting with Senator Max Cleland. They knew the first WTC tower had been hit before the meeting, but they "thought it was a small airplane or something like that,” so they went ahead with their meeting. When the second tower was hit, Myers shamelessly told the interviewer, "Nobody informed us of that." The Pentagon was hit just as Myers came out of his meeting with Cleland, and someone stuck a phone into Myers’s hand, in case he wanted to get up to speed on the war in progress. Are we supposed to believe that the inexplicable behavior of not one, not two, not three, but all four of these men at the top of the military chain of command during the 9/11 attacks, is just some coincidence? (All you JFK researchers should be familiar with coincidences and their great explanatory power.) Or is it not more likely an indication that they knew what was happening, that the absence of action on the part of all four of these men was willful, studied behavior? But why, one might ask, if they had foreknowledge, would they not at least act like the responsible leaders they are supposed to be? Why would they not get off their butts and do something, instead of acting, well, guilty? And the most likely answer is that they did not want to put themselves into a position of having to do something, before the events played out. For example, one of the big controversies about the blanket “incompetence” exhibited by the government on 9/11 was the delay in getting jet fighters launched till it was too late. In that regard there is a very significant comment in Myers’s prepared statement to the 9/11 commission. He says that as soon as he reached the smoking Pentagon from Capitol Hill, “I asked questions,” such as “the status of fighters” to intercept hijacked aircraft. There’s the rub. Had Myers simply been told about the second tower strike, that these were terrorist attacks, one of the first things he would have been expected to do as JC Chairman would be to ask about the status of fighters. Thus fighters conceivably could have been launched from Andrews or elsewhere to protect Washington many minutes before the Pentagon was hit. It was important, therefore, if this was a conspiracy, that Myers not be informed, so that he would not be in a position to ask about fighters. Ditto Rumsfeld, who even when he was told about the second tower being hit, went and virtually hid in his office with his daily briefer, lest he be expected to ask the National Military Command Center, right there in the Pentagon, about things like the possibility of fighters being launched. A final note, though I could go on and write a book. If Rumsfeld had foreknowledge, one may ask, why was he even in the Pentagon that day? That brings into play the strange behavior of Flight 77, which once again calls into play the mystical god of coincidence, which seems ever to hover around what may seem at first blush to be conspiracies. Why did Flight 77, instead of crashing straight into the Pentagon’s middle to inflict as many casualties as possible, circle around in a steep bank in order to hit the one section of the Pentagon, called Wedge One, that had just been reinforced, and was thus the one section most resistant to damage, and because of the renovation still had less than a full complement of workers to suffer death or injury? (And while on the subject of minimal casualties, why such an unusually low number of passengers on Flight 77 that morning? And also aboard Flight 11, and aboard Flight 93, and aboard Flight 175? Well, how about coincidence, coincidence, coincidence, and coincidence?) The Washington Post called Flight 77's circling around to hit Wedge One “a weird quirk of fate.” Maybe so. But there were a lot of weird quirks during the attacks of 9/11, which no one has had to explain.

I think Simkin is just as likely to have been the old tramp as Holt was.

Larry, FWIW the ARRB considered the Hoover memo about Mr. George Bush to be genuine. Here's a link to part of the ARRB final report: http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part08.htm About three quarters down the linked page is the following: 4. George Bush A November 29, 1963, memorandum from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State refers to the fact that information on the assassination of President Kennedy was "orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." At the request of the Review Board, the CIA made a thorough search of its records in an attempt to determine if the "George Bush" referred to in the memorandum might be identical to President and former Director of Central Intelligence George Herbert Walker Bush. That search determined that the CIA had no association with George Herbert Walker Bush during the time frame referenced in the document. The records that the Review Board examined showed that the only other "George Bush" serving in the CIA in 1963 was a junior analyst who has repeatedly denied being the "George Bush" referenced in the memorandum. The Review Board staff found one reference to an Army Major General George Bush in the calendars of Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles. There was no indication if this General Bush could be the referenced George Bush. The Review Board marked the calendar page as an assassination record.

Here's a link to the Kitchel memo. You're right, it's an FBI memo, not SS as I incorrectly assumed. (The letterhead is simply "United States Government Memorandum", and I didn't notice "FBI - Houston" in the stamp at the bottom). I don't see why you say this memo doesn't jibe with the SS memo you've quoted, since I don't see where the latter specifies that Bush advised of this threat before the assassination. BTW are you sure it's an SS memo you're quoting and not FBI? The reason I ask is that the reference in it to checking "with Secret Service in Houston" sounds like something that another agency would say, not the SS about its own office in Houston. And it starts by saying "Houston . . . advised," which also suggests an agency other than "Secret Service in Houston." I would think that the other agency most likely would be FBI. What it sounds like is that Bush called the FBI in Dallas on the afternoon of 11/22/63, the FBI in Dallas advised the FBI in Houston, which investigated including checking with the SS in Houston. (Bush was not calling from Houston but from Tyler, Texas.) http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/user_files/5656.jpg

According to a Secret Service memo dated 11/22/63 from SA Graham W. Kitchel to the Houston office, Bush called Dallas to report Parrott's alleged threat at 1:45 pm that day, over an hour after the assassination. The reported threat therefore had no effect on security in Dallas, as Bush's call came after the fact. Also, there is no evidence that Bush was ever "in the company of" Parrott. Bush was calling to "furnish hearsay," and gave the names of two people who might could provide more info on Parrott, who Bush said is "possibly a student at the University of Houston."

On Robert Kennedy, it is interesting to note that a magic bullet was involved in his assassination too. While the convicted assassin Sirhan fired at him from a few feet in front, the fatal shot was fired point-blank behind RFK's ear complete with powder burns. IMO that qualifies as a magic bullet. While it's debatable whether an umbrella gun was used from the CIA arsenal in the JFK hit, that arsenal seems to have had no shortage of magic bullets. Note also the bullet that somehow curved around a car door to hit Ronald Reagan. I suspect that someone wanted the CIA's George Bush in the Oval Office sooner rather than later.

I have a question for David Simkin. How did the large exit wound in the rear right of JFK's head get there?

If Stockdale was having legal problems, the guys whom he suggested were out to get him were more likely prosecutors than conspirators.

John, Since some of the suspicion about Phillips depends on the claims of Veciana, the implication of some of the points you make (which are good points) is that Veciana seemed to be out to get Phillips (claiming that he saw Phillips or Bishop and Oswald together). Why would Veciana make up incriminating things about Phillips?

You're right. I don't know where I was or what I was doing. I just think I do. You win. We don't need to correspond any further.

That would be a worthwhile interview. Here's an interesting essay on Smathers by Gil Jesus that was posted a while back on the JFK Lancer forum: http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...ing_type=search

>But we are coming at this from different angles. Indeed. Whenever I try to discuss the assassination with someone who sees it through the eyes of a determined lone nutter, I get a headache. Or what I shall henceforth call the Folsom Prism Blues. >I, on the other hand am maintaining that it is much logical and much more probable that Witt simply forgot the events that occurred that day.< I vividly recall, over 40 years later, exactly what I was doing in Gainesville, Florida when I heard about JFK being shot. But Mr. Witt, so you reason, forgot exactly what he was doing right there in Dealey Plaza, 15 years after the momentous fact, when JFK got shot only yards away from him. Pardon me if I don't respect that logic. >What on earth would be his motive in coming forth and giving false information?< Who knows? Perhaps it had something to do with a conspiracy, i.e. perhaps he was told or requested to do it. Ever heard of disinformation? The intelligence community is good at it.

T. Folsom: All I can assume you are referring to is that he seemed to recall that he was still walking towards the Presidential motorcade when the shots were first fired, and the Zapruder film shows him stationary at the time of the first shot. I cannot imagine what else you are referring to as being so damning in his testimony. Did you read his testimony? If you did, you need to read more carefully. He didn't just say he was walking forward, he went on to say that he couldn't even see the president when he was being shot because he had the umbrella up in front of his face, presumably still trying to open it. Take a look at the Z film or the photos of UM (who appears to be standing still) and see if the umbrella he's holding over his head is in any way blocking his view of the president. T. Folsom: But I'm still not even sure what you are struggling to prove by thie Umbrella Man nonsense. Maybe I havenot read enough conspiracy lunacy to understand. Please explain. I'm not trying to prove anything. I simply stated my opinion that Witt was not UM, and I base that on his testimony and the photographic evidence.

Why are you asking me what testimony I'm referring to, and when it was given, when the very first post in this thread says that Witt testified before "the HCSA, Monday, September 25, 1978"? Now that you have that basic info, you can easily look up his testimony for yourself with a Google, and compare what he says he was doing when the shots were fired and what the UM is seen doing on film and in photos. I'm not going to do the work for you, since I really have no interest in arguing with a sarcastic lone nutter, about this or anything else.

There is evidence, however, that the man with the umbrella, regardless of what he was doing in the plaza, was not Mr. Witt. The evidence is Witt's own testimony v. what cameras in the plaza recorded. I prefer to believe the camera.