W. Tracy Parnell

3 hours ago, Mathias Baumann said:

These facts were made public long ago. That's why a majority of people believe in conspiracy.

I am not talking about simply making facts public, but about proving a conspiracy through scientific and legal means and reversing the history books. I am working on a blog article about this now. 

2 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

And by the way... are you aware that the HSCA concluded there was a high probability that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy?

Yes, and I also know why they said that. But Steve Barber, Dale Myers and other information have showed the acoustics evidence to be wrong.

8 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

The single bullet theory is NOT a rational explanation. It violates the laws of physics. Bullets travel in a straight line unless they are deflected by a solid object. But President Kennedy was not leaning forward when the "single" bullet hit him.

The involvement of other gunmen is NOT speculation. It is backed up by the testimony of numerous witnesses AND scientific evidence.

Then it should be a simple matter to get your information to scientists, the media and others who can make these facts known to the public. But as far as witnesses, you should be aware that people witnessing an event will vary in their explanations of what happened.

28 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

In comparison saying that President Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy is NOT an extraordinary claim.

It is when there exists a perfectly rational alternate explanation with evidence to back it up. The burden of proof then shifts in this case to the conspiracy theorists. Unfortunately, very few of them agree about anything regarding this case. Take the H&L theory for example. An informal poll here showed the majority do not agree with it. Another case is the umbrella man who was the subject of a recent thread. For some reason I can't discern, some people here still believe there is something to this even though Louie Witt came forward to ID himself and he looks exactly like photos of the UM as Jerry Organ showed. I am willing to bet there are many (again probably a majority) who would discount this debunked theory. So, until an alternate CT theory is developed that refutes the WC/HSCA with evidence accepted by scientists, academia and the media, the CT community is resigned to speculation.

9 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I like Fred Litwin have evolved from Conspiracy Freak to Lone Nutter through a process of nothing more complicated than serious study, intellectual honesty and a refusal to be sucked into a conspiracy mindset. 

Great post Lance. Hopefully, you won't be a stranger here.

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Ruby killed Oswald on orders from Civello via Campisi. 

It's not enough to theorize, you have to prove it.

6 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

How does the LN theory fare with these data? Fred did not answer. And so I still do not know what a LN theorist thinks about data which so clearly disprove the LN view.

In a case with literally millions of pieces of information, it is impossible to deal with all of it. Professional investigators (FBI, Police agencies) know this and instead look to what the preponderance of the evidence shows happened to determine facts. This is especially true regarding witness statements which can (and will) vary significantly.

(scroll down to "Eyewitness testimony Questionable")

http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/h&l1.htm

35 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

What was Jack Ruby's motive?

There was no motive. He simply acted on impulse as his personal history (acts of violence against people at his club) shows he was want to do. He then spent much time trying to explain his irrational action in a rational way.

4 hours ago, François Carlier said:

First of all, who said that Lee Oswald killed JFK "for no reason at all" ? In Vincent Bugliosi's book you can read a whole chapter on motive, for example. I mean, as I write in my own book, nobody can ever say that they "know" Lee Oswald's motive. He took his secret to his grave. OK. But that does not mean in any way that he assassinated Kennedy for no reason at all.

Very good point. While the motive is unknowable, several good treatments have been done which offer good and logical suggestions. In addition to Bugliosi, Jean Davison and Jerry Organ come to mind.

12 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

That is not what he said Parnell, and you know it.

He was asking a question first about money.

Then he offered that it may be misguided moral or political agenda. 

In other words, America could not have done something like this.

I believe my comment was fair. He asked what motivates us and went on to suggest money was a factor. It is reasonable to assume that the money would come from the CIA, or wherever because I don't know where else it would come from. Fred Litwin (who is having trouble posting right now) tells me sales of his book have been very modest. DVP stated, if I remember correctly, that he has sold around 50 copies of this own book which means he didn't cover his expenses in all likelihood. In any case if Mr. Niederhut says he did not mean to say we are paid agents, I will apologize.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

My question.  What motivates people like Litwin and Parnell to engage in propagating this kind of disinformazia?

Not lack of intelligence, because both are, obviously, good writers.

Money?  Some sort of misguided moral or political agenda?

There you have it. We did not have to wait long before the old chestnut is trotted out-if you don't agree with us, you must be a paid agent from the CIA or wherever. I have been involved in JFK research since 1984 and I have never made a cent. Fred will presumably make some money from his book-as he should.

15 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

Clay Shaw who perjured himself, I don't care what the NYT says or anyone else. He was a highly paid asset for the agency before the assassination.

I don't rule out the possibility that Clay Shaw was a CIA "asset" since he was former military. That does not prove he was involved in an assassination plot.

Getting back to the topic of this thread, my review of the book is now up:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2018/10/book-review-i-was-teenage-jfk.html

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I proved that Lee Harvey Oswald was missing two teeth and at the same time was missing no teeth. (Thus corroborating the research of John Armstrong, Jim Hargrove, and David Josephs.)

You have proved no such thing. You have zero expertise in the field of forensic dentistry so someone who does would have to write a paper agreeing with your theory and then publish in a peer reviewed journal. If the paper was then accepted by the peers you would have something. But when they found out who the teeth belonged to, they would not go near it with a ten foot pole because of the other evidence that disproves the H&L theory. BTW, the majority of researchers here at EF who are overwhelmingly of the CT persuasion disagree with the H&L theory and would likely disagree with your claim of "corroborating" Armstrong's research.

It is amusing to read the attacks on Fred Litwin, the majority of which are by people who have not read his book and do not intend to. I have not read the book yet, but I will and plan to do a review to be published at my website. But my understanding is that this book is as much or more a coming-of-age story than it is an analysis of the assassination. And at only 272 pages, it is unrealistic for such a book to address the myriad issues regarding JFK's death. It seems to me that many people here are afraid that others may read a book written by a former conspiracy believer and find that his reasons for "switching sides" make sense.

13 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

I have to call foul on the responses here. I think any author who posts here deserves a fail, critical appraisal of his or her work. That cannot be done prior to reading it.

Good for you Michael. And let me say I wish Fred the best of luck with this book and to the doubters-what are you afraid of? Give it a chance at least.

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

From Harvey and Lee:

I considered the possibility that Robert assumed that his brother entered Stripling after finishing elementary school, because this was the same school he (Robert) attended in the fall of 1948. But if Lee Oswald and his mother had remained in Fort Worth in the fall of 1952, Lee would have transferred to nearby Monnig Junior High, not Stripling.  [H&L, p. 94]

Now please address ALL the evidence for Stripling School, not just one element at a time.  How many people are lying?

The funny thing is Robert (or the fake Marguerite) wasn't very well versed on the plot it seems, even though Armstrong believes he was in on it. This is one of the biggest points against the H&L theory-the conspirators didn't know what they were doing and kept goofing up even though the CIA would have presumably trained them so geniuses like Armstrong could not discover their handiwork years later.

How many witnesses are lying? In this instance probably zero. They could be remembering an Oswald at Stripling, but if so it was Robert-after that many years the memory gets hazy. But Armstrong thinks that people remember mundane events in vivid detail years after the fact when they have no reason to. In other words, I can remember what I was doing when JFK was shot, but I don't remember the day before at all.

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Oh for crying out loud!  Mr. Parnell is desperate to discredit Oswald’s attendance at Stripling School because it is obviously impossible for one Oswald to have attended there and to have the school records published by the Warren Commission. So he not only claims assistant principal Frank Kudlaty was lying about giving LHO’s records to the FBI, but that Jack White put him up to it!  And Mr. Parnell ignores all the other evidence supporting Mr. Kudlaty’s claim. 

For example, on two occasions, once in 1959 and again in 1962, Robert Oswald told newspaper reporters that his younger brother attended Stripling School.  This is from the June 8, 1962 Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  

Kudlaty was not necessarily lying. He heard White's story and then "remembered" his experience with the FBI, no doubt differently than it was because of White's influence. If Kudlaty had come forward independently, if would give greater weight to his statements. Of course, we have been over Robert's statements about Stripling before. He assumed that his brother attended Stripling. And he would have if Marguerite had not moved them to NYC.

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/04/robert-oswald-and-stripling.html

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oh baloney.

You got blindsided because you did not know what DiMaio had done in Dealey Plaza to stop the laser test that CNN had arranged.

That is trying to rearrange the models in the car into a position they were not in in the Z film.

Any "authority" is fine with Parnell.

(I won't even comment on Lifton's "objectivity".)

Jim,

You always want to change the subject to DiMaio no matter what the subject is. But we are talking about witnesses as they relate to H&L. And you can't equate DiMaio, who is an expert even though you don't agree with him (or believe he is a member of the evil "power elite"), with the people Armstrong dug up. These are people 40 years after the fact who may or may not have even been in a position to see what they think they did.

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Wow.  Parnell first accuses Armstrong of approaching a witness with a confirmation bias. No no says Parnell.

But then Lifton comes in to see McBride with guns blazing, Gary Mack type "You are a damned xxxx" zealotry, and Presto!  That's cool.

My God Parnell.

Give us all a break.

From the guy who said a long time ago, "Well, Vincent DiMaio is an objective expert."

 LOL!

 

You can find a partial transcript of Lifton's interview with McBride on the Internet. It comes across IMO as very journalistic not "guns blazing" at all. And I don't remember saying DiMaio was objective-just that he was an expert.

12 hours ago, Mark Lawson said:

In any case, Armstrong has conducted quite a number of primary interviews, and scoured various real property, school and similar records, and the glaring discrepancies he cites have to be explained somehow.

All of the discrepancies have a reasonable alternate explanation. One thing you have to understand about witnesses-especially those speaking 40 or more years later is that they are essentially worthless without collaborating evidence. Particularly true when there is other evidence that refutes them. Palmer McBride is the gold standard for what I talking about. He knew LHO and there is no doubt about that. He was just mistaken about when some of the events he witnessed took place. David Lifton interviewed McBride and did exactly what the WC would have done if he had testified-showed him documentation that proved he was mistaken. And McBride immediately recanted. But what Armstrong did and does with other witnesses is convince them they are an important part of history. And McBride was very receptive to the idea that he was not mistaken after all-who wouldn't be? So, he reversed himself.

As further evidence of witness unreliability, when David Matt and Richard Sweat escaped from prison in upstate New York a few years back, police received hundreds of reports that they were in Allegany county. Turns out they had never left the Adirondack region near the prison they escaped from hundreds of miles away. Were those people lying? Some possibly were, but most were  just mistaken.

As for records, there will be any number of mistakes in records, especially when a family moves as much as LHO's did. 20 plus moves is a lot of opportunity for mistakes to creep into the record.

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

All the H&L deniers can do is to say people like Veciana, whose statements clearly indicate there was more than one LHO, are lying, along with witnesses such as Dr. Milton Kurian, Allen Felde, Linda Faircloth, Marita Lorenz, Frank Kudlaty, Fran Schubert, Aletha Frair, Laura Kittrell, Ralph Leon Yates, Fred Moore, half the residents of Alice, Texas and vicintiy, and many others I'm undoubtedly forgetting.  

These people are not making mere "mistakes;" their statements are far too detailed and elaborate. Perhaps Jack White can be blamed for all of them. There is another long list of witnesses who have to be seriously mistaken.  
 

Some of the witnesses probably are lying. People do it all the time for various reasons. Some are certainly mistaken-Palmer McBride comes to mind immediately and also Dr. Kurian. Another group are recent witnesses that Armstrong approached in the nineties. The problems with those witnesses are numerous. For one thing, he did not approach them with an unbiased mind. Instead of using a journalist's technique, he found them and informed them that they were witnesses to history and no doubt used leading questioning. Of course, 40 or more years had passed since the events they were trying to recall which is another problem. And then there is the case of Kudlaty who was a friend of Jack White. Kudlaty had never said a word about the FBI taking any records but when White told his story, Kudlaty suddenly "remembered" the alleged incident. This has all been discussed here many times and anyone who needs more information can do a forum search.

1 hour ago, Mark Lawson said:

FWIIW: Veciana is reported to be a native Spanish speaker.  In British English, Maurice is usually pronounced "Morris," versus the French "More-ESE."  Bishop/Phillips *may* have used the former pronunciation.  In any event, if whoever made the audio transcript heard "Morris," then there's a good chance they would have spelled it phonetically.  ML

OK, I can buy that. But how do you explain Jim and John which he apparently told the Church Committee?

11 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Way back in 1977, Mr. Veciana testified that, "the person who travelled to Mexico City and visited the Cuban Embassy was not Lee Harvey Oswald, but was in fact a man disguised as Oswald.

This is not "testimony" but rather statements he made on TV. All of this is just his own speculation and obviously fueled by books and articles that he had read (he thinks LHO was a patsy and double agent). I am doing this from memory, but to my knowledge he never made any of the statements you highlighted in his HSCA testimony. Notice he says the alleged meeting with "Bishop" was in August twice, once saying it was "perhaps the first days of September" in a nod to Fonzi whose theories had influenced him by that point. Note also Bishop is named Morris instead of Maurice and at other times he said he was Jim or John. 

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

John has been asking me to put some stuff up on a FB group,

Care to share the URL? Don't worry, I won't post anything as I'm not on Facebook. I just want to read it.