Greg Doudna

Update on "spatial disorientation" and the JFK Jr. plane crash For Jim DiEugenio and anyone else interested, this update: I did some more checking on both the JFK Jr. crash and the National Transportation Safety Board's finding that the cause of that crash was considered most likely "the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation", and then to some studies of spatial disorientation. I still remain baffled at how spatial disorientation can alone cause pilot fatalities but they do. The reason I do not understand it is I know from my own flight training how very emphatically it was drilled into me and everyone in the instruction I received on this issue: always trust your instruments, not how your body feels. They emphasized this over and over and over, telling how in the early days of flight before there were instruments pilots would get killed flying "by the seat of their pants" by feel. We had films, we had veteran pilots talk about this, we read flight manuals on this, and we had physical demonstrations of the effect in which one by one, students blindfolded would be put into a spinning chair this way and that and then raise their hand when they "felt" the spinning chair motion had stopped, and everyone could see the blindfolded student getting it wrong due to inner ear vertigo. And I was a VFR-only pilot, but I always monitored the instruments, the altimeter, airspeed, turn and bank indicator, attitude indicator, all the time, every flight. Therefore I have read almost with disbelief accident reports of spatial disorientation causing fatal crashes, because I ask: how can that happen to pilots who know to "trust their instruments" and NOT anything else that seems in contradiction? Have trained and practiced to do that? Well, something like 20% of the crashes determined "spatial disorientation" do involve failure of instruments, and that I can understand. But I do not understand how this can happen in a case of a non-impaired pilot of sound mind who went through training similar to that which I did (which I assume was fairly standardized across the nation), in an aircraft with functioning instruments. And yet according to the data, evidently it does happen, no matter that I do not understand it. The only way I can make sense of it is by an analogy. I have read that in Australia where there are very long distances in roads, the number one rule, repeated and repeated and repeated AND REPEATED, every summer, public service warnings ad nauseum: if your car breaks down, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CAR. The rule is: wait with your car by the side of the road until another car comes by and can assist (could be hours in some places, but that is the rule). And yet every summer cases happen of people having car breakdowns, and leave their car on foot, wander off the road out of sight of their car, disoriented, cannot find their way back, collapse and die. Why? Did they not get the message not to do that? All I can think is that something wired into human psychology has humans occasionally self-violating rules trained and learned, and maybe that is what happens in some of these cases, I don't know. As it applies to JFK Jr., the investigators could not find anything wrong with the plane, or the weather, and toxicology testing on the body showed no alcohol or drugs in his system including not even a legally-prescribed opiate painkiller for an ankle injury (I assume that was not found in his system because JFK Jr. purposely did not take it knowing he would be flying, as safe practice, based on the eight-hour "bottle to throttle" rule, zero alcohol or drugs in the 8 hours preceding a pilot's flight, federal law). As for JFK Jr., I still find that a suspicious death. He was well-trained, had flown that stretch a number of times before, had night flight experience, was already halfway through IFR training toward an IFR (legal instruments-only) rating. He had two passengers with him and it is drilled in flight training that safe practices for pilots are nothing to be messed with. That "there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots". The argument is that there was no evidence of anything else amiss, and there is this known incidence of some airplane fatalities determined caused by spatial disorientation, so the logic is that must be what happened here, and because it is a known phenomenon, well, maybe that is what did happen here. To Jim D.: if you pursue this, my number one question to ask experienced current pilot sources today (if you don't know any personally, cold call an airport flight instructor) would be to ask how spatial disorientation crashes can happen with a trained, competent pilot and functioning instruments. Not disputing that such does happen, but try to find out how and why a trained VFR pilot would not "fly in agreement with their instruments". I think the JFK Jr. was a suspicious crash. But I also don't claim to know for sure what happened there.

The “hood” as it is called is like an elongated bill of a baseball cap that also comes down on the sides, and is made of hard plastic not cloth, but put on and worn like a baseball cap. It is designed to block out all peripheral vision above and to either side, so one cannot see out the windows of the cabin and one can see narrowly forward only the instruments. There is perfect unobstructed visibility of the instruments.

Thanks Robert for this human side of Veciana from your experience. So far as I know, I am not aware that there were claims that Veciana was implicated in the JFK assassination. It seems the main issue was Veciana’s claim that Phillips was involved with Oswald (claimed to be debunked by Tracy Parnell at his website). But the anecdote of a chastened thoughtful Veciana in later years regretting his earlier views and activities has redemptive value, in that some people do grow and learn with time. Thanks for telling this.

I am a low-hours VFR (Visual Flight Rules), single-engine land rated, and night flight. I took flight training both classroom and in-air while at college at Big Sandy, Texas which had an airstrip and an aircraft fleet, and then in Ashland, Oregon at the municipal airport there where I completed my training. The requirement was 40 hours minimum in-air flight training, 20 hours with instructor and 20 hours solo, for the license. My flight training occurred 1975-1980 and I received my pilot's license in 1980. I learned on rental planes. I flew Cessna 150s (2-seater), Cessna 172s (4-seater), and Piper Cubs (2-seater). The pilot's license itself is good for life so I still am a licensed pilot, although every 2 years pilots must pass a medical and a flight proficiency check to remain current. I have not flown since the 1980s, didn't keep up with it due to the costs of the expensive hobby, never flew other than recreationally. I have about 120 hours. I recommend getting opinions from other pilots on their assessments of the JFK Jr. plane crash, not relying on mine alone. All I can say is how it comes across to me from my knowledge and flight training.

The reason the idea that JFK Jr was distracted or disoriented and that caused the crash does not sound right to me is, if that were so, once he became aware of a stall or falling situation he would have instantly refocused and flight school training would kick in (no hundreds of hours experience or IFR rating required). Pilots learn this in flight school, I did. The instructor puts a hood on the pilot like a horse’s blinders with no visibility outside, only the cockpit instruments. Then the instructor takes control and has the pilot close their eyes and the instructor flies the plane this way and that way wildly out of control as if in severe turbulence and verbally hands control back to the student, with the plane flying non-level and in free fall, and inner ear balance distorted from the acrobatics. The student then on the basis of relying solely on the instruments because of wearing the hood, disregarding what the body “feels” like is level, stabilizes, points the nose down and full power on the throttle, recovery, the plane flying as it should again. This is just basic training 101 for pilots at the first stage, VFR rating (Visual Flight Rules), what to do if caught by surprise in clouds or weather turbulence (then the 180 by the instruments to fly back out of the storm). So if JFK Jr had lost control through some negligence or distraction, it would not normally be a big deal apart from fright to the passengers. He would focus on the instruments, do what he learned and trained in flight school, and recover. It should not logically end up in a fatal crash. As I recall, radar showed the plane of JFK Jr climbed briefly precipitously before veering one way and falling down to the water fatally for all with no recovery from the stall. This is not something that poor visibility or lack of flying experience seems easily to account for to me. If he had lost use of his instruments and was flying by “feel” in a vertigo situation with poor visibility, that could do it, but I am not aware that investigators found any issue with loss of use of the aircraft’s instruments, and aircraft generally are well engineered these days such that such malfunctions are not too common. Now Don Jeffries in his forthcoming book says he has new research on that crash, apparently involving witnesses sighting an explosion of the aircraft, not simply rehash and speculation of old. I’ll be interested in what he has got and have pre-ordered the book.

As a private pilot myself, single-engine VFR, I have had an interest in plane crash investigations for decades. Every plane crash is mandated to have an investigation, and although I have not studied the JFK Jr. case closely, it was investigated and found to be from pilot error going into a "death spiral" dive (as I recall). Two relevant questions. First question: does that finding of an authoritative investigation mean that is what happened? Answer: no it doesn't; it just means there was no evidence found that anything else was the cause. This has been studied: investigators check if there was anything wrong with the plane mechanically or its electronics malfunctioned; if there was unusual weather or other explanation, etc.; and if nothing is found of that nature, then the default explanation is "pilot error", reasoning logically it had to be that since no other explanation was found. However, when that is the finding and the pilot survived, living pilots have often fought back on the "pilot error" finding and prevailed. But when the pilot is dead, there is nobody to contest the finding and it stands, case closed. It is an easy, logical, and very common way to close cases. But it isn't proof that is what happened. Second question is: does the "pilot error" explanation in the JFK Jr. crash make sense? And I have to say as a pilot when I read the explanations in the past my answer has been "not really, no". Supposedly JFK Jr. pulled the nose up while banking, sending the craft into a spin or "death spiral" which is difficult to recover from. That is the explanation as I recall, reconstructed (because no other cause of the crash could be identified). But I went through flight training and it doesn't matter that JFK Jr. was not terribly experienced, pilots learn not to pull the nose up, to trust their instruments (not their sense of up and down inner-ear sense), and also learn how to immediately recover from a stall by stabilizing the plane and putting the nose down, with recovery from the stall usually with 300 feet drop in altitude, which is nothing when high in the air. Still, odd things can happen. My father told of his WW2 training experience and witnessing a crack pilot training with a dive bomber and full crew went into a practice dive, then horrifyingly never pulled out at the last minute like normal and crashed killing six of my father's fellow crew members (my father was not in the plane). No one knew why, nothing mechanically wrong. Speculation of something medical, a blackout, but nobody knew why. In the JFK Jr. case as I read it I speculated: a fight (verbal) in the cabin with the two women? Maybe. JFK Jr. joking around too much telling some story and not paying enough attention? (That one seems doubtful; pilots know better than that.) The lack of instrument rating (IFR), the flying at night with no visible horizon; and relative inexperience with low flight hours are cited as factors in the JFK Jr. crash but neither of those three factors bear significant weight to me as explanation either because VFR pilots are trained in flight training at the outset to use, and do use, instruments when there is loss of visibility (even if not rated to fly intentionally into instrument-only daytime conditions). Now Don Jeffries from his essay says he has a source saying there was no haze contributing to JFK Jr's loss of control, and a couple of other things. And the claim is that JFK Jr. was (a) extremely popular and a realistic chance to go high in America including talk of the presidency; and (b) had a strong personal interest in the JFK assassination including conspiracy theories, analogous to questions asked concerning whether someone put Sirhan up to killing RFK, who could reasonably be expected to have sought to find the identities of his brother's killers and go after them with fury if he did know who they were, if and when he became president. I don't think it is out of line to view the JFK Jr. crash with neutral critical consideration of evidence, without need for generic name-calling dismissal and putdown (as opposed to simply skipping it from personal reading if not of interest; or criticism of substance on specifics). Remember stories of Saddam Hussein's political opponents in Iraq who kept dying in helicopter accidents... there were conspiracy theories about that too. Some people are more suspicious than others looking at the same set of facts.

John Thomas Masen. I am not aware of any evidence or reason to consider it likely that he knew anything about the assassination or knew Oswald. But... He was knowledgeable of and a participant in an arms-obtaining activity in Nov 1963 for a plot by anti-Castro Cubans to do an imminent major action related to an attack on Castro and Cuba. This (apparently) same plot was stated by a credible Chicago witness as also assuming an imminent assassination of JFK. He was arrested on Wed Nov 20, 1963, released and (my interpretation here) "turned" or had been prior to that as an informant to ATTU Ellsworth; supposedly rearrested again on Fri Nov 22, 1963 although I have never seen any documentation of that; but Masen appears to be an extremely good candidate for the cellmate of Elrod in the Dallas jail on Nov 22 that was misidentified as Oswald. (Masen looked strikingly like Oswald, though that was accident.) His phone number appears in Jack Ruby's phone book by some kind of cipher (I forget the details but it seemed convincing). Masen appears to be confirmed known to Ruby in being the apparent identification of an unruly customer in the Carousel Club misidentified as "Oswald" who stood and accused an MC of being a communist and was thrown out by Ruby, in an incident of ca. early October 1963. And Masen was involved in the same gunrunning activity (I believe likely as an informant by that point) in which Ruby appears also maybe to have been involved though Ruby was never himself charged over that. Based on my own separate studies, I believe it is certain that Masen was the Sports Drome shooting range mistaken ID of "Oswald" by witnesses there; and that Masen also was the Shasteen barbershop customer in Irving mistaken ID for "Oswald". There could be still further cases of Masen identifications of Oswald mistaken ID's (from the accident of physical resemblance) though these are two I personally am certain of. There is no evidence or indication that Masen ever impersonated Oswald or used any alias or claimed to be Oswald in these two instances or elsewhere, or even knew Oswald, or that either of the two "Oswald sighting" claims just noted had anything to do with Oswald or the assassination. These were simply post-Nov 22 sincerely mistaken identifications by witnesses based on memory of appearance and certain specifics of behavior of Masen. Masen was a dealer in Mannlicher-Carcano rifles and ammunition, which was not very common, of obvious interest in light of the Nov 22 assassination and alleged murder weapon.

David von Pein, I notice you lump all alternative views and proponents to the WC finding as “conspiracy theorists” or “conspiracists”, as a single cluster with certain negative and ridiculed characteristics which you refer to as what CT’s “always” do. Would you say your definition of “conspiracy theorist”? Do you consider it to be a pathology or negative? Do you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist? In the case of the unsolved murder of Jimmy Hoffa I mean? I am sure you are aware that 4, and possibly as many as 5 depending on assessment of Gerald Ford, of the 7 members of the Warren Commission, personally privately believed or suspected that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, contrary to their unanimously signed published finding that Oswald acted alone. And that view or suspicion held privately by a majority of the members of the Warren Commission is promoted even today by such as Gus Russo and others. Do you attribute your list of method flaws and ridicule to the members of the Warren Commission and all the serious authors making that kind of case as well? Do you consider Bugliosi a CT? I mean on the RFK assassination. I understand Bugliosi did not believe Sirhan did that alone. (Never mind the separate issue of whether any given theory is right or wrong, the question is in the definition and accuracy of the label.) Do you think it is helpful to discussion to apply a term with highly negative connotations and baggage, as an almost weaponized epithet or name-calling, toward any and all even Innocence-Project genre of inquiries toward some of the famous assassinations in history. Is that your intent? Be honest!

Crooks seems classic school shooter type, bullied, pain inside, in an America with easy access to guns, a variant of teen suicide issues going out in a blaze of fury, not ideological or political. Everyone asks why and typically there is no reason other than a kid so unhappy they snap. A college friend of mine was shot and killed in a horrific mass shooting in Brookfield, Illinois in national news. The shooter had no previous criminal record, was remembered as a helpful young man, killed as many as he could in a church meeting then turned the gun on himself. No one knew why. One theory was an apocalyptic sermon about the end of the age set him off; another was he went for help to the minister and was put down pretty hard and berated. But no one knew why really. Oswald as loner won’t wash though. He had friends in Minsk, in the Marines before that, then he married and loved Marina and his baby girls. The loner tag on Oswald doesn’t work. Nor does a school shooter/suicidal type work. Either he was innocent or he was acting out ideologically and politically. Either of those interpretations have difficulties too. Crooks seems like he had not traveled or had much of a life at age 20. Oswald had achieved more at age 24, seen the world, than 99% of his peers. Crooks prepared for his violence toward Trump at that event. Apart from a marked rifle in the TSBD, no sign of preparation by Oswald to kill JFK, no practice shooting, no buying of ammo, no claiming of credit, and no taking of the picture perfect kill shot opportunity of the limo on Houston before the turn on to Elm. With Oswald, it is not excluded he was framed for JFK. Crooks wasn’t framed. I doubt very much there was anyone conspiring with Crooks; if in the remote possibility that were to be so, the better parallel with Crooks would be Bremer and the assassination attempt on George Wallace.

Even his friend and advocate (posthumously anyway) in the manuscript “I’m a Patsy!”, de Mohrenschildt, said Oswald was a hitter of Marina when he was angry, and de Mohrenschildt told him that was wrong. Marina apparently got some hits in on Lee too when they fought. I knew a man in Ohio who ran a shelter for troubled people in transition and he told me they had one couple in one room that to this day he honestly could not tell whether it was mutual battery or rough sex, every night, sounds from their room.

Marina knew about the rifle in the blanket in the garage, and also knew that it had been removed by Lee and her from the garage close to two weeks earlier on Nov 11, 1963, with no evidence it was in the garage again after that date. https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf. Its Ruth who didn't know about the rifle in the garage until Marina told that to police in Ruth's presence on Nov 22. It seems Hosty's notes of Nov 23 reflect Ruth telling of the police's and her own learning on Nov 22, via what Marina told, of the business of the rifle in the blanket in the garage.

Thank you Jean, and Claude! Yes I have never seen these handwritten Hosty notes from 11/23/63 before. Question: why is there no Ruth Paine 11/23/63 interview report writeup by Hosty in the released documents or on the MFF site? (Not that I know of anyway.) Also, that Hosty did visit Ruth Paine on Sat 11/23 has never been a secret itself since that is when Ruth says she gave the Oswald Soviet embassy letter copy to Hosty. However, that does not appear in Hosty’s notes, and what is in Hosty’s notes does not appear anywhere (now) written up! Yes.

Does anyone know about the second and third of the below? My computer says it is unable to open these files due to lack of an application. Can anyone else access these files and give either a screenshot or a transcription? Thanks. From https://web.archive.org/web/20001017101248/http://www.redacted.com/i_lhofbi.htm. ~ ~ ~ start copy and paste ~ ~ ~ Investigation - Oswald and the FBI 11/22/63 James Hosty's Notes from his Oswald Interview[max] These notes were discovered by Hosty and turned over to the ARRB in 1996. Hosty had previously said they had been destoryed. These notes mention Oswald's involvement with the FPCC, his USMC marksmenship, and other rifles seen in the TSBD on 11/20/63. 11/23/63 James Hosty Notes from his Ruth Paine Interview Page 1[max] These notes were discovered by Hosty and turned over to the ARRB in 1996. Hosty had previously said they had been destoryed. These notes mention the Hidell alias and its connection to the FPCC and the 3/20/63 ordering of the rifle. Also mentioned are Oswald's coming to the Paine house the night before the assassination and his leaving New Orleans in September and returning to Dallas in October. 11/23/63 James Hosty Notes from his Ruth Paine Interview Page 2[max] These notes were discovered by Hosty and turned over to the ARRB in 1996. Hosty had previously said they had been destoryed. These notes mention Oswald geeting the job at the TSBD in October, his leaving Dallas in April, and his work at Jaggars. ~ ~ ~ end copy and paste ~ ~ ~

One possibility for making sense of Oswald on Nov 22 is he had intentionally incriminated himself in what he thought was going to be a failed assassination attempt that would be blamed on Castro. Then someone turned that into a real assassination and he had been set up. Then he was told to maintain his persona after his arrest including to his police interrogators until intervention from higher authority would get him freed. That didn’t happen because the mob got to him first and killed him. In other words he was screwed royally. In this scenario, the rifle on the 6th floor was his mail-order marked rifle; he got it into the TSBD, though it makes better sense the rifle infiltration into the TSBD happened prior to Nov 22; but he did not shoot it. And his TWICE, not once but TWICE, telling witnesses he was bringing a package of “curtain rods”—was part of intentional feint to look incriminating. And the justification for the curtain rods would be the real wrecked curtain rod in his room (of the photos) done intentionally by himself in support of that ploy. But the only way it makes sense for Oswald to be a witting part of a framing of Castro (as part of working for US interests) would be if he had, like Delgado just not as quickly, become dis-enamored with Castro for similar reasons the earlier Delgado did—the dictatorship, etc. Remember Oswald read and liked Orwell’s Animal Farm, about a socialist revolution begun with ideals and happiness that becomes corrupted by the growing power of evil pigs. It’s an anti-Communist message, but Liebeler was not correct that Animal Farm is anti-socialist. Orwell himself was socialist. The animals revolution is the socialist revolution and the reader remains sympathetic to the farm animals and the ideals of their revolution to the end even as the betrayal of that revolution unfolds. Oswald read Marx and Jack London and many others as a mid-teenager, formative to his retaining in adulthood socialist views like Jack London, an American not a non-American socialist. The anti-racism and pro-JFK of Oswald was real, that was not persona. An ideal that workers should own and control the fruits of their labor, not for the enrichment of absentee owners, in networked democratically run enterprises across the land, as economic theory was real. The real Oswald supported Kennedy from the left, liked Kennedy’s domestic liberalism, would be inspired by JFK’s achievement of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and perhaps would be inspired by those elements in JFK speeches envisioning a non-colonial future world and an end to the Cold War. All it would take for Oswald to support Ray/JURE as an alternative to Castro in Cuba—Ray/JURE whom RFK envisioned as having a role in governing a post-Castro free and democratic and non-Soviet-aligned Cuba—would be contact with Ray/JURE people or ideas. They agree in political views with Oswald’s own writings—and the Animal Farm parable’s message as Oswald could have seen it applied to Castro. This is a different possible way of seeing Oswald than the deeply entrenched view that Oswald was a diehard Castro loyalist who hated America. How could an Oswald who was too poor of a shooter to have pulled off what people say he did; in an assassination in which a picture-perfect kill shot of the president in the limo was NOT taken on Houston before the turn to Elm; an Oswald who liked and supported JFK; who never practiced shooting in the runup; who never claimed credit as being a hero in killing JFK; who did not attempt to kill Walker when he with Robert Surrey stood together in that alley and fired that staged shot into an empty room… HOW could Oswald have his rifle there in the TSBD on Nov 22 and look so self-incriminated? Oswald’s witting involvement in a false flag failed assassination attempt to be blamed on Castro would be one way of making sense of some things, but it requires abandonment of the widespread perceived certainty that Oswald at least by 1963 was a Castro loyalist. The main argument claimed against Oswald having worked for a military or federal agency doing undercover things is the lack of a document confirming that. But Dulles said in WC executive sessions that there would be no document and that an agency chief would not and SHOULD NOT tell the truth (if Oswald had worked for them) even if asked under oath. Dulles said that (as one in a position to speak with some authority on the matter of agency chief practices and ethical norms). He said the only person—the only person in America— an agency chief should tell the truth re a covert relationship with Oswald was the president personally if ordered, ie LBJ, whom some consider a person of interest himself in the assassination. That was Dulles’ take on the question of how one would ever know if Oswald had worked for anyone on the U.S. side.

Claude, thanks very much for the thoughtful response. A first point is I don’t agree with the reasoning that if Oswald was an informant or agent provocateur in Aug 63 New Orleans that his agency would necessarily know about or be involved in the assassination in Dallas on Nov 63; non sequitur. Second there was a CIA message to the FBI just at the time Oswald was getting his visa to go to Mexico City informing FBI of an operation designed to discredit the FPCC in some area where FPCC had support. Since that operation is not otherwise identified, and since it occurs at the time the New Orleans CPUSA connected head of the FPCC chapter decided to go to Mexico City, was that anti-FPCC operation related to Oswald? It looks like it. Third, if FPCC by mid 1963 was a paper or shell organization dying a natural death, doesn’t that CIA-FBI message alerting to a new imminent anti-FPCC false flag (or similar) operation indicate ongoing active operations to subvert that organization, which Oswald’s behavior looks closely like? And fourth, I believe Canadian political scientist Gary O’Brien in “Oswald’s Politics” justly criticizes the Warren Commission’s treatment of Oswald’s motivation in psychological terms. O’Brien says Oswald aligned with the anti-Castro JURE would agree very well with Oswald’s writings and political views. And fifth, I agree Oswald’s behavior on Nov 21-22 indicates Oswald was involved in something but there are other possibilities than that he was intending either to shoot Kennedy personally or go to Cuba. I believe sources for the “real Oswald” in the 1959-1963 period are: his personal papers and writings other than his letters; the Delgado WC testimony you note; Titovets’ book on Oswald in Minsk; de Mohrenschildt’s “I’m a Patsy!” Manuscript; and his Aug 63 Spring Hill College address in Alabama. But that other things of Oswald reflect persona not the real Oswald, such as some of his letters, behaviors, and, in the case of the Backyard Photographs, photographs. I don’t think it is necessarily certain the real Oswald of 1963 underneath persona would be pro-Castro. As for joining in revolutions in other Latin American locations, there is no evidence in Oswald’s writings of an advocacy for, love for or romanticization of revolutionary violence.