Michael Griffith

He starts talking about Lawford's confession at about 17:15. His discussion on the confession lasts for nearly 10 minutes.

As some here probably know, in 2021, a serious, credible author, Mike Rothmiller (with Doug Thompson), published the book Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe. Rothmiller makes a strong case that Robert F. Kennedy had Marilyn Monroe murdered because she was about to go public with her affairs with him and JFK. Rothmiller worked for years in the LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division. Because of his position and contacts, he gained access to important new information about Marilyn's death. Here is an extended interview with Rothmiller about his book and how he obtained the new information included therein, which includes a confession from Peter Lawford [given to Rothmiller himself]: LINK. (He also talks about the RFK and JFK cases, Oswald, LAPD intelligence ops, and the CIA.) [Here is another interview with Rothmiller: LINK, starts at 11:10 and ends at 1:10:49. This interview provides more background on Rothmiller's career and on his research on Marilyn Monroe's death, and it includes info on Frank Sinatra and the Mafia.] After having a brief affair with JFK, Marilyn began having a more serious, prolonged affair with RFK. At one point, RFK told her he would leave his wife and marry her, but Marilyn soon realized this was not going to happen. Furious at being dumped first by JFK and then by RFK, she decided she would go public with her affairs with JFK and RFK. She made the serious mistake of angrily warning RFK that she was about to go public. We know the CIA was aware of Marilyn's affairs with the Kennedy brothers and knew about her threat to reveal the affairs to the press. Marilyn's house had been bugged, with mircophones planted in nearly every room. The CIA was also aware of the contents of the recordngs from those microphones, as a CIA document reveals. The FBI may have been behind the bugging of her house. Also, evidence suggests that the Mafia may have been aware of the affairs and may have known or suspected that Bobby was involved in Marilyn's death. Undoubtedly, when the plotters learned that RFK had murdered Marilyn Monroe, they saw this as strong justification for killing JFK, since JFK may have known or suspected that Marilyn had been murdered, and since JFK may have known or suspected that RFK was involved in her death. They knew that if they killed RFK, JFK would leave no stone unturned in pursuing his killers, but that if they killed JFK, this would neutralize RFK and would be, in their eyes, justified revenge for RFK's killing of Marilyn Monroe. Rothmiller's book goes well beyond Mark Shaw's research on Marilyn Monroe's death (included in Collateral Damage, Denial of Justice, and Fighting for Justice). However, I recommend that interested readers also read Shaw's research on the subject, since he presents a few items of information not found in Rothmiller's book. I should add that Rothmiller acknowledges that JFK and RFK did "many great things." He speaks favorably about their policies and achievements. He says he is sad to have to discuss RFK's crime and wishes RFK had not done it.

Regarding Dale Myers' scholarship on the Tippit shooting, you might be interested in my 33-page critique of his book With Malice: Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers' Book With Malice

I think RFK Jr. would be safer if he had Secret Service protection. I think the Secret Service is better than it was in 1963. Obviously, RFK Jr. himself thinks he'd be safer with Secret Service protection, or else he would not have asked for it. Ronald Reagan's Secret Service detail saved his life when John Hinckley tried to kill him in March 1982. I happen to know a Secret Service agent and two former agents from other agencies who did presidential protection work. They are all men of good character who would never take part in any illicit operation to allow someone to be harmed.

The 6.5 mm object is not a large fragment. It is a ghosted image that was superimposed over the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment. This is why there is no fragment that corresponds to the 6.5 mm object on the lateral x-rays, which would be a physical impossibility if the object were metallic. Dr. Mantik confirmed that the 6.5 mm object is an artifact with high-magnification analysis and then with repeated optical-density (OD) measurements. Dr. Chesser did his own OD measurements, and his measurements confirmed Dr. Mantik's measurements. Dr. Mantik points out that the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment is only 3-4 mm thick but that the 6.5 mm object's OD measurement shows that it would be nearly 40 mm thick if it were actually metallic; in contrast, the 7 x 2 mm fragment is 2 mm thick on the lateral x-rays, which is consistent with its OD measurement of 1.44 (JFK Assassination Paradoxes, 2022, p. 24). In OD measurements, larger numbers mean less density, while smaller numbers mean more density. As mentioned, the 6.5 mm object's OD measurement is an impossible 0.60, 0.84 lower than that of the 7 x 2 mm fragment. Even more revealing, the OD measurement of the four dental fillings combined is 0.76, 0.16 higher than the 6.5 mm object's measurement. Thus, if the 6.5 mm object were a bullet fragment, it would be denser than all four dental fillings combined, an obvious impossibility and a clear indication of forgery. We should remember the fact that the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment and the 6.5 mm object are at the same vertical level, since the small fragment is actually inside the 6.5 mm object when viewed on the AP x-ray. Nobody knew that the small fragment is visible inside the 6.5 mm object until Dr. Mantik discovered this with high-magnification analysis--and then confirmed the fragment's existence with OD measurements. Placing the small fragment inside the 6.5 mm object ensured that the two objects would align vertically. This is important because if the 6.5 mm object were higher or lower than where it is now, it would not align vertically with the small fragment, and nobody would have ever identified the small fragment as the companion image of the 6.5 mm object, and the forgery of the 6.5 mm object would have been obvious. Dr. Mantik explains this point further: On the AP X-ray, the authentic metal fragment lay at the anatomic right side of the 6.5 mm object, but it was located entirely inside of the 6.5 mm object. In fact, it appeared that the darkroom worker had positioned his double-exposed 6.5 mm image to precisely match the (anatomic) right border of the authentic metal fragment. Furthermore, by doing so, he had guaranteed that the 6.5 mm image would not be left without a partner image on the lateral X-ray. On the other hand, if he had not matched the 6.5 mm image to an authentic metal fragment, the 6.5 mm object would have had no partner image on the lateral X-ray, and the forgery would have been obvious. (JFK Assassination Paradoxes, pp. 24-25) This vertical alignment was part of the reason that so many experts erroneously concluded that the two images were the same fragment/one fragment. For example, the HSCA medical panel noted that the AP x-ray shows the 6.5 mm object to be "in approximately the same vertical plane as in the above-described lateral view" (7 HSCA 109). The forgery of the 6.5 mm object was not perfect, but it was good enough to fool every expert who examined the x-rays for over three decades. The forgers should have created an object on the lateral x-rays that matched the 6.5 mm object in size, density, and brightness, but this would have required a more complicated double-exposure than the 6.5 mm object, and they may have assumed that placing the 6.5 mm object over the image of the small back-of-head fragment would suffice (it did for over three decades). Plus, the science of optical density analysis of x-rays was barely in its infancy in 1963, so the forgers had no idea that one day a radiation oncologist who also happened to be a physicist would detect their forgery with OD analysis.

@David Von Pein In reviewing our exchanges, I realized that my above-quoted reply did not give your argument proper credit. You were correct in noting that the fragments that I mentioned did not equal more than the weight of a 6.5 mm Carcano bullet. Although I did not include the Young bullet, the Landis bullet and/or both Landis fragments among the bullet material, my point that the fragments that I did list exceeded the weight of a Carcano bullet was incorrect. But that's the rub: If we include the Young bullet, the Landis bullet and/or the two Landis fragments, not to mention the large fragment that Custer reported to the ARRB, we have more bullet material than the lone-gunman theory can explain. Even if Landis only saw one fragment in the back seat, that fragment is fatal for the lone-gunman scenario. We know from forensic science and ballistics tests that FMJ bullets do not deposit fragments on the outside of a skull when they strike a skull. All the other fragments were found well forward of JFK. A fragment in the back seat could not have come from an FMJ bullet that struck JFK's head from behind. No such unprecedented behavior was seen in the WC's own ballistics tests. And then there's the fact that the two fragments in the back of the skull could not have come from an FMJ bullet.

Here is more of the evidence from Dr. Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken that the war was going well from early 1962 until Diem was assassinated in November 1963. Much of this evidence addresses the myth that the war effort took a sharp downward turn in the summer of 1963, a few months before Diem’s death. Another [Communist] account explained, “With a network of outposts and strong points and a web of roads, airfields, and ‘strategic hamlets,’ the enemy was able to establish fairly tight control over Region 5. In the rural lowlands, our self-defense guerrillas and local force troops were few and weak.”[629] Concerning Cochinchina, meaning the Mekong Delta and the provinces surrounding Saigon, a Communist account stated that the Viet Cong had few full-time soldiers at this time, and noted that the Viet Cong troops were dispersed into small groups, which prevented them from defeating government forces engaged in either mobile operations or the construction of strategic hamlets.[630] Le Quoc San, the Communist commander in the upper Mekong Delta for most of the war, remembered that the Viet Cong were hurting badly in Ben Tre province, which had been one of the most troublesome provinces for the government since the Ben Tre insurrection in January 1960. By the middle of 1963, the government had established 195 strategic hamlets across Ben Tre. “Our Party members and guerrillas who had previously lived with and been close to the people,” explained Le Quoc San “were now driven out and forced to return to conducting secret operations or to living in the fields in bushes and on riverbanks. District and provincial local force troops could no longer rely on the people. Without this support, they were forced to disperse to conduct low-level operations, evading the enemy’s constant sweep operations and patrols.”[631] These developments reinforced the pessimism that had taken hold during the middle of 1962 in Hanoi. In a prominent Party journal, a senior North Vietnamese official named Minh Tranh wrote that the Americans and the South Vietnamese government “resort to all shrewd and cruel measures” and therefore “the South Vietnamese revolution must go along a long, arduous and complicated path.” The fighting capabilities of Diem’s forces, he predicted gloomily, “will not diminish during 1963 but can grow even fiercer.”[632] After 1963 had come and gone, Halberstam, Sheehan, and other reporters would claim that South Vietnam’s counterinsurgency efforts crumbled over the course of 1963, up until the end of October, and that they had been aware of the crumbling at the time.[633] It was a myth crafted afterwards to justify their support of the disastrous November coup. . . . Albert Fraleigh, one of the top U. S. advisers to the strategic hamlet program, received frequent visits from Halberstam, Sheehan, and other correspondents. On many occasions, Fraleigh discussed with them the achievements of the strategic hamlet program, but they showed no interest in such topics because they quite obviously were not seeking positive information about the Diem government. “Halberstam and Sheehan were always looking for glaring errors on the South Vietnamese side,” Fraleigh explained.[634] Major General Edward Rowny recalled from firsthand experience that some journalists, especially Halberstam, “were more interested in pursuing their own political agendas than they were in reporting on the military situation.” After Halberstam and Rowny accompanied one operation that resulted in combat with the Viet Cong, Halberstam wrote an article stating that the government troops had performed poorly and blaming their ineffectiveness on the unpopularity of Madame Nhu. Rowny told Halberstam, “You know, Dave, that the operation was rather successful. And whether it was or not had nothing to do with Madame Nhu. The soldiers don’t even know who she is.” Halberstam replied, “Ed, the readers don’t want to read anything about these military skirmishes. What they are interested in is the Dragon Lady.”[635] (pp. 209-210) But what is most significant is that Catholics did not come close to dominating the Diem government, not even at the highest levels. Among Diem’s eighteen cabinet ministers were five Catholics, five Confucians, and eight Buddhists, including a Buddhist vice-president and a Buddhist foreign minister. Of the provincial chiefs, twelve were Catholics and twenty-six were Buddhists or Confucians. Only three of the top nineteen military officers were Catholics.[658]. . . . No successful leader in Vietnamese history had tolerated the sort of vicious and organized public attacks that the Buddhist militants began to make on Diem in May 1963. In the rural areas, moreover, where the war was being fought, no one cared about the Buddhist crisis. Even among the educated elite, a large number understood and supported Diem’s actions during the Buddhist disturbances.[660]. . . . A few captured Communist documents, available at the time to both the Americans and the South Vietnamese, revealed Communist participation in the Buddhist protest movement. . . . For many years, Hanoi kept silent about the very sensitive subject of its involvement in the Buddhist movement, but in the early 1990s it began publishing detailed accounts of its early and intimate complicity. (pp. 216-217) In their trip reports, McNamara and McCone commented that during the Diem era some Americans had made use of South Vietnamese government statistics on the war that exaggerated the government’s successes. Supporters of the coup would later cite these remarks as evidence that the strategic hamlet program and other elements of the South Vietnamese war effort were crumbling during Diem’s last months.[901] This contention was erroneous. As mentioned earlier, top U. S. government officials had long distrusted South Vietnamese statistics and had based their views of the war on what they had learned from American advisers in the field and other reliable sources. Up until the time of Diem’s death, they had believed, correctly, that the war in general was proceeding well, and after the coup they perceived, with equal accuracy, a spectacular decline in performance. Coup proponents were also to misuse a statement in McCone’s report that statistical indicators of South Vietnamese performance in the war had begun a downward turn in July. They argued that these statistical trends showed that the Viet Cong had held the upper hand in the war from July onward, but in truth these statistical trends resulted from the increase in Viet Cong attacks on fledgling strategic hamlets in a few delta provinces, which, it has been seen, in no way demonstrated that the war had begun to turn against the government. These provinces had little strategic value, and Diem had been faring well in the rest of the country. At the time of the December report, McCone himself and the rest of the CIA knew that until the coup the problems had been confined to a few provinces, and that the sharp downturn did not begin until November.[902] In February 1964, moreover, after all of the claims of statistical error had been analyzed, an independent CIA team of experts pinpointed November 1, 1963 as the date at which the strategic hamlet program and the militia entered into a steep decline.[903] Communist sources were to confirm that the government had held the upper hand until the coup, and quickly lost it after the coup. In April 1964, reporting on the general situation, their southern command would state that the Viet Cong had struggled during 1962 and the first ten months of 1963, but after November 1 they began to re-establish themselves in areas where they had been weakened.[904] A Communist assessment prepared in March 1965, by which time the Saigon government stood very close to total defeat, was to describe the government’s collapse in the sixteen months since Diem’s killing in the following manner: “The balance of forces between the South Vietnamese revolution and the enemy has changed very rapidly in our favor. . . . The bulk of the enemy’s armed forces and paramilitary forces at the village and hamlet level have disintegrated, and what is left continues to disintegrate. . . . Eighty percent of the strategic hamlets, which are viewed by the Americans as the ‘backbone of the special war,’ have been destroyed, and most of the people and land in the rural countryside are in our liberated zones.”[905] Consonant with U. S. sources, Communist accounts indicate that the Viet Cong took longer to capitalize on the coup in some areas than in others. In the crucial lowlands of Communist Military Region 5, according to Hanoi’s official history of the region, the destruction of strategic hamlets built under Diem did not begin until the middle of 1964, for the Communist forces needed the intervening period to recover from the losses sustained during Diem’s final years. Between the middle of 1964 and the middle of 1965, the history stated, the Communists destroyed 2,100 of the 2,800 strategic hamlets that had been built in the region before the coup of November 1963.[906] A similar situation prevailed in Communist Military Region 6. The official Party history of that region stated that between Diem’s assassination and the middle of 1964, Communist forces accomplished little in the way of destroying strategic hamlets and retaking control of the population. The reason, again, was Communist weakness, not governmental strength; the history noted that the Minh government’s rapid disbandment of Diemist organizations and prosecution of Diemist officials had quickly caused the collapse of the government’s ruling apparatus in the villages, while the major advances did not begin until mid-1964. From that point until mid-1965, the number of civilians under Communist control in Military Region 6 jumped from 25,000 to 203,345.[907] In the central highlands, the strategic hamlet program sustained very little damage prior to November 1963. It came under attack in the months immediately following the coup, suffering substantial injury well before the programs in Communist Military Regions 5 and 6. The Communist history of the central highlands front observed that the ousting of Diem and the resultant disorganization of the South Vietnamese militia forces enabled the Viet Cong to cause the strategic hamlet program serious harm for the first time; within a few months, they destroyed forty percent of the region’s strategic hamlets. The strategic hamlet program in the highlands continued to suffer losses throughout 1964 and the first half of 1965. Many of the most geographically important hamlets in the highlands did not fall under Communist domination until the Communists’ summer offensive of 1965.[908] The southern command’s April 1964 report acknowledged that before Diem’s demise, the campaign against the strategic hamlets had attained significant momentum only in the Mekong Delta, and that even there, the Viet Cong’s achievements had been rather modest up until November 1963, at which point they began to grow rapidly.[ rapidly.[909] Even in Long An and Dinh Tuong, the two provinces where the Viet Cong had inflicted substantial pain on the strategic hamlets prior to the coup, the strategic hamlet program suffered much greater damage after the coup than before. The official Communist history of Long An province stated that September 1963 was the “period when the province faced its greatest difficulties. Enemy strategic hamlets and military outposts practically covered the entire rural area of the province. Most of the civilians had been moved into the hamlets.” The Viet Cong’s mobile company in the province had been so weakened in recent battles with the enemy that neither it nor the district and village forces could destroy any strategic hamlets completely. Whenever Viet Cong forces injured a strategic hamlet, the history asserted, the government came back the next day to repair the damage.[910] Of the 273 strategic hamlets established in the province under Diem, the history recounted, only 20 had been put out of order before the coup. In the six months after the coup, “virtually all the strategic hamlets throughout Long An province were destroyed.”[911] (pp. 283-285) The last point worth mentioning in connection with the claims of a major decline preceding the November coup is that almost all of the supporting evidence originated with Diem’s successors, who, even if they had always respected Diem and had turned against him primarily to appease the Americans, had a desperate need after the putsch to save face with the Americans and with their own people. Like Halberstam and Hilsman and the other American proponents of the coup, South Vietnam’s new rulers inaccurately claimed that the abysmal situation at the end of 1963 differed little from the situation preceding November so as to show that the coup they had instigated had created no new problems. An American assessment of the strategic hamlet program at the beginning of 1964 noted that because of “political or personal considerations,” the Minh government had replaced the original statistics on the pre-coup period with new, less positive statistics in order to support the “denigration of the old regime” and establish “a favorable data base for the new incumbent.”[913] The deceitful misrepresentation of the pre-coup situation by coup supporters, American and Vietnamese, would color analysis of the Diem regime for many years to come.[914]. Because of Diem’s accomplishments in 1962 and 1963, the Viet Cong lacked the ability to defeat the government at the time of Diem’s death, and for a considerable period thereafter. Had Diem lived, the Viet Cong could have kept the war going as long as they continued to receive new manpower from North Vietnam and maintained sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos, but it is highly doubtful that the war would have reached the point where the United States needed to introduce several hundred thousand of its own troops to avert defeat, as it would under Diem’s successors. Quite possibly, indeed, South Vietnam could have survived under Diem without the help of any U. S. ground forces. Those who led South Vietnam from November 1963 to the time of the American intervention prosecuted the war far less effectively than Diem had, and this weak performance helped overcome Hanoi’s great reluctance to send the North Vietnamese Army into South Vietnam. If the North Vietnamese Army had invaded the South at some later date while Diem still ruled, South Vietnam might very well have withstood the onslaught with the help of U. S. air power but without U. S. ground troops, as it would in 1972. The Communists, unlike most of the Americans, were very quick to grasp the profound significance of the November 1963 coup. Upon hearing of Diem’s assassination, Ho Chi Minh remarked, “I can scarcely believe that the Americans would be so stupid.”[915] Demonstrating astonishing foresight, the North Vietnamese Politburo predicted: “The consequences of the 1 November coup d’état will be contrary to the calculations of the U. S. imperialists. . . . Diem was one of the strongest individuals resisting the people and Communism. Everything that could be done in an attempt to crush the revolution was carried out by Diem. Diem was one of the most competent lackeys of the U. S. imperialists. . . . Among the anti-Communists in South Vietnam or exiled in other countries, no one has sufficient political assets and abilities to cause the others to obey. Therefore, the lackey administration cannot be stabilized. The coup d’état on 1 November 1963 will not be the last.”[916] The pro-Communist Australian Wilfred Burchett, who spent time with Vietnamese Communist leaders shortly after the coup, told an American journalist in late 1964, “We never believed the Americans would let Diem go, much less aid and abet his departure. Diem was a national leader, and you will never be able to replace him – never. You haven’t had an effective government in Saigon since and you won’t have one.” Burchett said that Vietnamese Communist leaders, amazed by their good fortune, called the coup a “gift,” and exclaimed that “the Americans have done something that we haven’t been able to do for nine years and that was get rid of Diem.”[917] (pp. 285-286)

One, I confirmed the size with Dr. Mantik. He thinks 6.3 or 6.4 mm is correct. I usually qualify the height by saying something like "6.3 mm (some might say 6.4 mm)." Two, you can see this in his diagram of the fragment. The fragment is slightly shorter than the 6.5 mm object--its top does not quite go up to the top of the 6.5 mm object (see JFK Assassination Paradoxes, p. 8). And Mantik's diagram shows that the fragment is 2.5 mm wide at its widest point. Chesser confirmed Mantik's OD measurements of the fragment inside the object: it is definitely metallic. It's the object that forensic radiologist Fitzpatrick saw on the lateral x-rays when he examined them for the ARRB. Fitzpatrick admitted that the fragment does not correspond to the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray. You might know that Mantik uses OD measurements in his practice as a radiation oncologist, and it helps that he also happens to be a physicist. Of the three innocent explanations for the 6.5 mm object, only one of them is even theoretically possible. Two of the three explanations (acid drop and stray metal disk in x-ray cassette) are physically impossible. That only leaves the theory that the AP skull x-ray was taken while there was a "stray metal disk" lying on the autopsy table. But WC apologists can't identify what kind of disk it could have been, can't identify a disk that was 6.5 mm in diameter, can't explain how a neatly defined notch would have been chipped from the disk, can't explain why the disk/object does not appear in any of the other skull x-rays, etc., etc. Leaving aside the question of where a drop of acid would have come from in the first place, since when do drops of acid include a well-defined notch that disrupts an otherwise perfectly round shape? The 6.5 mm object has a notch missing on its bottom right side (viewer’s right), but the rest of it is perfectly round. This is one of several problems with the acid-drop theory. The fatal problem with the theory is that if the 6.5 mm object were caused by an acid drop, the x-ray film's emulsion would be visibly altered at this site, but the emulsion is completely intact (Mantik, JFK Assassination Paradoxes, p. 150). That leaves the stray-metal-disk theories. First of all, what kind of metal disk would have been present that could have somehow dropped onto the autopsy table or gotten stuck in an x-ray film cassette during a presidential autopsy? Anyway, if a metal disk had been inside the film cassette, it would have produced a dark area at the spot of the 6.5 mm object, not a transparent one. If a metal disk had been lying next to JFK's head on the autopsy table when the AP x-ray was taken, it would appear on the lateral x-rays as well, but it does not. Of course, it goes without saying that if the radiologist and/or the x-ray technician had noticed a disk lying on the autopsy table after they took the AP x-ray, they would not have taken the lateral x-rays until they retook the AP x-ray. Finally, there is the fact that multiple sets of OD measurements have proved that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic but that it does contain a genuine fragment that occupies about half the space inside the object (see Mantik's diagram).

Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis's recent disclosure that he found a bullet and/or two bullet fragments in the back seat of the limo once again highlights the problems that the ballistics evidence poses for the lone-gunman theory. One of these items of evidence is the 6.5 mm object seen on the autopsy AP skull x-ray. One aspect of the 6.5 mm object that WC apologists cannot explain, an aspect that constitutes compelling evidence of a second gunman, is the fact that the 6.5 mm object contains--actually, is superimposed over--the image of a small genuine bullet fragment. The fragment is about 6.3 x 2.5 mm in size. OD measurements done separately by Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Michael Chesser confirm that the 6.3 x 2.5 mm object is metallic. Numerous forensic and other medical experts who have examined the skull x-rays have confirmed that the lateral x-rays show a small metallic fragment in the back of the skull. This fragment simply could not have come from an FMJ bullet, i.e., the kind of ammo that Oswald allegedly used, for the same reasons that former HSCA ballistics consultant Dr. Larry Sturdivan said the 6.5 mm object could not be an FMJ bullet fragment. Oddly, in his 2005 book, Sturdivan does not even mention the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment, nor does he discuss the other small back-of-head fragment that was identified by Dr. Gerald McDonnel for the HSCA, though he was surely aware of both of them. The McDonnel fragment is slightly to the left of the 6.5 mm object. The 6.5 mm object is 1 cm below the now-debunked cowlick entry site and 8-9 cm (3.1 to 3.5 inches) above the EOP entry site. These two fragments could only be ricochet fragments--that is the only scientifically plausible explanation. But, again, Sturdivan does not mention either of these fragments. However, Sturdivan does explain why the 6.5 mm object could not be an FMJ fragment. I quote from Sturdivan's discussion on the 6.5 mm object and Dr. Baden's attempt to use the object as evidence of the proposed cowlick entry site: It was interesting that it [Baden's description of the 6.5 mm object] was phrased that way, ducking the obvious fact that it cannot be a bullet fragment and is not that near to their [the HSCA medical panel's] proposed entry site. A fully jacketed WCC/MC bullet will deform as it penetrates bone, but it will not fragment on the outside of the skull. When they break up in the target, real bullets break into irregular pieces of jacket, sometimes complete enough to contain pieces of the lead core, and a varying number of irregular chunks of lead core. It cannot break into circular slices, especially one with a circular bite out of the edge. (The JFK Myths, pp. 184-185) To fully appreciate the insurmountable problems with the idea that a single FMJ headshot bullet deposited any fragment, big or small, on the outer table of the skull, we need to understand what WC apologists claim about this shot: According to WC defenders, the nose and tail of this supposed lone headshot bullet were found inside the limousine (on the floor in the front seat). Thus, in this scenario, as the bullet struck the skull, either (1) a cross section of metal from inside the bullet was precisely sliced off to form an object that was perfectly round except for a partial circle cut neatly out of its edge, or (2) a piece of the hard jacket was somehow sliced off to form an object that was perfectly round except for a partial circle cut neatly out of its edge. Then, this remarkable fragment abruptly stopped right there on the outer table of the skull, while the nose and tail of the rest of the bullet tore through JFK’s brain, exited the skull, and landed in the front of the limo. No credible researcher takes this scenario seriously anymore, but for many years this was the scenario that WC apologists adamantly defended--until fellow WC apologist Sturdivan, to his credit, demolished it in his 2005 book. (It had been demolished before, but only by critics, and WC apologists refused to listen to the critics' eminently scientific and logical case against it.) However, as mentioned, Sturdivan says nothing about the 6.3 x 2.5 mm metal fragment inside the 6.5 mm object, nor does he say anything about the McDonnel fragment. Forensic science and wound ballistics tell us that no FMJ missile could have deposited the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment or the McDonnel fragment on/just under the outer table of the skull. They could only be ricochet fragments. Firearms expert Howard Donahue said that Dr. Russell Fisher of the Clark Panel told him that the panel believed the 6.5 mm object "looked like a ricochet fragment" (Menninger, Mortal Error, p. 65). The Clark Panel did not have the benefit of OD analysis, so they did not know that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic and that its image is superimposed over the image of a smaller genuine fragment. But Fisher's comment to Donahue shows that the panel members realized that no FMJ bullet could have deposited a fragment on the outer table of the skull, much less nearly half an inch away from the presumed (but now debunked) entry point in the cowlick (not to mention 3.1 to 3.5 inches away from the actual entry point that was slightly above the EOP). There is credible eyewitness testimony that a bullet struck the curb near JFK's limo early in the shooting sequence, as many researchers have noted, and many kinds of bullets that strike concrete will send fragments flying from the impact. Donahue, although he rejected the conspiracy view, acknowledged this evidence of the curb shot and cogently argued that ricochet fragments from this bullet are the only scientifically feasible explanation for any back-of-head fragment, since no FMJ missile would have deposited fragments on the outer table of the skull. But WC apologists cannot accept this plausible scientific explanation, partly because they must account for the bullet that struck the curb near James Tague and sent a concrete chip or metal fragment streaking toward him with enough force to cut his face.

Curtin seems overly suspicious to me, and I think he oversimplifies the facts when he declares that we know the CIA killed Kennedy. Curtin argues there is an extensive media conspiracy to hype Landis's disclosure in order to divert the public's attention from the "fact" that the CIA killed JFK. He suggests that Landis's disclosure is being purposely used by powerful forces that are still covering up the truth about JFK's death. I think this is an overly suspicious take on Landis's disclosure and on the media's coverage of it. I agree that elements of the CIA were involved in the assassination, but other powerful elements also played a role. I think we need to be careful to point out that the CIA as an institution did not play a role in JFK's death, but that powerful rogue elements of the CIA were involved in the plot. To simply say "the CIA killed JFK" ignores the important roles played by certain Mafia leaders and by elements of the FBI and the military industrial complex.

If the Carousel Club had a rear entrance in the back alley, that would at least mean that Connally could have entered the club with a minimal chance of being seen, which would make this part of Estes's story a bit more plausible. I still find it hard to believe that Connally would have risked holding an illicit meeting in Ruby's club, even if he could have entered via a back-alley rear door. However, given the credible nature of the rest of Estes's story, I agree that the Connally-Ruby-meeting part of his story cannot be easily dismissed.

Ah, yes. Here we go. So all these witnesses are lying or incomprehensibly "mistaken." Dr. Young couldn't tell the difference between a bullet and CE 569. Chief Petty Officer Mills similarly mistook a small fragment for a bullet. Landis is lying or dreaming about finding a bullet in the back seat, even though he says he was afraid to talk about the bullet until now. Jerrol Custer, of all people, lied or merely dreamed about seeing a large fragment fall from JFK's back during the autopsy. Your true position is "If there had been a conspiracy, someone would have talked, but whenever someone does talk, we will look for any and every excuse to reject their account." I notice you said nothing about Sturdivan's admission that no FMJ bullet would have left fragments on the rear outer table of the skull. This refreshing admission is devastating given the fact that there are two fragments on the rear exterior of the skull, one in the outer table (the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment) and one between the galea and the outer table (the McDonnel fragment). Crucially, both fragments are far away--some 8 cm--from the rear head entry wound at the EOP (and at least 1 cm from the now-debunked cowlick entry site). These two fragments could only be ricochet fragments, just as Dr. Russell Fisher of the Clark Panel told Howard Donahue regarding the 6.5 mm object.

You are missing the key point that the 6.3 x 2.5 mm metal fragment inside the 6.5 mm object and the McDonnel fragment could not have come from the FMJ ammo that Oswald allegedly used. Plus, you ignored the large fragment seen by Custer, the bullet that Landis found, and the bullet found by two Navy corpsmen and seen by Dr. Young. The WC scenario simply cannot explain all of these bullets and fragments. No way. No how. Obviously, the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment is not the McDonnel fragment, as a few WC apologists have erroneously argued. The McDonnel fragment is about 5 cm above the lambda, "lies medial" to "the depressed fracture in the right occipital bone," and is "between the galea and the outer table of the skull" ("Report of G.M. McDonnel," 8/4/78, p. 2, 7 HSCA 218), whereas the other fragment is 3-4 cm above the lambda on the lateral view, is 2.5 cm to the right of the midline on the AP x-ray, is 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site, and is on the outer table of the skull. The McDonnel fragment could not have come from an FMJ bullet and could only be a ricochet fragment. Similarly, the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site could not have come from an FMJ bullet and could only be a ricochet fragment. These facts prove that more than one gunman fired at JFK.

And the Landis fragment that you're willing to acknowledge? And the other fragment that Landis mentioned? And the bullet that Landis found, whose existence Landis was afraid to reveal until now? And the 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment inside the 6.5 mm object? And the large fragment that Jerrol Custer told the ARRB he saw fall out of JFK's back at the autopsy? And the bullet that the two Navy corpsmen found--in the back seat of the limo--and that Dr. Young saw? Now is a good time to mention the fact that the back-of-head fragments could not have come from the kind of ammo (FMJ) that Oswald allegedly used. The fact that the autopsy x-rays show at least one small back-of-head fragment on the outer table of the skull has been acknowledged by everyone from Dr. Joseph Riley to the HSCA medical panel to the Clark Panel to Dr. David O. Davis to Dr. Norman Chase to Dr. Larry Sturdivan. This is the fragment that for many years was misidentified as the lateral-view image of the 6.5 mm object. It is about 1 cm below the debunked cowlick entry site. Dr. Larry Sturdivan, who served as a wound ballistics consultant for the HSCA, treats the small back-of-head fragment in a curious manner. In commenting on the HSCA medical panel's findings, he correctly notes that this fragment cannot be the companion image of the 6.5 mm object, and that the 6.5 mm object cannot be an FMJ bullet fragment: The frontal x-ray of the head . . . shows a nearly circular density near the higher entry site that the panel identified as a bullet fragment deposited on the skull at entry. It appears to be a disk of something as dense as metal, with a small circular "bite" taken out of the lower edge. . . . This second bit of evidence was discussed several times during the meetings of the FPP [the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, aka the HSCA medical panel] and is mentioned by Dr. Baden [chairman of the panel] as a "relatively large metal fragment". . . . It is interesting that it was phrased that way, ducking the obvious fact that it cannot be a bullet fragment and is not that near to their proposed entry site. A fully jacketed WCC/MC [FMJ] bullet will deform as it penetrates bone, but will not fragment on the outside of the skull. In the Biophysics Lab tests, most of the test bullets' jackets ruptured about midway through the skulls. . . . When they break up in the target, real bullets break into irregular pieces of jacket, sometimes complete enough to contain pieces of the lead core, and a varying number of irregular chunks of lead core. It cannot break into circular slices, especially one with a circular bite out of the edge. As radiologist David Mantik points out, . . there is no corresponding density on the lateral x-ray. The slightly lighter area indicated by the FPP as the lateral view of this object is not nearly light enough to be a metal disk seen edge-on [from the side/sideways]. As bright as it is seen flat in the frontal x-ray [AP x-ray], it should be even brighter when seen edge-on in the lateral. If an object is present in only one x-ray view, it could not have been embedded in the President's skull or scalp. (The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the JFK Assassination, 2005, pp. 184-185) Now, why is Sturdivan so vague about the small back-of-head fragment? He does not deny its existence. But, he never calls it a fragment. He calls it "the slightly lighter area." He admits that the HSCA medical panel identified it as the 6.5 mm object on the lateral x-rays, and does not dispute the panel's identification and placement of the fragment. However, he does not go beyond observing that the fragment cannot be the lateral image of the 6.5 mm object or of a metal disk. Why the apparent vagueness? Because he has just acknowledged that FMJ bullets will not fragment on the outside of the skull, so he knows that this fragment could not have come from an FMJ bullet. I suspect this is also why he says nothing about the McDonnel fragment.

It is utterly shameful that the Biden administration has denied RFK Jr. SS protection.

NBC News quoted Landis as saying he has been afraid to share his true story until now (LINK, 3:55 to 5:15). Landis mentioned that in an email exchange with Clint Hill in 2014, Hill advised him not to say anything about finding a bullet because it would have "many ramifications."

"Not even close"??? Let's review: Two fragments, CE 567 and 569, the nose and tail of a bullet, were recovered from the floor in the front seat of the limo. A 7x2 mm fragment and a 3x1 mm fragment were removed from the skull during the autopsy. The skull x-rays show a 6.3 x 2.5 mm fragment within the 6.5 mm object, 1 cm below the now-debunked cowlick entry site and about 8 cm above the entry site described in the autopsy report (aka EOP entry site). Dr. McDonnel identified another fragment to the left of the 6.5 mm object, even farther away from the nonexistent cowlick site and from the EOP entry site. On top of all these fragments, the skull x-rays show some 40 small fragments in the right-front part of the skull. How, how, how can you say that the one Landis fragment that you're willing to acknowledge, which was found in the back seat, can be explained by the lone-gunman theory? I notice you once again avoided mentioning the bullet found in the rear of the limo by two Navy corpsmen and observed by Dr. James Young at the autopsy. Dr. Young, as you may know, ardently believed the WC's version of the shooting and innocently assumed that the deformed bullet that he saw was one of the three shots acknowledged by the WC.

Uh-huh. Landis admits that he withheld the finding of the bullet until now. So, yes, he made previous statements that contradict what he's now saying, but he's explained the contradiction, just as Kenny O'Donnell explained to Tip O'Neill why his WC testimony said nothing about shots from the grassy knoll--he withheld it to avoid controversy after FBI agents told him he must have been imagining things, but he was certain that shots had come from the knoll. And, again, even the one back-seat fragment that you're willing to acknowledge destroys the lone-gunman theory. As it is, there are too many bullet fragments in the official record to have come from the head-shot bullet, as I explained in my previous reply. And this is not to mention the bullet that two Navy corpsmen found in the rear of the limo and that Dr. Young saw at the autopsy before it was handed to Humes.

So, according to you, Landis is just lying when he says that he purposely did not mention the bullet earlier and that he is revealing it now because he believes its existence should be known. The lone-gunman theory cannot even explain the one back-seat fragment that you are willing to acknowledge. The nose and tail of the head-shot bullet were found on the floor in the front seat. Two more fragments were acknowledged as having been removed from JFK's head during the autopsy, and the autopsy x-rays show a snowstorm of dozens of tiny fragments in the right-front part of the skull. Plus, HSCA radiologic experts detected another fragment in the back of the skull at least 1 cm from the now-debunked cowlick entry site, and there's no way that an FMJ bullet could have deposited that fragment. And shall we mention the deformed bullet that two Navy petty officers found in the rear of the limo and that Dr. Young saw before it was handed to Dr. Humes? Just admit it: More than one gunman fired at JFK.

Even Landis's account of the two back-seat bullet fragments is problematic for the lone-gunman theory, because the only two fragments in the official record, CE 567 and CE 569, were found on the floor in the front of the limousine. So whether Landis saw a whole bullet or two fragments in the back seat, he saw ballistics evidence that the lone-gunman scenario cannot explain. Are WC apologists going to claim that Landis saw neither a bullet nor two fragments? That he imagined or made up all of his accounts? One way or another, they will find excuses to dismiss this historic evidence.

Below you will find part of the evidence that the war was going well in 1962 and 1963 that is presented in Dr. Mark Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Presenting all of that evidence would require at least three more posts. If you’re curious to know how liberal scholars have responded to this historic evidence, go read the liberal reviews of the book in the roundtable compilation Triumph Revisited--you’ll see that they have simply ignored most of it and have misrepresented the small parts of it that they have addressed. Here is small part of the evidence that the war was going well in 1962 and 1963 from Moyar's book: All observers in South Vietnam at the time, even the American journalists who would later claim that the war effort was deteriorating at this time, reported that the Diem government dramatically improved its position in the countryside relative to that of the Viet Cong during the second half of 1962. It did so in the face of extensive North Vietnamese infiltration of men and materiel that continuously replenished the Viet Cong’s forces. The Australian Wilfred Burchett, a pro-Communist journalist who lived with the Viet Cong during this time and spoke with many of their leaders, accurately summed up the year. “In terms of territory and population, Diem made a considerable comeback in 1962,” Burchett observed. Government armed forces “registered a number of successes and held the strategic and tactical initiative.” In the final analysis, stated Burchett, 1962 was “Diem’s year.”[546] (pp. 184-185). Once again, North Vietnamese documents and histories corroborate the American and other foreign reports on the Diem government’s effectiveness. One North Vietnamese account stated that in the first six months of 1963, the South Vietnamese government conducted between 1,500 and 2,000 infantry operations per month, and it noted: “Protracted and large-scale operations launched unremittingly against any given region were more numerous and fiercer than in the previous year.”[626] A top-level Communist report on this period asserted that the government strengthened the rural militias and it still possessed much stronger military forces than the Viet Cong. “Due to the results attained in the recent sweeps and due to his grinding efforts to gather in the people and establish strategic hamlets,” the report acknowledged, “the enemy seized a large number of people and constricted our liberated areas, causing us many manpower and materiel difficulties.” It also stated that government forces had launched successful operations deep into Communist base areas, destroying Communist forces and disrupting Communist lines of communication that ran from North Vietnam and Laos into South Vietnam.[627] The history of the Communists’ critical Region 5 noted that during 1963, “the enemy recaptured practically everything we had captured.” (pp. 208-209) Most compelling of all, the Communists themselves acknowledged that the Diem government was attacking the Viet Cong energetically and adeptly during the last months of 1962. Meeting on December 6, the North Vietnamese Politburo remarked, “The enemy is using his military superiority to expand the war in a determined effort to annihilate our forces.” It conceded that “our armed forces are still weak,” and that if the Communists continued the armed struggle at the present level, they would be unable to maintain the movement in the South.[529] One official Communist history noted that South Vietnamese government leaders “obstinately continued to strengthen their forces and wage an increasingly fierce ‘special war’ against our people in the South” through the end of 1962.[530] A Communist document concerning the upper delta – the 7th Division’s own area of operations – in late 1962 acknowledged that “the enemy succeeded in mopping up our weak areas, repressing the people’s political movement, expelling our forces, and activating strategic hamlets. The enemy then employed concentrated Civil Guard, Self-Defense Corps, and Ranger units to attack liberated areas.”[531] Similar descriptions appeared in a Communist history of Military Region 6, which encompassed six coastal and highland provinces in central South Vietnam.[532] According to these Communist histories, South Vietnam’s regulars as well as its irregulars caused great harm to the Viet Cong in this period, a strong indication that the South Vietnamese Army was becoming more proficient in counterinsurgency operations.[533] As the hamlets sprouted up across the country, Hanoi ordered the Viet Cong to set the destruction of the strategic hamlets as their top priority. The Viet Cong, however, were not capable of annihilating the new hamlets, not even in the Mekong Delta, where the program was making the least headway and was most vulnerable. The Communist history of the upper Mekong Delta noted that when the Viet Cong tore down the strategic hamlet fences and guard posts, “the enemy would just force the people to rebuild them, this time even stronger, and would tighten his defensive alert procedures, tighten his controls on the population, and aggressively hunt down our guerrilla organization inside the hamlet to suppress it, making it more difficult for us to conduct our operations. . . . When we destroyed a strategic hamlet they usually rebuilt it and then built even more.”[539] The official Communist history of the southern Mekong Delta region stated, “We expended tremendous efforts in the program to destroy strategic hamlets but in fact accomplished very little.”[540] (pp. 181-183) South Vietnam’s armed forces were to make even greater progress in the second half of 1962 than in the first. Weak commanders were replaced with aggressive young men from the new generation of leaders. Government units hit the Viet Cong hard in VC-held areas and at night. . . . A Communist historical account of 1962 noted, “Our people’s war forces were unable to stop the enemy’s helicopter-borne and armored personnel carrier assaults, and so our three spearheads [military, political, military proselytizing] became confused and hesitant, and our losses increased. . . . Many units were forced to disperse.”[477] In the latter part of the summer, the number of government victories soared, and the government reasserted its control over many areas that had fallen into Viet Cong hands over the past two and a half years. After repeated maulings of large Viet Cong units, the Communists cut back severely on large-unit operations, making it more difficult for them to overwhelm government units and strategic hamlets. . . . As the summer came to a close, Ambassador Nolting’s deputy William Truehart exclaimed that he was “tremendously encouraged” by progress in the military realm that was “little short of sensational.”[478] (168-169) Colonel Daniel Boone Porter, the senior American adviser in the Mekong Delta, where the government’s armed forces were at their weakest, reported in February 1963 that “tremendous progress has been made in virtually all areas of training, operations, logistics, civic action programs and in the fields of leadership and command since 1 January 1962.”[589] None other than Vann himself was to say, in his final report before leaving the country in April, “There is not the slightest doubt that significant improvements have occurred in practically every facet of the counterinsurgency effort in this tactical zone during the past year.”[590] Steady improvement was to continue for the rest of Diem’s tenure. . . . (pp. 199-200) As 1963 progressed into the spring and summer, the South Vietnamese government continued to improve its counterinsurgency capabilities and its position in the countryside.[609]. . . . At Diem’s command, the South Vietnamese continued to eliminate small and isolated outposts in the countryside and transfer their personnel to more productive duties. The government’s forces aggressively sought battle with the Viet Cong and inflicted many defeats during this time. Colonel Bryce F. Denno, upon completing an eleven-month tour as the I Corps senior adviser in July 1963, reported that in his region, “the Self-Defense Corps units are defending their villages against enemy attacks with much greater confidence and success than in the past. The ARVN is reaching out into the deep jungle to attack Viet Cong ‘secure’ areas.” The population, moreover, was giving more information on the enemy to government forces in his corps area.[611] In a mid-year assessment, Ⅲ Corps senior adviser Colonel Wilbur Wilson remarked that pacification had experienced substantial gains in every province of the corps area.[612] (p. 206) U. S. officers who visited each of South Vietnam’s provinces in the first half of 1963 remarked that local governments had undergone dramatic improvements and had greatly extended their reach, while the hamlet militia were repelling the Viet Cong with determination and skill. They also noted that the rural population and local officials now had much greater confidence in the government and their morale was up.[616] Colonel Ted Serong, a guerrilla warfare expert who headed the Australian training mission in South Vietnam, told top Washington officials in May 1963 that “the big success story in Viet-Nam is the strategic hamlet program and this story has not yet been fully told.”[617] Sir Robert Thompson, who like many other observers had shifted to an optimistic view of the war effort after holding a distinctly pessimistic view in the bleak days of 1961 and early 1962, observed that in the strategic hamlet program, “the energy displayed has been remarkable by any standards.”[618] In Thompson’s opinion, the government was now winning the war and it might be able to shut off the Viet Cong’s access to the people by the middle of 1964, even in the Mekong Delta.[619]. . . . Later it would be alleged with great regularity that the optimism surrounding the strategic hamlet program was the result of uncritical acceptance of inflated South Vietnamese statistics. In reality, Phillips and most other advisers did not rely solely on statistics or other reports from the South Vietnamese. In every province, American civilian and military advisers personally inspected numerous hamlets and talked with villagers and government employees, then sent reports to Phillips’s staff and other U. S. organizations. The Americans also received pertinent information from captured documents and Viet Cong defectors.[620] Phillips’s report made very clear that the optimism about the program was not based upon official statistics. (p. 207) From his first entry, on October 9, 1962, to the last entry, on January 11, 1963, Tregaskis described a war that was very different from the one that Halberstam and Sheehan later depicted in their enormously influential books. The American advisers Tregaskis met during those three months gave no indication of frustration with the level of aggressiveness among South Vietnamese leaders; to the contrary, they generally thought that the South Vietnamese were prosecuting the war effectively. “Patrols are going on constantly,” said Major Lloyd Picou, the American operations officer for Ⅱ Corps. “We want to get into new areas, so that there will be no area where the VC can say, ‘This is a safe area.’” Pointing to a map of Vietnam, Picou showed Tregaskis a province where the government had gone from controlling very little two-and-one-half months earlier to controlling three quarters of the rice land.[508] Other American journalists who visited Vietnam in late 1962 came away with the same general impressions as Tregaskis. Touring Vietnam for Newsweek after Sully’s removal, Kenneth Crawford wrote, “In the opinion of Diem’s responsible American advisers, his strategy is right and he has made a promising start.” Crawford also noted, “Missionaries scattered through the country report that the Communists are in fact complaining about lack of support.”[512] Writing in The Saturday Evening Post in late November, Harold Martin concluded that the huge American investment of men and materiel had begun paying dividends in recent months.[513] Time commented that the war in South Vietnam “looks far more hopeful than it did a year ago,” and “U. S. advisers are confident that the Viet Cong now have virtually no hope of achieving their goal of setting up a separate Communist-ruled puppet state in South Viet Nam.”[514] Most remarkably, the reporting from the Saigon correspondents themselves in late 1962 confirmed that the South Vietnamese government had not cut back on aggressive military operations and that the South Vietnamese armed forces were fighting well. (pp. 177-179) Much other evidence shows that Diem’s war effort did not falter between October and December 1962. In some areas, especially those distant from Saigon, American military advisers witnessed successful operations during this period that entirely escaped the attention of the press corps. Among the most noteworthy was a series of joint air-ground assaults in Ⅲ Corps near the Cambodian border. . . . Theodore Heavner, following a visit to Vietnam from October 18 to November 26, noted that American advisers “say that the GVN forces are doing more and better night work,” with the result that “the night no longer belongs only to the VC.” The South Vietnamese armed forces were performing much better on the whole, he noted. . . . (p. 181) At an early stage in the development of the strategic hamlet program, Theodore Heavner, a Vietnamese-speaking State Department official who examined the strategic hamlets in considerable depth, commented, “One of the brighter aspects of the program at the moment appears to be the remarkable effort to send good cadre into the hamlets to get the program in motion.”[448] (p. 158) Diem’s government rang in the second half of 1962 with a sensational exhibition of military prowess. On July 20, two days after Harkins had told Diem “the only way to win is to attack, attack, attack,” the South Vietnamese 7th Division executed a large night helicopter assault in the Plain of Reeds. Employing thirty U. S. Army and Marine Corps helicopters and one thousand government troops, it was the biggest attack involving helicopters to date, day or night. The heliborne government troops came down almost directly on top of a Viet Cong battalion, but the Viet Cong were unable to gun down the South Vietnamese troops as they disembarked from the helicopters, when they were most vulnerable. Upon realizing the strength of the attack force, the Viet Cong attempted to flee, only to find themselves pursued by South Vietnamese infantry, helicopters, and rocket-firing AD-6 Skyraiders. (p. 168)

Oh, that's just total nonsense. Here we go again with this far-left tar-brushing of all Republicans as "radicals." Was the recent budget deal that the Republicans made with Biden "radical"? How about the recent bill to improve trade with Taiwan? How about the recent bill that put certain land in San Diego into trust to help the Pala Band of Mission Indians? How about the recent bill that authorized additional major medical facility projects for veterans? How about the recent bill that increased compensation for veterans with service-related disabilities? How about the recent bill to require the DNI to declassify information about COVID's origins? The House passed all these bills, along with the Senate, and Biden signed them--they are now public law. Were these bills "radical"? I'm guessing you have no clue about the solid and growing evidence of serious wrongdoing by Biden involving brazen pay-for-play/access, aiding and abetting Hunter's criminal activity, the acceptance of huge sums of foreign money under suspicious circumstances, and using extortion to force Ukraine to fire the state prosecutor, etc. Have you read even a single article from a non-liberal source on these issues?

I don't see how Connally's 1967 pardon of Candy Barr, four years after the assassination, has any bearing on the claim that Connally held a secret meeting with Ruby and others at Ruby's strip club before the assassination. Governors get dozens of requests for pardons every year and usually rely on some kind of screening board to vet the pardon requests. It just makes no sense to me that a Boy Scout like Connally, who was the governor of the state at the time, would have been caught dead in a strip club for any reason, much less that he would have attended an illicit meeting at such a club. It would have been far more logical and much safer to hold such a meeting in a private home or in a hotel room. Is it possible that the FBI padded Estes's account and added the bit about Connally meeting with Ruby and others at the strip club? Or did Estes fabricate this meeting in an otherwise-truthful account?

As chance would have it, while I was re-reading your book Survivor's Guilt yesterday, I came across the section on Pool and saw that I had highlighted large parts of it the first time I read it. Great stuff. Pool's description of the stretcher bullet as pointed matches O. P. Wright's description. Ah, I can hear WC apologists now: They were both "mistaken."

I remain torn about LBJ's involvement. I'm aware of the fact that in a phone call with Hoover soon after the shooting, LBJ asked if anyone had been shooting at him. On the other hand, I am suspicious of LBJ's vehement attempt to get JFK to swap Connally and Yarborough in the motorcade. Reportedly, the argument devolved into a shouting match. Would LBJ have been so vehement simply because he disliked Yarborough and didn't want to sit next to him during a motorcade during which he could simply ignore Yarborough? My tentative suspicion is that LBJ was made aware of the plot, or that he detected indications of the plot on his own, and stayed silent. I have difficulty seeing LBJ as the mastermind behind the plot, though I could be wrong.