Michael Griffith

I agree with 95% of what you say about Garrison. Lou Ivon did urge Garrison to take Ferrie into custody. Instead, Garrison chose to put Ferrie in a hotel after Ferrie said he feared for his life, but Garrison did not assign people to guard Ferrie.

The HSCA's photographic experts grasped and strained to explain the obvious difference between Oswald's chin and the backyard figure's chin, and they just could not do it. In his testimony, when pressed on this point by Congressman Fithian, McCamy even claimed that the chin "disappears" in the backyard photos, a silly assertion that anyone with two functioning eyes can see is bogus. The figure's chin is especially clear in 133-A DeM and 133-A Stovall. There is no way that the figure's chin is Oswald's chin. This is why the Committee's photographic experts omitted the Penrose measurements for the chin in their report, even though the chin had been identified as one of the most suspicious and problematic features of the backyard photos. British photographic expert Malcolm Thompson did not buy the HSCA's explanation for the obvious difference between Oswald's chin and the backyard figure's chin.

Let me start by saying I believe that Jim Garrison was on the right track, that some of the leads he developed were historic and crucial, and that his acts of misconduct were less serious and fewer in number than those of his enemies. However, I have always wondered what led Garrison to commit the catastrophic mistake of calling the nutcase Charles Spiesel as a witness against Clay Shaw. Although Garrrison did not know about Spiesel's paranoid fear that his daughter was in danger of being replaced by a lookalike, he did know about Spiesel's equally nutty claim that the NYC police and others had repeatedly hypnotized him over a period of 16 years, and that Spiesel had filed a $16 million lawsuit against NYC over this alleged hypnosis (and other alleged offenses). Here is some of what Spiesel alleged in his lawsuit: . . . the defendants, during a period from January 1, 1948, to July 5, 1964, a total of sixteen years, had used a new police technique to torture him and conspired with others to torture the plaintiff in New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, New Orleans and various other places. Spiesel claimed these defendants also harassed him, annoyed, tailed him, tapped his phones, and prevented him from having normal sex relations. . . . The defendants also kept him hypnotized for periods of time, caused him to make errors in his work because of their hypnotic control, wreaked psychological terror upon him, prevented him from making business deals and from borrowing money from public agencies, surrounded him with competitors in the tax return business, and hired "plants" to work in his office, who then acted intoxicated and annoyed and frightened his customers. . . . accused the defendants of using disguises in their attempts to pass themselves off as his relatives for the purpose of gaining entrance to his home and also "to quickly pass by the plaintiff in public places." The defendants also were accused of attempting to create the impression that Spiesel and his family were communists, attempting to link the plaintiff with various crimes, interfering with sign carriers advertising the plaintiff's business, conspiring to make Spiesel break the law, depriving him of his civil rights, mentally torturing, humiliating and financially ruining him. In a bar below Spiesel's office, near the building's main light switch, they also supposedly planted a man who enacted the equivalent of scenes out of Angel Street. Add this all up and Spiesel claimed the results forced him out of his own income tax business in 1963. Clearly, Spiesel was a genuine nutcase. Spiesel had also had 15 lawsuits filed against him for fraudulent tax returns. What led Garrison to put such a dubious, unreliable person on the witness stand? Sheer desperation? The belief that the defense did not know about Spiesel's whacky hypnosis claims and his bizarre lawsuit? Both?

I watched the segment on JFK and Vietnam. Very sad. Newman is badly informed and sorely mistaken on this issue. He makes a number of claims that are simply erroneous and that were debunked years ago. The war was not going terribly in 1963. Quite the opposite. An abundance of sources, including North Vietnamese sources, confirm that the U.S. war effort was going well in 1963, and also in 1962. The war effort did not start to go badly until after Diem was assassinated. Has Newman not read any of these materials? Diem was not corrupt, and he enjoyed considerable support among the people. Diem enabled tens of thousands of people to own their own farms for the first time ever. Under Diem, South Vietnam's economy performed far better than did North Vietnam's economy. Diem greatly improved South Vietnam's education system, and, unlike Hanoi's leaders, allowed private schools to operate and gave public school districts some control over curriculum. The Buddhist crisis was markedly exaggerated by JFK's liberal advisers and by the American press. The majority of the officials in Diem's government were Buddhists, as were many ARVN generals. Diem had done a great deal to help the Buddhists. The militant Buddhists were a minority among their fellow Buddhists. Many ARVN generals who were Buddhists believed that Diem was being too lenient with the militant Buddhists. And, it has been known for years now that some of the militant Buddhists were Communists and that Communists had substantially penetrated the Buddhist protest movement. As for Newman's claim that JFK had decided to abandon South Vietnam after the election, it is sad to see him repeat this specious claim, after all we now know on the subject. Even the vast majority of stridently liberal, anti-war historians reject the claim as baseless. No trace of any intention to pull out can be found on the JFK White House tapes--instead, we hear numerous affirmations of JFK's desire to win the war, not to mention the fact that JFK publicly and repeatedly rejected and criticized the idea of withdrawal in the months leading up to his death. Even on the civil rights issue, Newman is off base. He says that JFK was not going to take strong action on civil rights until after the election in order to avoid losing the Souther vote. This is pure fiction. JFK's forceful interventions against segregation in Mississippi and Alabama had already infuriated most conservative Southern Democrats. Furthermore, JFK had already introduced civil rights legislation in Congress, and it was DOA because of Southern Democratic opposition. Democrats were already quite fearful that they were going to have a hard time winning Southern states in the 1964 election. I might add that the revised version of NSAM 273 that LBJ signed on 11/26/63 was virtually identical to the draft that JFK was going to sign after he returned from Dallas. The 11/26/63 version said nothing about U.S. combat troops--not one word. It tacitly allowed the direct intervention of U.S. forces, but it did not expressly say this. And, U.S. military personnel had already been directly involved in military actions for well over a year before JFK's death. Furthermore, there is a mountain of evidence that shows that LBJ was not chomping at the bit to send large numbers of U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam. Indeed, in his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs soon after the assassination, LBJ told them he wanted to cut defense spending. Additionally, the record shows that LBJ hoped to keep U.S. intervention in Vietnam to a minimum, and that he even hoped that the American advisers there could start to be withdrawn soon. Moreover, there is also the fact that JFK never faced the kind of massive Communist escalation that LBJ faced. Hanoi's leaders drastically escalated the Communist war effort in late 1964 and early 1965, far beyond what they had ever done before. JFK had never been faced with such a situation. When LBJ was faced with it, he dragged his feet and nearly waited too long.

It is worth repeating that we learned years ago that RFK warned the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis that there were senior military officers in the Pentagon who would stage a coup if they found JFK's response intolerable. Recall, too, that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara urged JFK to sack JCS members General LeMay and Admiral Anderson because they were insubordinate during the Crisis. JFK said that for political reasons he could not fire both of them, and he let McNamara choose which one to sack. McNamara chose Anderson.

I agree that the Mafia played a role in the plot, but the Mafia could not have altered the autopsy x-rays and suppressed numerous autopsy photos. The Mafia could not have made ballistics evidence disappear (e.g., the damaged bullet that two Navy NCOs found in the limousine and that Dr. James Young examined during the autopsy). The Mafia could not have moved JFK's body from the Parkland ceremonial casket to a military shipping casket during the flight to DC.

The HSCA's Photographic Evidence Panel (PEP) refused to acknowledge clear signs of forgery in the backyard photos. For example, the panel's own parallax measurements found impossibly small differences in the distances between objects in the background of the photos. If the photos had been taken in the manner claimed by the WC, i.e., with the camera handed back and forth between Lee and Marina between each picture so Lee could advance the film, those differences should be much, much, much larger. This was one of the issues that photographic expert Brian Mee zeroed in on when I interviewed him about the backyard photos. He noted that it would be difficult to achieve such virtually identical backgrounds with an automatic camera. Also, the PEP was unable to duplicate the variant shadows in the photos. Although the PEP dishonestly claimed otherwise, one of the PEP members tacitly but clearly admitted that they could not duplicate the variant shadows with the model's head in the same position as the backyard's figure's head; to get the shadows to align, the PEP had to markedly tilt the model's head and alter the camera angle. One can look at the PEP's photos of their reenactment and easily see that the panel did not duplicate the problematic shadows when the model's head was in the same position as the backyard figure's head. And, the PEP's own Penrose measurements cast serious doubt on the photos' authenticity, so much so that the PEP withheld the measurements for a long-recognized problem area in the photos: the chin. I discuss these issues and several others in this article: The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos

I ask again, Why is this thread in this forum? As I've said before, I have no problem with the subject itself. As I've also mentioned, my wife saw a UFO in the 1990s. But what does UFO research have to do with the JFK assassination? Nothing. This thread belongs in a different sub-forum.

This evidence has already been documented and presented, e.g., Prouty's glowing letter to the Holocaust-denying IHR journal, his written expression of concern about Jewish sergeants manning military targeting systems, his bizarre charge that Israel was responsible for high oil prices, his refusal to condemn Carto's Holocaust denial, his decision to allow a Holocaust-denying publisher to publish one of his books, his recommendation that people read the anti-Semitic journal The Spotlight, etc., etc., etc. Robert's departure should tell us that posting fringe material in this forum turns off rational, educated people. I can only guess how many people have browsed this forum as guests and were turned off after reading defenses of nutty, fringe claims ranging from 9/11 Truther claims, Prouty's embarrassing claims and associations, and nutty theories such as the John Lennon and Princess Diana conspiracy theories that have been posted and defended in this forum.

Why do you keep repeating the same things over and over again expecting a different result? Well, certain people herein keep peddling the spurious claims that I listed "over and over again," so, yeah, every now and then I repeat my objections to this embarrassing stuff. Now you are asking for Censorship from the MODS???? You're doggone right I am. Yes, absolutely. I am asking that the dubious claims that I mentioned not be allowed to be posted in this particular forum. If people want to post this stuff in other forums, I don't care. But posting it in a forum that's supposed to be about the JFK case makes the case for conspiracy look bad.

Human Rights Watch is not the only major human rights group to document the repressive nature of Vietnam’s Communist regime. Amnesty International has also done this. Let’s look at some Amnesty International reports on conditions in Vietnam. We will readily see that Vietnam most certainly is not a “pretty nice country.” This is from Amnesty International’s 2022/23 report titled Amnesty International Report 2022/23: The State of the World’s Human Rights: Viet Nam: Socialist Republic of Viet Nam A crackdown on both online and offline dissent raised concerns about a new wave of repression against civil society. Independent journalists, activists, religious practitioners and other government critics were arrested and charged under repressive laws. Human rights defenders were subjected to widespread harassment, digital surveillance, arbitrary arrest and politically motivated prosecution. Torture and other ill-treatment continued to be reported at an alarming rate. The sixth meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) in October further cemented General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s grip on power, signaling continued control and repression of civic space. Viet Nam was elected to the UN Human Rights Council despite a requirement that elected members uphold the highest human rights standards. The government made several pledges on human rights but, after declaring Viet Nam’s candidacy for the Council, it detained, arrested or sentenced at least 48 journalists, activists and NGO leaders. . . . Intolerance of dissent continued throughout 2022 with the right to freedom of expression continually restricted. Articles 117 and 331 of the 2015 Criminal Code continued to be used to arbitrarily detain and prosecute human rights defenders, journalists, religious practitioners and others who criticized the government or the CPV. . . . Six practitioners of the Tịnh Thất Bồng Lai temple were arrested under Article 331 of the Criminal Code and charged with “abusing democratic freedoms” for posting videos deemed to have “published false information” and “defamed the dignity” of local police and a monk from a government-controlled Buddhist Sangha. On 21 July, the six received prison sentences ranging from three to five years. Husband and wife, Nguyễn Thái Hưng and Vũ Thị Kim Hoàn, were also arrested under Article 331 after criticizing the government on a livestream video. They were sentenced in November to four years’ and two and a half years’ imprisonment respectively. . . . In September, land rights activist Trịnh Bá Tư reported being beaten, placed in solitary confinement and shackled for days while serving part of an eight-year sentence for spreading “propaganda against the state”. Despite calls by NGOs, no independent investigation took place. Tư’s family visited him in No 6 prison and reported that he was recovering after having been on a hunger strike for 22 days. Journalist Huỳnh Thục Vy also reported being beaten and choked in detention while serving a two years and nine months’ sentence under Article 276 of the Criminal Code for defacing a national flag. (https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/5670/2023/en/) From a 2021 Amnesty International report: Reports of torture and other ill-treatment of prisoners remained widespread. In March, Amnesty International revealed that political activist Nguyễn Văn Đức Độ, who was serving an 11-year prison sentence, had been kept in solitary confinement since May 2020 in inhumane conditions at Xuân Lộc prison in Đồng Nai province. His prolonged solitary confinement and ill-treatment by prison guards severely affected his mental health. . . . A severe crackdown on both online and offline dissent occurred during the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) National Conference and national elections. Independent journalists, publishers and other government critics were arrested and charged under repressive laws. Human rights defenders were subjected to widespread harassment, unlawful digital surveillance, arbitrary arrest and politically motivated prosecution. Torture and other ill-treatment continued to be reported. . . . . In February, an investigation by Amnesty International revealed a campaign of unlawful surveillance targeting human rights defenders conducted between February 2018 and November 2020. The spyware attacks were attributed to a group known as Ocean Lotus, and targeted Vietnamese activists both inside and outside the country. Among them was Bùi Thanh Hiếu, a blogger and pro-democracy activist residing in Germany. The Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE), a non-profit organization supporting Vietnamese refugees and promoting human rights in Viet Nam with offices in the USA and the Philippines, was also targeted. Prominent journalist, author and human rights defender Phạm Đoan Trang, who was arrested in October 2020, was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment by The People’s Court of Hanoi on 14 December 2021. She was charged under Article 88 of the 1999 Penal Code for “storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam”, in relation to articles she had written about the environment and human rights, and interviews she gave to foreign media outlets. Prior to her trial, Phạm Đoan Trang had been held in incommunicado detention for over a year. Another prominent human rights defender, Nguyễn Thúy Hạnh, was arrested on 7 April and charged under Article 117 of the Criminal Code. She is the founder of the “50K Fund”, which fundraises to provide support for the families of unlawfully detained persons in Viet Nam, and she frequently discussed human rights issues on Facebook. On 5 May, two land rights activists, Cấn Thị Thêu and her son Trịnh Bá Tư, were convicted under Article 117 of the Criminal Code and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment followed by three years’ probation for their peaceful advocacy of land rights. They had been arrested in June 2020 together with Trịnh Bá Phương (another son of Cấn Thị Thêu) and fellow land rights activist Nguyễn Thị Tâm. The four had spoken out about a high-profile land dispute in Đồng Tâm village near the capital, Hanoi, in which a clash during a police raid in January 2020 resulted in the deaths of an 84-year-old village leader and three police officers. In December, Trịnh Bá Phương and Nguyễn Thị Tâm were sentenced respectively to 10 years in prison with five years’ probation, and six years’ imprisonment with three years’ probation. Before his trial, Trịnh Bá Phương was held incommunicado for 16 months, with all requests for family visits denied by authorities. Intolerance of dissent hardened further throughout the year and the right to freedom of expression continued to be restricted. Arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of journalists, publishers and others who criticized the government or the CPV increased. Before the National Assembly elections in May, the authorities initiated a crackdown on independent election candidates and those critical of the election process. In March, political commentator Trần Quốc Khánh and citizen journalist Lê Trọng Hùng were arrested under Article 117 of the 2015 Criminal Code, which criminalizes “making, storing or spreading information, materials or items for the purpose of opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam” and carries a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment. Both had applied to be independent (or “self-nominated”) candidates for the National Assembly elections. On 31 December, Lê Trọng Hùng was sentenced to five years in prison and five years’ probation. . . . In October, four people were arrested and charged under various articles of the Criminal Code for posting comments on Facebook that were critical of the government’s response to Covid-19. They remained in detention at year’s end. (https://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/viet-nam/) From an Amnesty International report issued in 2016: A new report published by Amnesty International today casts a rare light on the torture and other harrowing treatment of prisoners of conscience locked up in Viet Nam’s secretive network of prisons and detention centers. Prisons within Prisons: Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners of conscience in Viet Nam details the ordeals endured by prisoners of conscience in one of the most closed countries in Asia, including prolonged periods of incommunicado detention and solitary confinement, enforced disappearances, the denial of medical treatment, and punitive prison transfers. “Viet Nam is a prolific jailer of prisoners of conscience; this report offers a rare glimpse at the horror that those prisoners face in detention,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s Director for South East Asia and the Pacific. “Viet Nam ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 2015. This in itself is not enough. In order to meet its human rights obligations, the authorities must introduce reforms in line with international law and ensure accountability for torture and ill treatment.” The report is based on one year’s research – including more than 150 hours of interviews with 18 former prisoners of conscience, who spent between one month and a decade in incarceration. Five of these men and women described to Amnesty International how they spent lengthy periods of time in solitary confinement in dark, fetid cells without access to fresh air, clean water and sanitation. Some were frequently beaten in clear contravention of global and national prohibitions on torture. (https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/prisons-within-prisons-torture-and-ill-treatment-of-prisoners-of-conscience-in-viet-nam/) @James DiEugenioJim, does any of this information give you pause/second thoughts about your claim that Vietnam is a “pretty nice country”? Somewhere deep down inside does it not occur to you that the liberal betrayal of South Vietnam was not only a disgraceful act of treason but a terrible human tragedy?

Perhaps it would help if the moderators would stop allowing threads that peddle fringe, extremist claims, such as threads/posts that defend the anti-Semitic crackpot and fraud Fletcher Prouty, and threads/posts that argue that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the Bush people, that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolitions, that a missile--and not an airliner--hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that John Lennon was assassinated by the military-industrial complex, that the "Secret Team" assassinated Princess Diana, that Vietnam was a "pretty nice country" after the Communists took over (yes, someone actually said that, and they scoffed when confronted with numerous Human Rights Watch reports on the terrible conditions and brutal repression in Vietnam), that Churchill poisoned FDR, that the Israelis deliberately attacked the USS Liberty, that Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser was a peace-loving moderate, that Israel is a repressive police state (but Vietnam is a "pretty nice country"), that JFK was killed because he was going to expose the existence of UFOs, and that Liberty Lobby was not really anti-Semitic (a truly mind-boggling claim), etc., etc.

Total nonsense. Jeff's and your attempts to whitewash Prouty are embarrassing and inexcusable. Allow me to repeat a few facts, facts that, as you and Jeff know, I have documented in previous exchanges on Prouty (links provided below): Prouty wrote a warm, positive letter to the editor of the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal in which he spoke approvingly of the journal's primary goals. You can read the letter in the IHR's journal online. I have provided two links to the letter in previous replies. This letter alone should cause any rational person to repudiate Prouty. Prouty spoke at an IHR conference that focused on denying the Holocaust. This is documented in the IHR's own agenda for the conference, as I have documented in previous replies. Prouty spoke at a convention of the far-right anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. During the convention, he co-hosted a panel discussion with Bo Gritz, David Duke's running mate. Liberty Lobby's newspaper The Spotlight published portions of Prouty's remarks, part of which included Prouty's blaming of Israel for high oil prices. Prouty had one of his books published by the IHR and praised Carto and Marcellus for their "vision" and "courage" in being willing to publish his book. This is a matter of record. Prouty expressed, in writing, his concern about Jewish sergeants manning military targeting systems. We have the letter. I have posted a link to it. The fact that Prouty did not always express extremist views during his 10 appearances on Liberty Lobby's radio show does not change the fact that no one in their right mind would have been caught dead appearing on that show, nor does it change the fact that the show frequently included Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, and white supremacists as guests. The fact that the mass murderer Joseph Stalin advanced the nutty theory that Churchill poisoned FDR hardly excuses Prouty for giving it credence. Your willingness to make excuses for such nuttiness shows you are too emotionally committed to defending Prouty to be taken seriously. Some of Prouty's fiercest critics have been respected ultra-liberals, such as Chip Berlet. Berlet has spent most of his career studying and exposing extreme right-wing groups. He's a former vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, for crying out loud, and he has worked in support of the ACLU, AIM, and even the Socialist Workers Party. For more information on Berlet's stainless, undeniable left-wing credentials, see the Wikipedia article on him. Prouty's bizarre, sleazy defense of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology is a matter of record, including his bogus, erroneous interpretation of Hubbard's military records. Prouty's royal back-peddling on key claims he'd been making for years when he was interviewed by the ARRB is a matter of record. Even if you want to somehow imagine that the ARRB interviewers were somehow hard on Prouty, this does not change the fact that Prouty admitted that there was nothing sinister or unusual about his trip to the South Pole, that he had no meaningful role in presidential protection, that he inexplicably did not have the notes he had supposedly taken during his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group, that the photo that supposedly showed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza actually showed no such thing, etc., etc. Is it not tragic and inexcusable that Prouty did not reveal these things to Oliver Stone before Stone released JFK? If David Duke had peddled the debunked theory that JFK intended to abandon South Vietnam after the election, and if Duke had argued that JFK was killed because of this intention, one fears you would be trying to whitewash Duke the same way you are trying to whitewash Prouty. Researchers who defend Prouty are the reason that the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination is rejected by most journalists and academics. LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK

And what does this have to do with Prouty's praise of the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal, his speaking appearance at an IHR Holocaust-denial conference, his multiple appearances (10 in four years) on Liberty Lobby's nutjob radio show, his speaking appearance at a Liberty Lobby convention, his co-hosting of a discussion panel with Bo Gritz at the same Liberty Lobby convention, his warm praise for Carto and Marcellus for publishing one of his books, his written expression of concern about Jewish sergeants manning military targeting computers, his disgraceful and bizarre defense of Hubbard and Scientology, his phony claims about his role in presidential protection, his false claim that he was sent to the South Pole for sinister reasons (he later admitted to the ARRB that there was nothing sinister or unusual about the trip), etc., etc., etc.?

Look, Prouty praised, in writing, the primary goals of the IHR's journal, the Journal of Historical Review, a Holocaust-denying publication. The IHR, as most know, is a Holocaust-denying organization. Prouty even spoke at an IHR conference that focused on denying the Holocaust. He appeared 10 times on the nutcase radio program produced by Liberty Lobby, a vile anti-Semitic group--other guests on that program included Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, and white supremacists. He also spoke at a Liberty Lobby convention and hosted a discussion panel with Bo Gritz at the convention (and, BTW, during his speech he blamed Israel for high oil prices). For those who don't know, Gritz was white supremacist and former KKK leader David Duke's running mate in 1988. These indisputable facts alone should convince any rational person that we must repudiate Prouty. And this is not to mention Prouty's embarrassing defense of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology fraud, Prouty's sleazy attacks on Scientology's critics, Prouty's suggestion that the "Secret Team" may have killed Princess Diana, Prouty's giving of credence to the nutty claim that Churchill poisoned FDR, Prouty's obscene attacks on Edward Lansdale, and Prouty's back-peddling on every major claim he'd been making for years when interviewed by the ARRB in the 1990s (including his admission that he did not have the notes that he allegedly took during his supposed stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group). The subject of Fletcher Prouty is a bright red line that separates credible, serious JFK research from fringe, specious JFK research. If you write a 10-chapter book on WW II, and if one of the chapters stoutly defends Hitler and the Third Reich, no one will care about what the other chapters say, no matter how valid they might be. Fletcher Prouty did enormous damage to the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. He continues to do so because a handful of researchers still defend him and still peddle his discredited, fringe claims.

Your continued defense of Fletcher Prouty casts serious doubt on your credibility and judgment. It also makes this forum look bad. It is thoroughly documented, substantially with Prouty's own words, that Prouty was an anti-Semitic fraud who spoke at a Holocaust-denial event, who spent years closely associating with Holocaust deniers and other extremists, who made truly nutty claims on a wide range of subjects, who exaggerated (if not lied about) his credentials, and who back-peddled all over the place when he was gently and respectfully interviewed by the ARRB.

And the only way you can conclude that Oswald shot Tippit is to ignore all the evidence that someone else shot Tippit and to ignore the severe problems with the alleged evidence of Oswald's guilt. From my review of Myers' book With Malice: An experienced policeman and a former combat Marine both said an automatic pistol was used (not Oswald's revolver). Moreover, the policeman, Sgt. Gerald Hill, based his automatic-pistol identification on the shell casings. As any firearms expert can attest, it is very easy to distinguish between automatic shells and revolver shells. Additionally, in a 1986 interview, Hill said he knew the shells were .38-caliber shells because he picked one of them up and examined it. This is significant because .38 automatic shells are marked ".38 AUTO" on the bottom. Hill specifically said he looked on the bottom of the shell that he examined. It is no wonder, then, that Hill got on the radio and said, "the shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38." In reading Myers' book, one finds good documentation of the fact that two witnesses said the killer's hair was "bushy" (pp. 117, 118, 487, 636). The problem is that Oswald's hair certainly was not bushy, as any number of photos of him readily prove. Buried in one of Myers' endnotes is the fact that a key witness to the Tippit shooting, William Smith, initially said the killer was not Oswald (p. 615 n 390). An anonymous person informed the FBI that Smith had been at the Tippit scene, that he'd seen the killer, and that Smith had said the man was "not Oswald." Like some other witnesses, when Smith was questioned by the FBI, he changed his tune and gave a story more in keeping with the lone-gunman scenario. Smith told the FBI he initially did not think the gunman was Oswald because when he first saw Oswald on TV after the assassination it looked like Oswald had light-colored hair. This strikes me as a dubious explanation for Smith's change of story. I've watched much of the post-assassination TV footage of Oswald, and I would invite anyone to find a clip from that footage in which Oswald seems to have light-colored hair. Of course, Smith might not have said this--we have only the word of the FBI agent who interviewed him that he in fact gave this explanation. Numerous witnesses complained that the FBI agents who interviewed them misrepresented what they said or only mentioned selected parts of their accounts. This is not to say that all FBI agents did this, but we know that some did. Furthermore, what about the killer's facial features, and his height, weight, and so forth? Given the fact that Smith got a good look at the killer, one would think he should have been able to base his initial opinion on more than just the appearance of hair on a black-and-white TV screen. Myers admits the slugs from Tippit's body do not match the missile shells in evidence. To explain this, Myers posits a fifth shot (pp. 269-271). Yet, there is no physical evidence of such a shot, and only four shells were found on the day of the shooting. Myers seeks to explain the fact that not one of the shells in evidence has Sergeant W. E. Barnes' or Patrolman J. M. Poe's initials on it, even though both men said they marked two of the shells (pp. 260-265). Myers quotes two former DPD officers as saying marking evidence was not viewed as vital at the time (which I seriously doubt). However, Sergeant Gerald Hill testified he told Poe to be "sure" to mark two of the shells. If the Dallas police did not think marking evidence was important at the time, why did Sgt. Hill tell Poe to be "sure" to mark the two shells he had received from an eyewitness? Myers quotes a former DPD detective as saying, decades after the fact, that Poe told him he really did not mark the shells. However, Poe adamantly maintained in his Secret Service and FBI statements, and in his interview with Henry Hurt, that he marked the shells. He said he was certain he had marked the shells. Even in his WC testimony he indicated he believed he had marked them. Of course, the absence of Poe's initials on the extant shells suggests those shells are not the same shells that were found at the crime scene on the day of the shooting. But Myers can have none of this. So, he must argue that Poe somehow, for some reason, "failed" to mark any of the shells, even though Sgt. Hill had told him to be "sure" to mark two of the shells, and even though Poe initially said he was certain he had marked them. Speaking of Sgt. Hill, it is worth repeating that Hill, an experienced policeman, initially said an automatic pistol was used in the shooting (as opposed to Oswald's revolver). Hill based his identification on the shell casings. As noted earlier, any firearms expert can attest that it is very easy to distinguish between automatic shells and revolver shells. In a 1986 interview, Hill said he knew the shells were .38-caliber shells because he picked one of them up and examined it. This is significant because .38 automatic shells are marked ".38 AUTO" on the bottom. Hill specifically said he looked on the bottom of the shell that he examined. It is no wonder, then, that Hill got on the radio and said "the shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38." (LINK)

So Fruge and Weiss both just made up their stories--independently, no less? Never mind that Fruge dismissed Cheramie's account until JFK was killed? How about Dr. Bowers? Was Dr. Weiss lying about him too? What about the aspects of Cheramie's story that were verified? You guys always say that "if there had been a conspiracy, someone would have talked," but you look for any and every excuse to reject the accounts of the people who did talk. Rose Cheramie (spartacus-educational.com) HSCA staff report on Rose Cheramie

BTW, Fonda turned out to be a real businesswoman. She made a lot of money with her workout books, workout tapes and cook books. Just the tapes sold 17 million copies. I'm sure that was comforting to all the American POWs who were being tortured by the North Vietnamese at the same time Jane Fonda was saying they were being treated exceptionally well. As she has said, she was simply opposed to that ghastly, godawful war. (Although she herself admits she should not have gotten into that anti aircraft battery.) You mean the war that we fought to try to keep 18 million South Vietnamese from falling under Communist tyranny? That war? Yes, Fonda did eventually, finally apologize for posing with a North Vietnamese AA battery that was regularly firing at American pilots. Did she express any regret when the Hanoi regime imposed what even a former Viet Cong leader called a "reign of terror" on the South Vietnamese? Did she express any regret that after the war the side that she had cheered for, i.e., the Communists, executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent at least another 800,000 to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%? Did she express any sorrow that 18 million people lost every basic right that we value, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of education, freedom from unjust imprisonment, the right of private property, etc.? I think I have said this before but she actually visited my hometown of Erie Pa on a nationwide tour with some VAVW. The line at the college to get in to see her was blocks long. And I did not get in. But I talked to some people who did and they said one of the main points she and the vets were making was the kind of ordnance that was being used in the field. How much of it was composed of projectiles that would explode and then scatter into little bits, same thing we are arguing about in Ukraine. Oh my goodness. This borders on the obscene. First of all, fragmentation anti-personnel ordnance was used long before the Vietnam War, and by many nations. It was even used in a basic form in the Revolutionary War. Second, did those cowardly vets and Jane Fonda complain about the North Vietnamese shelling of fleeing civilians, about the murder of thousands of school teachers and nurses and local officials by the Viet Cong, about the numerous Communist massacres, etc., starting in 1962? Did they happen to voice any complaints about those crimes? The owner of the newspaper, a guy named Ed Meade, was really angry with her visit and all the attention it got.. He devoted a whole column to trashing her. Me and, according to him, many others, wrote letters protesting how unfair this was. I thought she did the right thing. And she took a lot of heat for it. Well, I guess if your version of "the right thing" is to be a cheerleader for the murderous Stalinist thugs who brutalized 18 million people after the war, after deliberately killing tens of thousands of civilians during the war, then, yeah, she "did the right thing." The tens millions of South Vietnamese who suffered for decades under the same Communist thugs that she cheered for did not think she "did the right thing." Just imagine if she had been a cheerleader for the vicious North Korean regime during the Korean War. After all, every single argument that she made against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War.

I don't think party politics are the main problem. There are plenty of liberal Democrats who ardently defend the Warren Commission, and there are quite a few conservative Republicans who reject the lone-gunman theory. We should keep in mind that the three WC members who balked at the Commission's main conclusions were all conservatives (Russell, Boggs, and Cooper), whereas Warren was a devout liberal and Ford was a moderate whose centrist policies nearly cost him the 1976 GOP nomination.

You clearly have not read the Lopez-Hardway report. Gerry's argument that "the HSCA" did not conclude that Oswald never visited the Soviet Embassy or the Cuban Consulate is a bit disingenuous. The HSCA's final report presented a number of conclusions that many of the HSCA's investigators rejected or doubted. Moreover, the Lopez-Hardway report was withheld from the HSCA's published volumes because it was among the materials that were sealed, so it was not used in the committee's final report. The Lopez-Hardway report notes, for example, that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy spoke terrible Russian but that Oswald himself spoke fluent Russian. And I must say that it is surprising to see you and Gerry casually dismiss the fact that one of the HSCA's two main researchers on the Mexico City episode said none of the CIA surveillance photos taken at the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy showed Oswald, and that he believes Oswald was set up by the CIA with an imposter in Mexico City. The other main Mexico City investigator, Dan Hardway, likewise believes there was an Oswald imposter in Mexico City. If the HSCA researchers who investigated Jack Ruby said they believe that Ruby had no meaningful Mafia ties and that Ruby's shooting of Oswald was nothing but a spontaneous act of rage, you guys would be trumpeting this from the rooftops. Yet, you yawn when the HSCA researchers who investigated Oswald's time in Mexico City say that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy was not the real Oswald. Now why oh why oh why would anyone be impersonating this supposedly obscure, friendless, unstable loner in Mexico City shortly before the assassination and trying to make it seem like he contacted the Soviet Embassy?

This next book recommendation deals with the liberal myth of massive drug use among our soldiers during the Vietnam War, a myth that has been repeated in this thread. The book comes from an unlikely author and an unlikely publisher: Dr. Jerry Kuzmarov's book The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2009. No one can accuse Kuzmarov of being an ardent conservative. In fact, he has written material for The Progressive. And, needless to say, the UMass Press is not known for publishing conservative works. I could not describe Kuzmarov's book much better than how the UMass Press describes it: The image of the drug-addicted American soldier—disheveled, glassy-eyed, his uniform adorned with slogans of antiwar dissent—has long been associated with the Vietnam War. More specifically, it has persisted as an explanation for the U.S. defeat, the symbol of a demoralized army incapable of carrying out its military mission. Yet as Jeremy Kuzmarov documents in this deeply researched book, popular assumptions about drug use in Vietnam are based more on myth than fact. Not only was alcohol the intoxicant of choice for most GIs, but the prevalence of other drugs varied enormously. Although marijuana use among troops increased over the course of the war, for the most part it remained confined to rear areas, and the use of highly addictive drugs like heroin was never as widespread as many imagined. Like other cultural myths that emerged from the war, the concept of an addicted army was first advanced by war hawks seeking a scapegoat for the failure of U.S. policies in Vietnam, in this case one that could be linked to "permissive" liberal social policies and the excesses of the counterculture. But conservatives were not alone. Ironically, Kuzmarov shows, elements of the antiwar movement also promoted the myth, largely because of a presumed alliance between Asian drug traffickers and the Central Intelligence Agency. While this claim was not without foundation, as new archival evidence confirms, the left exaggerated the scope of addiction for its own political purposes. (https://www.umasspress.com/9781558497054/the-myth-of-the-addicted-army/)

So are you just going to keep repeating liberal talking points, while ignoring facts that refute them and refusing to read the other side of the story? A few facts: We were in fact supporting democracy in South Vietnam. It was a fledgling and imperfect democracy, but it was far more democratic than North Vietnam. As I have personally documented for you in previous replies, the South Vietnamese enjoyed far more freedom than the North Vietnamese. The Saigon government allowed far more freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of education, local control, and private property rights than did the Stalinist Hanoi regime. It is very odd that you will never, ever, ever talk about the brutal, repressive nature of the Hanoi regime--the total lack of freedom of the press and lack of freedom of speech, the use of the military to crush civilian uprisings, the regime's killing of tens of thousands of North Vietnamese who made the mistake of expressing opposition to Communist rule, and especially the horrific reign of terror that the regime imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, etc., etc. Diem did in fact enjoy widespread grass roots support. He did not need to rig his election. Even if he had done nothing, he would have won by at least 15 percentage points. He was running against the French-selected puppet leader Bao Dai, who did not even live in South Vietnam. Yes, that's right: Bao Dai did not even live in the country--he lived in France. Bao Dai was not even interested in the job of governing; he preferred to let Diem do all the work while he, Bao Dai, indulged in his indolent lifestyle in France, which is one reason that Diem decided to challenge Bao Dai. The "invasion" of Cambodia??? The only invasion of Cambodia was done by the North Vietnamese. They invaded Cambodia in 1965 and took control of a large strip of eastern Cambodia in order to create sanctuaries where they kept huge supply depots and from which they launched literally hundreds of attacks on South Vietnam. The limited and temporary American incursion into eastern Cambodia in 1970 was an attempt to neutralize those sanctuaries. As for whether we should have been in Vietnam "in the first place," the answer is an obvious Yes. If we had not helped South Vietnam, the country would have fallen under Communist tyranny in just a few years, since North Vietnam was receiving massive economic and military aid from the Soviet Union and Red China. One of the points hammered home so convincingly in Dr. Christopher Goscha's recent book The Road to Dien Bien Phu is that the Viet Minh would have lost their war against the French without the massive aid they received from Red China. Donald Duncan again? He was part of the Winter Soldier fraud. Every war has its Donald Duncans. Duncan represented a very small minority of Vietnam veterans, but you never mention this fact. Nor do you ever mention that repeated surveys, both government and private, showed that the overwhelming majority of Vietnam veterans were proud of their service and believed the war was honorable. Check out the websites that are run by Vietnam vets--you will find that the vast majority of them defend the war. Read the books written by Vietnam vets--here, too, you will find that the vast majority of them defend the war. Why don't you ever talk about the numerous genuine heroes of the Vietnam War, especially exceptional heroes such as John Ripley, Mike Novosel, John Levitow, Tim Lowry, Jamie Pacheco, William Pitsenbarger, and Rocky Versace?

Two recent sources that I have not yet mentioned on the Vietnam War are a documentary and a book about South Vietnam's first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, and the first three years of the war. Last year, Ignatius Press released an excellent documentary on Diem titled Liberator of Asia: The True Story of Ngo Dinh Diem. This is the first English-language documentary that defends Diem. The documentary also provides important information about the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1963. Links: https://watch.formed.org/videos/liberator-of-asia-the-true-story-of-ngo-dinh-diem (streaming) https://www.amazon.com/LIBERATOR-ASIA-STORY-SOUTH-VIETNAM/dp/1621645975 (DVD) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGfMiLC6hRU (trailer) The Catholic streaming website Formed, which carries the documentary, says the following about it: There is arguably no political assassination in history as consequential as the ill-fated November 1, 1963, CIA-backed coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam. His tragic murder led to a series of failures that ushered in the Vietnam War, and contributed to the major societal upheavals of the 1960s. Cast as a despot and autocrat in order to justify the actions of misguided policymakers, Diem receives a stunning new appraisal in this provocative and expertly crafted new film. Liberator of Asia: The True Story of Ngo Dinh Diem masterfully weaves together interviews with leading contemporaries and relatives of Diem, military historians, Vietnamese leaders, rare archival footage, and groundbreaking new evidence to present an altogether different portrait of Diem. He possessed the Confucian "Mandate of Heaven," a moral and political authority that was widely recognized by all Vietnamese. Diem was a figure of rare political courage and integrity, and unwavering Catholic faith, a patriot who strove to defend his country from Communism while fighting off Western attempts to undermine his governing authority. The recent book that I recommend is Vietnamese scholar Dr. Duy Lap Nguyen's The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam, published in 2020. Dr. Nguyen is an associate professor of world cultures and literature at the University of Houston and specializes in Vietnamese studies. Dr. Keith Taylor, a renowned Asia scholar and a professor of history at Cornell University, praises the book in his lengthy review of it. Here is a small portion of his review: The military officers who murdered South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963 and the Americans who urged them on subsequently propagated a view of this man that has become a cliché in virtually every book written about the Vietnam War: he was a tyrant with obscure and self-absorbed ideas whose autocratic and repressive policies provoked an insurgency against his own government—he was the architect of his own demise. This idea served the purposes of nearly everyone: the rulers of North Vietnam, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese who justified their rule by having overthrown him. During the past twenty years, scholars have published studies that portray Ngô Đình Diệm in a somewhat less dismal light. But the thoughts and aims of both the man and his domestic critics have remained elusive—until now. In The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam, Duy Lap Nguyen has dissolved the entrenched stereotype of Ngô Đình Diệm and developed an analysis of his thought, aims, policies, and opponents that is fresh and convincing, meanwhile subverting prevailing interpretations of modern Vietnamese history. He also develops a fresh analysis of American and South Vietnamese relations in the post-Diệm era. This book will be disdained by those committed to the caricature of Ngô Đình Diệm that was retailed by the military officers who overthrew him and that remains in fashion among people who write about the Vietnam War. This book’s arguments, while grounded in historical evidence, are informed by philosophy and cultural criticism, which may deter some historians. Nevertheless, the importance of the book is bound to be increasingly understood as the encrusted stereotypes of the war gradually fade. (https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/reviews/6291358/taylor-nguyen-unimagined-community-imperialism-and-culture-south) A bit more info on Dr. Taylor: He is the author of the Cambridge University textbook A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is also the author of the classic study The Birth of Vietnam (University of California Press, 1991). And, yes, Dr. Taylor is the same Keith Taylor who wrote a favorable review of Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Forsaken in the collection of reviews titled Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War.

Great post. It highlights the flimsy nature of the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting.