Michael Griffith

I read several of your replies. You cited the record of the 5/6/63 SECDEF conference as evidence that I was wrong in my reply regarding Dr. Moyar's books on the Vietnam War, but that conference has nothing to do with the material presented in Moyar's books. You apparently have not read any of Moyar's books on the war, especially his two most recent ones. In another one of your replies, you told me that the withdrawal plan was real, as if I had denied the withdrawal plan. But I have never disputed the fact that JFK had a withdrawal plan. What I have disputed is the inaccurate liberal claim that the withdrawal was going to be an unconditional and complete disengagement from South Vietnam. The JFK White House tapes and a wealth of other evidence soundly refute this claim. In another reply, you said I rely too much on the "official narrative." The "official narrative"? What is that? There is no "official narrative" about the Vietnam War. One can find a wide range of views on the war in government publications on the subject. The closest thing to an "official narrative" is the false narrative that the news media, Hollywood, most liberal politicians, and the majority of historians have been pushing since the 1960s. My view, although shared by most Vietnam veterans, and although supported by numerous scholars and historians, official military reports, and newly released/available North Vietnamese sources, is still the minority view in the academic community.

That is a good question. I will see if I can find out what happened with that project.

That won't work. Hawkeyeworks had no analytical function. NPIC did, but not Hawekeyeworks. (I worked at the agency into which NPIC was later merged for several years.) And why keep it secret if the purpose were merely analysis? And why two separate sets of briefing boards? And why destroy, or "lose," such historic evidentiary items? The chief of NPIC at the time, Homer McMahon, told the ARRB that when he viewed the film, he concluded that there were six or seven shots from three directions.

I agree that the black blob is obvious and is evidence of alteration. However, I would never cite James Fetzer on the issue. Fetzer has discredited himself with his truly nutty 9/11 inside-job conspiracy theory and with his even nuttier claim that the Moon landings were faked. Doug Horne, David Mantik, and Daryll Weatherly have done solid research on evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film. Of course, we now know that the Zapruder film was diverted to the CIA-contracted Hawkeyeworks photo lab in Rochester, NY, and then to the CIA's NPIC in DC.

I take it you are new to the subject of JFK and Vietnam. The White House tapes prove that JFK's hawkish public comments were not posturing. McNamara's memoir is a joke and was shredded by both liberal and conservative historians. Kennedy did have a withdrawal plan, but it was a phased and conditional plan, and under that plan we would have continued to provide military and financial aid to South Vietnam. Repeat: Do some balanced research instead of only reading one side of the story before you talk about issues such as fraggings in South Vietnam. I notice you ignored my questions on the issue. Are you ever going to read research that challenges what you want to believe this subject? You think it is "ridiculous" to argue that ARVN was usually an effective fighting force because your reading on the subject has been pitiful. You do not know what you are talking about. Do you recall in our previous exchanges in another thread that I provided quotes from North Vietnamese sources that proved that ARVN often fought well, even "ferociously," even after the U.S. withdrawal? I take it you did not bother to watch the lecture by Dr. Wiest on ARVN that I linked in my previous reply. Instead, you doubled down on the liberal myth about ARVN's performance. The lie that ARVN was an incompetent, cowardly fighting force remains a key part of liberal mythology about the war, even though this falsehood has been demonstrably refuted by the North Vietnamese sources alone, not to mention by the research of numerous historians and Vietnam War scholars. In an earlier reply, you claimed that ARVN was "no match" for the Viet Cong. Obviously, you are unaware of the fact that during Tet I, which was led mostly by Viet Cong forces, ARVN either defeated the Viet Cong or fought them to a standstill in most cases, much to the shock of the Hanoi regime. How long did it take for Saigon to fall in 1975? Like three months? This sentence deserves special attention, and severe ridicule. It took the NVA two years of bitter, costly fighting before they were able to get in position to take Saigon, and for half of that time ARVN was fighting with a fraction of the American aid that had been promised to them. Your argument is as ridiculous as saying, "Gee, the German army must have been pathetic and weak, because, shucks, how long did it take Berlin to fall to the Soviets? Like three weeks?" No credible person would make this ludicrous argument because they would know that it took the Soviets four years of horrific fighting to put themselves in position to take Berlin. The only thing holding South Vietnam together was the US military: all 3 branches. And this was what Kennedy said should have never happened. Because once American combat troops were entered, it would become a white man's war, one that we could not win. Because it would unite the populace against America. More far-left drivel. All you ever do is repeat far-left myths about the war because most of the little reading you have done has been among far-left sources. If you can ever muster up the objectivity to read studies on the North Vietnamese sources, or the North Vietnamese sources themselves, you will learn that after the Tet Offensive, the vast majority of South Vietnamese strongly supported the American presence and the effort to keep South Vietnam independent, because Tet gave them a bitter and revealing preview of what Communist rule would be like. And I notice that you never talk about the fact that the only thing that kept North Vietnam afloat was massive Soviet-Chinese military and financial aid. When you harp on South Vietnam's reliance on American aid, you never say a word about North Vietnam's even heavier reliance on Soviet and Chinese aid. From 1950-1953, South Korea depended far more heavily on American aid than South Vietnam ever did. Yet, only a few far-left wingnuts lament that America kept South Korea afloat and helped her defeat the North Korean-Chinese invasion.

The "fact checks" done by Snopes and Politifact are sometimes inaccurate. Wikipedia is erratic, all over the map--it all depends on who writes the article. Their primary editors have a strong anti-conspiracy bias. NPR and MSNBC are extremely biased and one sided--and monolithic. CNN is biased but is less one sided than NPR and MSNBC. Fox News is biased but is much less one sided than NPR and MSNBC. MSNBC almost never includes conservative guests in their panel discussions and interview segments. Newsmax is interesting because it includes traditional conservatives and libertarian conservatives, and there are often wide gaps in the views of those two camps. Newsmax does a reasonably good job of including liberals in their interview segments, and occasionally in their discussion panels.

I agree with 99.99% of everything you say here, Greg. And we should remember that in JFK's American University speech, he made the following statements, which liberal summaries of the speech usual ignore: The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."

It is good that a billionaire with his own social media platorm now publicly says that JFK was killed by a conspiracy. However, it is not so good that he appears to have accepted the far-left version of the conspiracy position. If someone reaches him with the facts about JFK's Cuba and Vietnam policies, he may become disillusioned with the case for conspiracy. When JFK realized that the Russians had lied to him about not putting missiles in Cuba, he privately remarked, as recorded on the White House tapes, that "it shows the Bay of Pigs was really right, if we had done it right" (10/16/1962).There is ample evidence that JFK never lost interest in toppling the Castro regime, and that he was fully prepared to increase the destructive pressure on the regime either to persuade Castro to reach an acceptable resolution or in the event Castro refused to do so. There was nothing "unnatural" about our noble effort to keep 18 million South Vietnamese from falling under Communist tyranny, just as there was nothing unnatural about our war to keep 20 million South Koreans from falling under Communist rule. JFK did not need any "pushing" from the CIA on this issue. JFK warned about the dangers of a Communist takeover of South Vietnam years before he became president. And, the White House tapes prove beyond any rational doubt that JFK was determined not to let the Communists win in South Vietnam. Bobby's April 1964 oral interview reflects this determination.

Huh, well, that is one heck of a whopping coincidence. I am agnostic on this issue, but I do find it mighty, mighty odd that the police would find two torn halves of dollar bills, especially if they were found during the same timeframe when Oswald was arrested and detailed. Do the police records say when the dollar-bill torn halves were found or booked into evidence?

When you raised the Winter Soldier issue in the thread on Stone's documentary and the Vietnam War, I pointed out some of the problems with the Winter Soldier claims and cited sources that address them. Let me guess: You still have not read any of the sources I cited, right? Have you read a single article or book that answers the liberal spin on fraggings in the Vietnam War? Did it ever occur to you that you should read both sides of the issue before discussing it in a public forum? Would it surprise to learn that most of the fraggings in Vietnam occurred in rear areas, far removed from danger, not in combat zones? Are you aware that fraggings also occurred in WW II and in the Korean War? Do you have any idea how the numbers compare? You again expose the inadequate, one-sided nature of your research when you repeat the myth that "every American there knew that the ARVN was no match for the Viet Cong and the Hanoi regular army." What utter nonsense. Such drivel shows you have no business talking about the war in a public forum, much less reviewing books by authors, such as Dr. Marc Selverstone and Dr. Mark Moyar, who have read 20 times the number of books and studies that you have read on the subject. As I have told you several times before, we know from North Vietnamese sources alone that ARVN was a formidable fighting force that fought well in the substantial majority of cases. When we discussed this subject many months ago, I pointed out the facts about ARVN's performance and cited several scholarly sources on the subject, but you obviously have not bothered to read a single one of them. Yet, here you are repeating the liberal myth about ARVN. If you ever want to educate yourself on ARVN's performance, you could start with what is considered one of the best books, if not the best book, on the subject: Dr. Andrew Wiest's book Vietnam's Forgotten Army (NYU Press, 2009). If you cannot bring yourself to read the book, perhaps you could bring yourself to watch Dr. Wiest's lecture on the subject (it's just over an hour long): LINK.

There is no argument about the Decent Interval concept. It was the operative doctrine for Kissinger and Nixon. You have not read enough on the subject to be making such statements, not to mention that your statement is a misleading oversimplification. I would direct interested readers to my previous replies on the decent interval in this thread. And I do not use Turse to make it and neither does Tom. I did not say that you cited Turse on the decent interval. I did not even imply this. How can there be when people like Kimball actually found the term in Kissinger's notebooks. Wow. You see, these are the kinds of silly, sophomoric arguments that get made when your research has been badly deficient. You keep acting like any reference to the decent interval somehow automatically proves your spin on the subject. Did you even read my replies on the subject in this thread? You using someone like Neil Sheehan, of all people, as to be anti war is, I mean whew. Sheehan never got over Jean Paul Vann. And Vann was one of the earliest critics of Kennedy not committing combat troops since he thought the ARVN was so hapless that they were no match for Hanoi. Sheehan was still praising Vann for his actions during the Tet Offensive! Please read this in full: https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/neil-sheehan-in-retrospect Halberstam and Sheehan were two of the worst writers about Vietnam. Because they were out and out hawks, while Kennedy never was. They were so bad, and proved to be so wrong, that Halberstam went back and revised his first book on the war, The Making of a Quagmire, to edit out the most hawkish parts. Why? So he would not betray himself to later generations who he wanted to buy into his godawful book The Best and the Brightest. Which Warren HInckle called one of the greatest BS books ever written. Both men in their later works tried to blame how badly Vietnam had turned out on, of all people, Kennedy! This was part of their cover up of their own advocacy for escalation. Which, when they got their wish, turned out to be a disaster. One of the most disgusting things about Sheehan was his betrayal of Mark Lane, which you can read about above. The second most was his portrayal of Vann's funeral as trying to forget the war. When, in fact, there would have been no war had Kennedy not been killed. But this is something Halberstam and Sheehan could never admit. A perfect example would be, when Stone's JFK came out, Halberstam said there was no Pentagon machination to drive the war forward. When, in fact, his hero, Jean Paul Vann, wanted to do just that. And in his first book Halberstam regretted not doing it earlier. Sweet Mother of Pearl! This is a dazzling mix of far-left mythology, distortion, and falsehood sprinkled with a few isolated facts. Only fringe-left idealogues view Sheehan and Halberstam the way you portray them here. If you ever do break down and decide to do some balanced research on the Vietnam War, you will be embarrassed over these claims. Halberstam and Sheehan would not "admit" that "there would have been no war had Kennedy not been killed" because they knew this was abject nonsense. As for your remark about John Paul Vann's view of ARVN (who was "Jean Paul Vann"?), you once again show just how deficient your reading has been. FYI, Vann soon came to respect ARVN's fighting ability. His initial negative comments about ARVN were part of his effort to hide his own blunders in the Battle of Ap Bac. Now, about civilian casualties, are you going to say that everyone involved in the Winter Soldier protest was a l--r? Are you going to say that the estimates of civilian deaths by epidemiologists for Cambodia and Vietnam are false? Are you going to say that the study showing the steady increase by American soldiers fragging their commanding officers thus causing the collapse of the US Army in Vietnam, all that was really inconsequential because some rightwing hack writer like Moyar says that, well see, we blew it. Both McNamara and Clifford were wrong, and so were Nixon and Kissinger. Only I am correct. Another diatribe loaded with far-left myths. You are in no position to be making these kinds of pronouncements. Your research has been so minimal and one sided as to be unserious and disqualifying. You call a reputable, highly credentialed historian like Dr. Moyar a "rightwing hack writer" and then turn around and cite bungling amateurs like Mike Swanson and genuine hacks like Nick Turse (who, again, was forced to issue a formal retraction to settle a libel lawsuit over bogus claims made in his book). You know, if you just cannot bring yourself to read centrist and conservative American scholarship on the Vietnam War, why not read center-left British historian Max Hastings' book on the war or Vietnamese scholar Lien-Hang Nguyen's book on the war (she is a professor of history at Columbia University) or University of Montreal history professor Dr. Christopher Goscha's new book on the French phase of the Vietnam War (which has received effusive praise from historians from all across the spectrum)? Mike, that is Newsmax stuff. It won't fly here. We know too much. Vietnam was a disaster that should have never happened. "Newsmax stuff"? Your far-left ideology is showing again. And, pray tell, what is wrong with Newsmax? Newsmax has a readership in the millions, and Newsmax TV is one of the fastest growing cable TV news channels in the country. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, Newsmax TV's viewership growth outpaced that of every other cable TV news channel. FYI, Newsmax TV frequently includes liberals in their discussion panels (whereas MSNBC rarely includes conservatives in their discussion panels). And if Kennedy had lived, it would not have. This is delusional wishful thinking that ignores Kennedy's own statements, private statements that were recorded on the White House tapes, and statements that he made in public up to the very day he died. You brush aside all these statements as election posturing, even the ones on the White House tapes, which were never meant to see the light of day. You also dismiss RFK's statements in his April '64 oral history, claiming he was suffering from PTSD. I should mention again that even most liberal historians reject your theory that JFK was going to disengage from South Vietnam after the election. For all the good work you have done on the JFK assassination itself (and you have done a great deal), you have done severe damage to the case for conspiracy by peddling the Stone-Prouty myth that JFK was determined to abandon South Vietnam after the election.

One, you ignored the positive comments that were made in those negative reviews. Two, I am guessing you did not bother to read any of the favorable reviews that I linked. If you did, you chose not to comment on the arguments they make in support of Moyar's book. Three, did you notice that not one of the negative reviews even tried to deal with the historic evidence that Moyar cites from newly released/available North Vietnamese sources? Why do you suppose not one of those liberal historians tackled the most crucial, historic part of Moyar's book? (And Moyar is not the only scholar who has cited this evidence, either, but he was the first to make major use of it.) Four, did you read Moyar's detailed response to the negative reviews? I notice you said nothing about his rebuttal arguments. Five, you obviously have not read Moyar's book. Six, I have not personally attacked Jim DiEugenio. It is not a personal attack to point out to him that his research on the Vietnam War has been woefully inadequate and one sided. That is not a personal attack. Just look at the fringe, substandard sources he has cited, such as Nick Turse's book Kill Anything That Moves (which even famous anti-war journalist Neil Sheehan condemned in strong terms) and Michael Swanson's embarrassingly amateurish book Why the Vietnam War? (which contains junior-high grammar errors and twice identifies McNamara as the Secretary of State, among other problems that I pointed out to Jim when he first cited the book). In one post, Jim said that the awful far-left propaganda documentary Hearts and Minds was "the best" documentary on the war. Are you kidding me? Go watch that video. Among other things, it includes Daneil Ellsberg denying that North Vietnam received substantial aid from the Soviet Union and Red China. Also, Jim has heaped great praise on Fletcher Prouty's writings on the Vietnam War. Fletcher Prouty? Again, are you kidding me? Go back and read my exchanges with him on the Vietnam War. Before I mentioned the North Vietnamese sources, he had no clue about them and what they reveal. When I mentioned the mass executions and the concentration camps that North Vietnam imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, he said I must have been referring to what happened in Cambodia because, he claimed, the North Vietnamese only executed a few thousand people; next, he argued that I was merely relying on Nixon's statement about the mass executions in No More Vietnams. When I provided several scholarly studies that document that probably closer to 60,000-65,000 South Vietnamese were executed, not counting the tens of thousands who died in the concentration camps, he fell silent on the issue. And on and on I could go. And I repeat, yet again, the fact that even the vast majority of liberal historians reject Jim's claim that JFK was going to abandon South Vietnam after the election. That view is on the very far left fringe of the spectrum and is nearly universally rejected by historians--again, even by most liberal historians, not to mention moderate and conservative ones. All this being said, I have always praised Jim's work on the JFK assassination itself. I continue to strongly recommend JFK Revisited and feature it on the front page of my JFK site. I am just saying that Jim is simply unqualified to posture as a credible scholar on the Vietnam War because his reading has clearly been very limited and extremely one sided. Finally, regarding the decent interval: I see that in another reply, you again posted a handful of cherry-picked, out-of-context statements to support the liberal spin on the decent interval. You did not address a single point that I made in my two long replies on the decent interval. Here are the links to them, if you ever decide to address the points I made therein: LINK. LINK.

Yikes, how can anyone still cite Posner on the JFK case in 2023? Mind you, this is the same Gerald Posner who claims that the Tague curb mark and Tague facial cut were caused by the lead core of an FMJ bullet that separated from its copper jacketing after hitting a limb of the oak tree on Elm Street. Posner says that the first bullet struck a limb of the oak tree, that its lead core separated from its metal jacketing, and that this lead core traveled in a straight line to the curb over 400 feet away, somehow striking the curb with enough force to send a concrete fragment streaking toward Tague with sufficient velocity to cut Tague's face. Moreover, consider this stark contradiction: Posner would have us believe that striking a tree limb caused the first FMJ bullet's lead core to separate from its jacket. However, Posner also says that the next FMJ bullet supposedly tore through Kennedy's neck, plowed through Connally's back, smashed three rib bones, shattered a hard wrist bone, and then penetrated Connally's thigh, yet this FMJ bullet not only did not separate but emerged with its lands and grooves intact, with no damage to its nose, and with no more than 4 grains lost from its substance.

If one is going to accuse others of making lame arguments, he had better not make the comical error of citing the autopsy report as proof that the autopsy doctors found a tract from the back wound to the throat wound. That claim would have been inexcusable even in 1965. It is embarrassingly surreal in 2023. To believe WC apologists, the witnesses all suffered from color blindness, being unable to tell the difference between white, blue, gray, and tan.

The plotters and those handling the cover-up on their behalf were very concerned about those films and photos. That is why, as now know, they diverted the Zapruder film to the CIA-contracted Kodak Hawkeye photo lab in Rochester, NY, and then to the CIA's NPIC in DC. That is why the Zapruder film was suppressed for 12 ears (even in its altered state, it was unacceptable). That is why some photographic evidence disappeared or was deliberately damaged. That is why the NPIC briefing boards on the Zapruder film vanished. But the cover-up operation could not suppress or damage every photo and film. The plotters and their cover-up people, for example, were not powerful enough to keep ABC from airing the Zapruder film in 1975.

"There can be only one!" is a famous line uttered by Sean Connery in the movie Highlander. That's why I put it in quotes. It was my attempt to inject some humor into the thread.

So, if nothing else, Oswald was saying that he had nothing to do with the JFK and Tippit shootings and that the police arrested him merely because he used to live in the Soviet Union. If nothing else, this is a strong declaration of innocence. But let's use logic and deduction and look a little deeper into his patsy statement, in light of his attempt to call a John Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina. Since WC apologists don't want to have to argue that the attempted phone call is meaningless, they claim that there was no such attempt, that Ms. Treon just invented the whole story, even though her daughter and others corroborated key parts of her account and vouched for her integrity. But let's admit the obvious conclusion: Ms. Treon did not invent the story, nor was she delusional or "mistaken" (how would anyone make that kind of "mistake"?). She was telling the truth. Oswald did try to call a John Hurt in Raleigh, NC, and two federal agents ensured that the call did not go through. Obviously, Oswald had been given that name and those phone numbers to call in an emergency. When he made his patsy statement, he may still have been trying to maintain his cover as a Marxist, so he said he was arrested because he once lived in the Soviet Union. Like his request for Communist Party USA lawyer John Abt to represent him, his patsy statement may have been his way of trying to tell his handlers that he was still maintaining his cover. If Oswald had not attempted to call John Hurt in Raleigh, NC, I would be quite open to the idea that he was so clueless about what was happening to him that he really did think he had been arrested just because he used to live in Russia. Of course, it is also possible that he tried to call John Hurt to tell him, "Hey, these red neck yahoos down here have arrested me because I used to live in the Soviet Union. Can you guys inform the Dallas police that I'm a federal intelligence operative and that I lived in the Soviet Union for a while because I was on an intelligence mission?"

One of the WC's most brazen lies was its claim that the single-bullet theory was "not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission." A sixth-grader can quickly figure out that if JFK and Connally were not hit by the same bullet, four shots must have been fired.

Let me take the last paragraph first. You are the one who engages in egregious cherry picking when it comes to JFK and Vietnam, not Selverstone. Your "review" of his book simply ignores most of the evidence he presents and misstates or ignores several of his arguments. Selverstone is absolutely correct in noting that we do not know what JFK would have done in '64 and '65. Arthur Schlesinger has made the exact same point. JFK was never faced with anything approaching the situation that LBJ faced in '64 and '65. The problem is that you've swallowed the myth that the war going badly in '62 and '63, when in fact the war was going quite well, as has been confirmed by North Vietnamese sources. If you would ever bother to read non-far-left sources on the war, you would discover that LBJ did not want to deploy combat troops to South Vietnam either. He did so only very reluctantly and hoped they could be withdrawn in a short time, so much so that he initially tried to conceal their deployment. (I might add that LBJ's relationship with the Joint Chiefs was anything but cozy. At times he subjected them to angry rants of profane screaming, even in front of others.) As for JFK and Cuba, you and Litwin are talking past each other. You ignore or minimize his valid evidence, and he ignores or minimizes your valid evidence. That being said, his valid evidence shows that your interpretation of your valid evidence goes too far and incorrectly seeks to paint JFK as a peacenik. You seem unwilling to admit that JFK's approach was a carrot-and-stick approach and that he was fully prepared to greatly ramp up the pressure against the Castro regime if he could not get a satisfactory negotiated solution. You focus on the carrot evidence but dismiss or minimize the stick evidence.

This picture borders on fantasy, I hate to say. It ignores a mountain of evidence. The idea that RFK did not keep JFK informed about anti-Castro operations is nothing but wishful thinking by those who seek to paint JFK as a peacenik. As for the statement "the same thing he had done in Vietnam," this is based on Fletcher Prouty's bogus claims. To his credit, JFK realized he had made a serious mistake in agreeing to a coalition government in Laos. The record shows he had no intention of repeating that mistake in Vietnam, which is one reason he summarily rejected De Gaulle's proposal for a coalition government. The White House tapes show JFK was determined to keep South Vietnam free, as do the speeches he took with him to deliver in Texas, one of which he was going to give at the Trade Mart after the Dallas motorcade. Oh, yes, JFK, like the Romans, would talk with anyone, but never from a position of weakness or fear. He was indeed prepared to make peace with Castro, but only on the condition that Castro stop exporting communism to Latin America and stop acting as a puppet of the Soviet Union.

In dismissing Weiss and Aschkenasy’s finding of a 95-plus-percent probability of a grassy knoll shot, the NRC panel committed the baffling blunder of assuming there were two degrees of freedom associated with the grassy knoll gunman when they did their calculations. But even a layman should have realized that there was only one degree of freedom because the grassy knoll gunman's position could not have changed vertically in relation to the fence, but only horizontally, since moving vertically would have produced a different echo-delay time. Dr. David Scheim (doctorate in mathematics from MIT) caught this error: For example, the critical Weiss-Aschkenasy conclusion of a 95-percent probability of a grassy knoll shot was treated only in a sketchy three-page appendix [in the NRC panel's report] that made one outright error--there was only one degree, not two, of freedom associated with the position of the shooter along the grassy knoll fence. (The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, p. 408) Dr. Don Thomas elaborates on the NRC panel’s curious error: The shooter position was also an uncertain parameter and therefore a free variable. The NRC Panel also figured this assumption was worth two degrees of freedom. But, in reality, the shooter's position on the grassy knoll was not free to move in two dimensions, but only one. The shooter could not have been any distance away from the fence, and thus, was only free to move in one dimension, i.e., along the fence. (Hear No Evil, p. 631) Also, I wonder how many of those who cite the NRC panel realize that the panel did not even try to explain the most powerful correlation between the police-tape impulses and the test-firing impulses: the timing-movement correlations, i.e., the fact that the dictabelt's five suspect impulse patterns matched five of the field-test gunshot impulse patterns in the correct order and interval. They could have matched in numerous irregular sequences, such as 5-1-4-2-3 or 3-5-1-4-2 or 2-5-3-1-4, etc., etc. But they did not. They perfectly matched the order of the field-test impulse patterns: 1-2-3-4-5. The probability that the matching of the order alone is a coincidence is 1 in 120, since there are 120 ways to order five events. Then, add to this improbability the extremely low probability that the matching of the interval is also a coincidence. These timing-movement correlations were the correlations that the BBN scientists found most impressive and that most convinced them that the suspect impulse patterns had to be gunshots. Yet, it bears repeating that the NRC panel did not even try to explain these amazing correlations.

It is often overlooked that one of the reasons the FBI falsely denied that Oswald worked for the government in any capacity, much less that he served in an intelligence role, is that admitting his agent/informant status would have made it even harder to come up with a motive for him to have wanted JFK dead.

Perhaps the CIA officer's lack of certainty was related to the 11/23/63 phone conversation between LBJ and Hoover, released by the ARRB. During this conversation, the following exchange occurred: JOHNSON. Have you established any more about the [Oswald] visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September? HOOVER. No, that's one angle that's very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy. Here is a segment from my section on Oswald's alleged activities in Mexico City from my online book Hasty Judgment: Posner claims that two employees at the Cuban Embassy, Silvia Duran and Alfredo Mirabel Diaz, positively identified Oswald as the man they had seen (6:188-191). Diaz, however, admitted he only saw the man briefly (14:349). And Silvia Duran said in 1978 that she was no longer certain that Oswald was the person who visited the embassy (14:350-351; 5:193-195). Also, Duran's initial identification of the visitor as Oswald was made under extreme duress (5:193-195; 43:58-60). Furthermore, the embassy consul at that time, Eusebio Azcue, told the HSCA that the troublesome visitor was blond and gaunt and about thirty-five years old (14:346-351). Duran, like Azcue, recalled that the visitor had blond hair. Posner points out that Azcue also told the Select Committee he would assume he had been imagining things if it turned out that the signatures on the visa application were verified as Oswald's (6:188 n). But did Azcue really believe this, or was he simply trying to avoid a confrontation with the Committee over the issue? Earlier in his testimony Azcue insisted that the man he saw "in no way resembled" Oswald. Azcue also noted that film of the real Oswald showed a young man with a youthful face. This, said Azcue, was "in radical contrast to the deeply lined face" of the man who came to obtain a visa. When Committee investigators showed Azcue photographs of Oswald, Azcue replied, "My belief is that this gentleman was not, is not, the person or the individual who went to the consulate." What about the Oswald photos and the signatures on the visa application? Consul Azcue pointed out that the clerk could have allowed the visitor to take the visa application out of the embassy, thus providing an opportunity to obtain the real Oswald's signature. Or, the signatures could have been expertly faked. After the assassination, researchers found a photocopy of Oswald's Social Security card on which someone appears to have been practicing how to sign Oswald's signature (11:392). As for the Oswald pictures on the application, intensive research after the assassination revealed that they were not made at any of the local photo shops (14:349). If the imposter was allowed to take the application out of the embassy, he could have simply attached Oswald's pictures to it. Posner argues that the visitor must have been Oswald or else the clerk would have noticed that the photos did not match the applicant. But Consul Azcue said the clerk might not have checked the pictures against the individual who was applying, explaining that "occupied as she was, she most probably proceeded to place the photograph on the application without this check" (14:349). Fonzi raises the possibility that the pictures and the signed application were planted by the CIA agents who worked at the embassy (61:293-294). . . . The Oswald imposter issue becomes even more troubling in light of the fact that questions about Oswald's identity surfaced well before the assassination. In June 1960, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asked the State Department for any current information it might receive on Oswald "since there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald's birth certificate" (5:539). In March 1961, the Passport Office informed the State Department, ". . . it has been stated that there is an imposter using Oswald's identification data and that no doubt the Soviets would love to get hold of his valid passport. . . ." (5:539). (LINK, pp. 96-98)

I think Litwin clearly has the better arguments when it comes to Operation Northwoods and JFK's willingness to use force against the Castro regime. However, I think Litwin stumbles when he sees nothing but spontaneous reactions and coincidences in all the 11/22 to 11/28 efforts to blame Castro for the assassination. Litwin's convincing arguments on Northwoods and JFK's intentions toward Cuba highlight a problem among conspiracy theorists, namely, the fact that many conspiracy theorists insist on denying JFK's hawkish anti-communism and instead paint him as a liberal peacenik. They argue that JFK was pushed into trying to keep South Vietnam free and pushed into trying to topple Castro; even worse, they claim that he was trying to shut down all anti-Castro operations and that he was determined to abandon South Vietnam after the election. These claims do a great disservice to JFK and to his legacy.

"There can be only one!"