Michael Griffith

On 3/16/2023 at 1:19 PM, Joe Bauer said:

Are most of us still unsure about who killed JFK after 60 years?

If so, isn't that a very sad and disheartening reality?

That after 6 decades, hundreds if not thousands of lifetime long deep research efforts, books and millions of documents and two more seriously funded federal government investigations most of us are as unsure about who did JFK as we were the day after it's occurrence?

With that widely felt unsureness reality in mind one might rationally ponder the proposition, or at least the question, as to whether all this six decades long time and effort in the JFKA truth and justice seeking mission could in some debatable aspects and degrees be considered a failure.

And to add more weight to that postulation possibility is the reality that whoever did JFK ... got away with it!

That they were left to remain in their highest positions of power and influence all this time. Through three generations.

Up to now, JFK's killers have won. The American people lost.

After 60 years ... is it time to at least consider this reality?

I disagree with much of this assessment. I'm not at all unsure about who killed JFK. I think it is clear that highly placed government figures were behind his death. I think it is beyond dispute that senior elements in the military, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA engineered the cover-up, especially of the medical and photographic evidence. I think we have reached the point where we have enough evidence to convince any rational, objective person that the above statements are true.

And I'm not at all sure that the plotters wielded the power and influence they thought they would wield after JFK was gone. Consider:

If the plotters were motivated by extreme right-wing views, and surely most of them were, they should have prevented LBJ from choosing Humphrey as his VP.  If Cuba and Vietnam were two major motives of the plotters, they surely should have knocked off LBJ after he refused to allow JFK's scheduled December coup against Castro to proceed (even though Bobby asked him to do so), after LBJ made it clear he had no interest in overthrowing Castro, and after LBJ imposed unprecedented, ridiculous, and disastrous restrictions on our war effort in Vietnam, thereby dragging out the war when it could have been won in a matter of months. If racism was a major motive for at least some of the plotters, they surely should have taken out LBJ when it became clear he was serious about pushing through massive civil rights legislation. Etc., etc., etc.

On 3/9/2023 at 10:53 AM, Michael Griffith said:

If you ever read just one more book on the Vietnam War, or if you're ever willing to read something other than far-left books on the war, I recommend that you read renowned British historian Max Hastings' widely acclaimed 2018 book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. 

Center-left in his politics and usually voting for Labor Party (liberal) candidates in British elections, Hastings was a proud anti-war liberal journalist during the Vietnam War. But Hastings, unlike most other liberal critics of the war, was sobered by the bloody reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after they conquered South Vietnam. The large-scale slaughter and oppression carried out by the Communists profoundly influenced Hastings and led him to reconsider his outlook on the war. No one would accuse him of being supportive of the war, but his book contains much information that sheds important light on the war effort.

Hastings' book is so balanced and objective that at times it seems like two very different people wrote it. Revealingly, the book has come under strong criticism from both liberal and conservative reviewers. Some liberals have condemned the book as being too sympathetic toward the U.S. war effort and too critical of the Hanoi regime, while some conservatives have attacked the book for supposedly repeating  claims made by the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s and for understating the U.S. military's achievements and its chances of winning the war.

If you're a liberal who is critical of the war, you will find much in the book that you like. But, you will also find much that will challenge your view of the war, such as the following:

-- Hastings rejects the liberal myths about the Geneva Accords and documents that the North Vietnamese were the first ones to violate the accords and that they violated them egregiously. He also dismisses the myth that the U.S. and South Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords when South Vietnam refused to hold elections in 1956.

-- Hastings takes liberal journalists to task for ignoring or minimizing Viet Cong atrocities and the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression over its own people. He fully acknowledges the sins of the Saigon regime and gives them no pass for anything, but he admits that the Hanoi regime was worse.

-- Hastings debunks the liberal myth that Ho Chi Minh was merely a nationalist who used communism as a vehicle to achieve his nationalistic aims. Hastings discusses much of the evidence that Ho Chi Minh was a hardcore Stalinist and Maoist who viewed Vietnamese nationalism as being secondary to Stalinism and Maoism.

-- Hastings notes that the Vietminh were brutal and that the majority of Vietnamese who dealt with the Vietminh soon grew to dislike them. He also aknowledges that the Vietminh seized power by killing or imprisoning most non-communist nationalist leaders.

-- Hastings admits that the American media badly misreported the Tet Offensive, that the offensive was actually a crushing, devastating defeat for North Vietnam that came with "catastrophis losses," and that it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective force. He also admits that the North Vietnamese horrendously miscalculated when they assumed that most South Vietnamese would rebel against the Saigon regime soon after the offensive began. 

-- Hastings is quite critical of his former fellow anti-war activists. He accuses them of ignoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality and of holding the Saigon regime to a draconian standard while whitewashing the Hanoi regime's more numerous sins. 

-- Hastings acknowledges that Hanoi's leaders were among the most ruthless and cruel in history in their willingness to accept staggering troop losses.

-- Hastings does not make nearly as much use of the newly available North Vietnamese sources as do authors such as Moyar, Veith, Sorley, and Nguyen, but he does note a few cases where these sources disprove certain common liberal claims about the war. 

-- Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is Hastings' chapter on the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed on South Vietnam. To my surprise, he includes information on the rape of South Vietnam that I had not seen before. 

Until I read Hastings' book, I never realized just how massively the North Vietnamese looted South Vietnam. Nor did I know, until I read Hastings' book, that the Communists even arrested the Buddhist monk Tri Quang, who had so vocally attacked the Saigon regime. Why was he arrested? Answer: He was religious and didn't like communism.

Hastings notes that untold thousands of South Vietnamese remained imprisoned in brutal concentration camps for over 10 years, and that some of them were not released until the 1990s. He notes that thousands died of starvation in the camps, and that "starvation was employed as a psychological weapon." Typically, prisoners were worked for 10-12 hours per day. Hastings points out that a "conservative estimate" of the death rate in the camps is 5 percent.

Hastings observes that the North Vietnamese people suffered terribly under Communist rule after the war. He observes that in 1988, thousands of people in the north died of starvation because of Communist mismanagement of the annual crops and the food supply. 

Finally, Hastings notes that as of the time of the writing of his book, Vietnam's Communist leaders "have shown no inclination either to indulge personal freedom or to sacrifice a jot of the power of the Party." He acknowledges that the regime has introduced some pro-market economic reforms, but he also notes that basic rights are still repressed.

Oh, I forgot to mention two things.

One, Hastings provides an exceptionally detailed look at the extreme level of repression imposed by North Vietnam's government on its own people during the war. His treatment of this subject even rivals that of Lien-Hang Nguyen in her book Hanoi's War. The Hanoi regime was so fanatically controlling and oppressive that even the Soviet advisers were surprised by the pervasive and excessive nature of the regime's totalitarian grip. Soviet advisers wrote home and/or later talked about the extreme degree of control that the Hanoi government exercised over the people.  

Two, in his analysis of the sorry performance of liberal journalists during the war, Hastings discusses the Hanoi regime's extensive propaganda efforts. He discusses cases when the Hanoi regime fed visiting liberal journalists false stories, including faked pictures, about the effects of American bombing. Those journalists uncritically repeated these stories and many American newspapers published them. Hastings spends some time on Harrison Salisbury's infamous 1966 visit to North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese gave Salisbury bogus statistics lifted straight out of one their propaganda booklets, and Salisbury repeated them virtually verbatim in the New York Times. The North Vietnamese also gave Salisbury a fraudulent photo that appeared to show that American bombs had destroyed a Catholic cathedral. Without making any effort to verify the photo, Salisbury ran with it. The photo was later exposed as a fake when photo reconnaissance and ground observation proved that the cathedral was totally undamaged. Hastings notes that liberal journalists frequently repeated bogus North Vietnamese claims about American bombs hitting the Red River dikes and hitting rural areas that were actually never hit and that never even had bombs land anywhere near them.

On 11/12/2022 at 3:34 PM, Vince Palamara said:

P.S. The FIRST author to use that title KILLING KENNEDY was Harrison Livingstone in 1995, NOT Bill O'Reilly!

O'Reilly's book is just plain awful. His book Killing the Rising Sun is even worse, inexcusably worse. 

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Chris - your feathers have clearly been ruffled, and you would like me to acknowledge that I was no less insulting than the forum member who was kicked out. But I don’t agree. I backpedaled a few times, which was hard considering how he was articulating his views. I found it repugnant when he threw Soros and Antifa together, as if there is any reality to that. And Soros is an anti-Semitic dog whistle. So I could have been kinder about that, and even said so. But the video he posted that got me to use the word racist was taken down by someone, not this forum. It was clearly bad enough for me to lose my cool. I’m generally pretty even handed and I try hard not to go too far in my comments. But this particular member did in fact stalk me after that. And when I posted something which explained where I was coming from regarding racism, and using my mother as an example, he insulted her with a fact that turned out not to be a fact. Unfortunately the conversation ended there. But it wouldn’t have taken much digging for him to see that he actually proved my mother right. The families of the women who were used as the face of Aunt Jemima did not benefit. Aunt Jemima was not a real person, she was a corporate logo, possibly the first. The image is easily seen now as racist, even if it wasn’t seen that way in the 1890’s. I’d didn’t fool my mom in the 1950’s. The Mullins company which owned the brand at first wrote a script for the real person they hired to play the part at the world’s fair I think in Chicago, that talked about the good times black paper and whites had together during slavery times. I can’t imagine this woman enjoyed that. The whole history of Aunt Jemima is most certainly racist. But this forum member was intent on proving my mother to be a feckless white privileged liberal. Chris - I would not behave that way, and I’m surprised you find me equally guilty of bad forum etiquette.

 

I think changing the name of the syrup and removing Aunt Jemima's picture was ridiculous and reactionary. I think it is another sad example of the "woke" crowd's draconian overreaction and twisted interpretation of perfectly innocent images and names. 

I don't know if I watched it or not because I was too young at the time to comprehend or recall such things. 

It would really help if you would provide a brief summary of what the link says. 

If you truly admire and respect JFK, you should not misrepresent his beliefs. JFK made the comment you quoted while accepting the nomination of the Liberal Party of New York state, and notice how he qualified the definition of "liberal."

Moreover, on other occasions, JFK made it very clear that he was not really a liberal. Even Chris Matthews, an ardent JFK admirer, conceded the point in his biography, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero. “I am not a liberal at all,” Kennedy once told the Saturday Evening Post. “I’m not comfortable with those people.” Journalist and JFK insider Ben Bradlee confirmed it: “He hated the liberals.”

The New New Left Is No New Frontier and JFK Was No Liberal (thedailybeast.com)

If you transported Nancy Pelosi-AOC-Liz Warren-Bernie Sanders liberals back in time to 1962, they would be fiercely critical of many of JFK's policies. If JFK were alive today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party would consider him another Joe Manchin or worse.

Great post. There are so many Zapruder frames that scream against the SBT. 

For me, Z190-207 and Z226-232 are the most compelling refutations of the SBT because they clearly show JFK reacting to two bullet strikes, the first being when he freezes his waving motion and begins to bring his hands toward his throat (190-207) and then when he is visibly jolted forward starting in Z226. 

I just can't fathom how any rational person can believe in the SBT.

If you ever read just one more book on the Vietnam War, or if you're ever willing to read something other than far-left books on the war, I recommend that you read renowned British historian Max Hastings' widely acclaimed 2018 book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. 

Center-left in his politics and usually voting for Labor Party (liberal) candidates in British elections, Hastings was a proud anti-war liberal journalist during the Vietnam War. But Hastings, unlike most other liberal critics of the war, was sobered by the bloody reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after they conquered South Vietnam. The large-scale slaughter and oppression carried out by the Communists profoundly influenced Hastings and led him to reconsider his outlook on the war. No one would accuse him of being supportive of the war, but his book contains much information that sheds important light on the war effort.

Hastings' book is so balanced and objective that at times it seems like two very different people wrote it. Revealingly, the book has come under strong criticism from both liberal and conservative reviewers. Some liberals have condemned the book as being too sympathetic toward the U.S. war effort and too critical of the Hanoi regime, while some conservatives have attacked the book for supposedly repeating  claims made by the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s and for understating the U.S. military's achievements and its chances of winning the war.

If you're a liberal who is critical of the war, you will find much in the book that you like. But, you will also find much that will challenge your view of the war, such as the following:

-- Hastings rejects the liberal myths about the Geneva Accords and documents that the North Vietnamese were the first ones to violate the accords and that they violated them egregiously. He also dismisses the myth that the U.S. and South Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords when South Vietnam refused to hold elections in 1956.

-- Hastings takes liberal journalists to task for ignoring or minimizing Viet Cong atrocities and the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression over its own people. He fully acknowledges the sins of the Saigon regime and gives them no pass for anything, but he admits that the Hanoi regime was worse.

-- Hastings debunks the liberal myth that Ho Chi Minh was merely a nationalist who used communism as a vehicle to achieve his nationalistic aims. Hastings discusses much of the evidence that Ho Chi Minh was a hardcore Stalinist and Maoist who viewed Vietnamese nationalism as being secondary to Stalinism and Maoism.

-- Hastings notes that the Vietminh were brutal and that the majority of Vietnamese who dealt with the Vietminh soon grew to dislike them. He also aknowledges that the Vietminh seized power by killing or imprisoning most non-communist nationalist leaders.

-- Hastings admits that the American media badly misreported the Tet Offensive, that the offensive was actually a crushing, devastating defeat for North Vietnam that came with "catastrophis losses," and that it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective force. He also admits that the North Vietnamese horrendously miscalculated when they assumed that most South Vietnamese would rebel against the Saigon regime soon after the offensive began. 

-- Hastings is quite critical of his former fellow anti-war activists. He accuses them of ignoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality and of holding the Saigon regime to a draconian standard while whitewashing the Hanoi regime's more numerous sins. 

-- Hastings acknowledges that Hanoi's leaders were among the most ruthless and cruel in history in their willingness to accept staggering troop losses.

-- Hastings does not make nearly as much use of the newly available North Vietnamese sources as do authors such as Moyar, Veith, Sorley, and Nguyen, but he does note a few cases where these sources disprove certain common liberal claims about the war. 

-- Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is Hastings' chapter on the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed on South Vietnam. To my surprise, he includes information on the rape of South Vietnam that I had not seen before. 

Until I read Hastings' book, I never realized just how massively the North Vietnamese looted South Vietnam. Nor did I know, until I read Hastings' book, that the Communists even arrested the Buddhist monk Tri Quang, who had so vocally attacked the Saigon regime. Why was he arrested? Answer: He was religious and didn't like communism.

Hastings notes that untold thousands of South Vietnamese remained imprisoned in brutal concentration camps for over 10 years, and that some of them were not released until the 1990s. He notes that thousands died of starvation in the camps, and that "starvation was employed as a psychological weapon." Typically, prisoners were worked for 10-12 hours per day. Hastings points out that a "conservative estimate" of the death rate in the camps is 5 percent.

Hastings observes that the North Vietnamese people suffered terribly under Communist rule after the war. He observes that in 1988, thousands of people in the north died of starvation because of Communist mismanagement of the annual crops and the food supply. 

Finally, Hastings notes that as of the time of the writing of his book, Vietnam's Communist leaders "have shown no inclination either to indulge personal freedom or to sacrifice a jot of the power of the Party." He acknowledges that the regime has introduced some pro-market economic reforms, but he also notes that basic rights are still repressed.

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Not sure how this will lead back to the JFKA. 

For whatever reason, Viet Cong strength levels in South Vietnam were vastly underestimated in 1962, and JFK mis-informed. 

It is sad to see Newman relying on a hack like Sam Adams, who issued numerous faulty analyses during the war. I am baffled that Newman seems unaware of the crucial information revealed in newly available North Vietnamese sources. This information has been available for at least 17 years, since Dr. Mark Moyar's 2006 book Triumph Forsaken and since Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's 2012 book Hanoi's War, both of which make extensive use of the newly available North Vietnamese material. 

It is also sad to see Newman taking CBS's side in the Westmoreland v. CBS lawsuit. Dr. Moyar discusses Adams and the Westmoreland lawsuit at length in his new book Triumph Regained (pp. 354-360), which, like his first book. Moyar does something that Newman strangely fails to do: he includes the new information from North Vietnamese sources that relates to the issue of VC and NVA strength in South Vietnam. It's important to note that the North Vietnamese disclosures were admissions against interest, i.e., they reflected negatively on the North Vietnamese war effort, which is why this information was kept sealed/private for so long. 

Dr. Moyar's treatment of this issue is the most up-to-date and comprehensive, but the following online article by Donald Shaw is a good summary of the other side of the story:

Westmoreland vs. CBS - Donald P. Shaw, Commentary Magazine

Another good article is John Hart's "The Statistics Trap in Vietnam," Washington Post (Op-Ed), 1/6/1985, p. C-7. Hart, the CIA station chief in Saigon in 1967, calls out Adams for his exaggerations and omissions. 

Believe it or not, I actually belonged to the JBS for a number of years, starting when I was 18. By the time I decided that the JBS was no longer for me, I had belonged to three JBS chapters in three states and had attended several large JBS conferences. Virtually everyone I met in the society was very pro-Israeli. I think I only encountered two members who I suspected of being anti-Semitic.  In the three chapters that I was in, you could get your membership revoked in a hurry for expressing anti-Semitic ideas, since most members were pro-Israeli and since the JBS leadership voiced opposition to anti-Semitism. 

As a previous post noted, the California Senate investigated this issue and found “no evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of anyone connected with the John Birch Society in California, and much evidence to the effect that it opposes racism in all forms.”

However, the JBS did, and I suspect still does, float some far-fetched conspiracy theories, which was one reason that I left the group. Another reason I left was the group's all-or-nothing attitude. Politicians who did not agree with at least 90% of the society's positions were viewed with suspicion. Some JBS members believed that Goldwater and Reagan were phony conservatives who were doing the bidding of our enemies.

I think Marc Thiessen has a point about the need for both liberals and conservatives to repudiate the extremists in their ranks.

9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Not my idea at all.  Paul belatedly read it and insisted on reviewing it.

He was struck by the stuff THAT DID NOT MAKE IT INTO  THE FILM.

That is the interview transcripts that make up half the book.  He is correct on that, we could have gone at least six hours with very strong material.  Wish we had used Henry Lee more.  And that is just one example.  You will see why. Among many others.

Thanks Paul.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-revisited-through-the-looking-glass-book-review

Any chance of talking Oliver Stone into doing a six- or eight-hour version so as to include more material?

And if this happens, how about letting me revise the segment on the Vietnam War?! 🙂 

I think Ruby was led to believe that he would get a light sentence, at the most. I think he began to reveal his knowledge of the conspiracy because he was shocked and angered by his conviction and subsequent death sentence and because he feared the new trial he'd been granted would still end with a conviction and with at least serious jail time. 

It's not that the FBI invented Ruby's Mafia ties after the assassination: it's that Ruby's Mafia ties were suppressed for years and only began to surface thanks to the work of private researchers. Ruby's Mafia connections became impossible to deny after the HSCA investigation. Subsequent research has shed even more light on those ties. 

On 2/22/2023 at 6:01 AM, Bill Brown said:

Our Hidden History interview with Jim DiEugenio:

https://ourhiddenhistory.org/2018/05/25/james-dieugenio-the-j-d-tippit-murder-case-in-the-new-millennium-an-our-hidden-history-interview.html

"The Warren Commission said that Oswald after the shooting of Kennedy left work, was driven by a taxi to his rooming house in Oak Cliff that he was only at the rooming house for a short period of time that he picked up his revolver and walked outside and went to a corner across the street.

No, not across the street.  Earlene Roberts stated that she saw Oswald standing near the bus stop on the same side of the street as the rooming house.

"Anyway that's the last time the landlady saw him. She said that he was there at about 1:04."

No.  Roberts does not say anything about 1:04.  She testified that Oswald came in "around 1 o'clock, or maybe a little after".  She added that she really wouldn't want to say what time it was that Oswald came in.  She testified that Oswald went back into his room and stayed about "three or four minutes", a figure of speech.  She continues by saying that Oswald was back in his room just long enough to go in there and get a jacket and put it on.  This last part is not a figure of speech; it is a literal description of just how long she felt that Oswald was back in his room.  Oswald was most likely back in his room for no more than sixty seconds because that is all the time it requires to grab a jacket and put it on.  Regardless, she doesn't say anything about 1:04.

"Roger Craig had a watch on. These witnesses placed at the shooting of Tippit much closer to about 1:06 or 1:07."

First of all, Roger Craig (in his manuscript titled When They Kill A President) said that he heard the news of the Tippit shooting from a nearby police radio (while in Dealey Plaza) and he looked at his watch, noting that the time was 1:06.  Neither the Dallas Police tapes nor the Dallas County Sheriff's tapes make any mention of any shooting over in Oak Cliff until we hear from T.F. Bowley at 1:16/1:17 (depending on who you want to use), i.e. there was never any broadcast on the tapes at 1:06 about a police officer getting shot.

Secondly, Craig (along with Penn Jones) was interviewed in 1968 by the L.A. Free Press.  In the interview, Craig was asked what time the Tippit shooting occurred.  His reply was "about 1:40".  Jones immediately corrects Craig, informing Craig that the shooting actually occurred at 1:15.  Craig's reply: "Oh that's right.  The broadcast was put out shortly after 1:15 on Tippit's killer."

1968:  Roger Craig (obviously unaware that he was going to try to sell a manuscript a few years later) believed (until he was corrected by Penn Jones) that the Tippit shooting occurred around 1:40.

1970's:  While trying to sell a manuscript, Roger Craig concocts a story of hearing of the shooting of a police officer in Oak Cliff and looking down at his wristwatch, noting that the time was 1:06.

"Warren Reynolds was also an eyewitness, saw the guy running away from the scene, said he would not commit to identifying Oswald then he was shot through the head and he changed his mind, and now he said he would identify Oswald."

Let's be a little more honest about this.

Warren Reynolds, before he was shot in the head, told the FBI that he was "of the opinion" that the man he saw running with a gun was Lee Oswald, but Reynolds added that he would hesitate to state for a certainty that the man was Oswald.

Why wouldn't Mr. DiEugenio simply quote the actual FBI interview with Reynolds?

"The lineups at Dallas Police Department were very unfair, to say the least... Further, when asked their names and occupations, the other people in the lineup who were policemen gave fictitious answers. Oswald said his real name and said he worked at Texas School Book Depository. What the heck kind of lineup is that? It's just a joke."

There is no evidence whatsoever that Oswald was asked, during any of the lineups, to state his place of employment and that he answered that he worked at the Depository.

"Now, further complicating that, Jerry Hill said he told an officer, JM Poe to mark the shells. His marks were not evident when the policemen inspected the exhibits for the commission."

Poe told the Warren Commission that he couldn't be certain that he ever did mark the shells.

"Further, when the witnesses who found the other two shells were asked by the FBI to identify them as the ones they originally recovered, they could not."

Is this really supposed to mean anything at all?  So we have Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis each finding a shell casing.  While the officers were still on the scene, Barbara Davis notified Captain George Doughty (of the crime lab) of a shell casing lying on the ground.  Doughty took possession of the shell.  Then, about four hours later, Virginia Davis finds a shell casing just a few feet from the location of the shell Barbara found earlier.  They call the police and Detectives Dhority and Brown (both of the Homicide & Robbery Bureau) are sent out to collect this shell casing (as well as take the two girls to headquarters to view a lineup).

Is it somehow supposed to be suspicious that two teenage girls could not identify shell casings that they had each found lying on the ground months earlier?  To anyone not familiar with firearms and ammo, all shell casings probably look the same.

This appears to me like a desperate attempt by DiEugenio to make these two shell casings now in evidence appear to be planted at a later time.

"Because of a witness named, Acquilla Clemons who worked as a caretaker about a block away. She heard the shots, run down the street. She said she saw two men at the scene. One was tall and slender. The other one was a short guy and then the tall guy waved at the shooter and told him to go on and they run off in different directions."

Here, DiEugenio implies that two men were involved in Tippit's death.  Acquilla Clemons never even hinted that the two men were associates.

Secondly, and more importantly, the REAL witnesses who were actually outdoors when the shooting occurred (unlike Clemons) and watched the events unfold (for the most part), people like Jimmy Burt, Bill Smith, Domingo Benavides, Helen Markham and William Scoggins, ALL stated that Tippit encountered just one man.  How could these REAL witnesses (who saw the thing go down) manage to miss a second culprit?

"There was also a letter to Playboy Magazine in the January 1968 issue where an anonymous person agreed with Clemons, he had been at the scene of the crime and he saw two men run off in different directions, neither one of them being Oswald."

Well, if it's from "anonymous", then it must be true.

"Doris Holan was one of these witnesses ... who were at the scene of the Tippit shooting but were never interviewed by the Warren Commission. There isn't even any evidence that she was interviewed by the Dallas Police or the FBI which is really weird because her house, her apartment is on the second floor of a house right across the street from where Tippit was shot and there's a diagram in my article which shows that."

No.

On 11/22/63, Holan's apartment was on Patton, pretty much halfway down the block between Tenth and Jefferson.

Dale Myers did some great work on where Holan lived on the day of the murder:

http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/doris-e-holan-and-tippit-murder.html

Despite some of the mistaken claims made right here on this forum, from her apartment on Patton, Holan could not see Tippit's parked patrol car on Tenth.

"She (Holan) said that as she looked out her second floor window upon hearing the shots, she saw second police car at the scene. It was in the driveway before 404 and 410 East 10th Street. This was adjacent to the spot where Tippit's car stopped. So knowingly or unknowingly Tippit blocked the driveway which led to an alley at the middle of the block behind. She said that a man got out of the car, looked at Tippit's body and went back down the driveway. He was alongside the car which is retreating back towards the alley."

Well, since we now know that Holan did not live in the apartment on Tenth directly across the street from the shooting scene, all of this is kind of moot, isn't it?  This is what you get when you cite Mike Brownlow as a source.

"No other county in America and almost no state for that matter has freed more innocent people from prison in recent years than Tarrant county which is where Dallas is, where Mr. Wade was a DA from 1951 through 1986."

Say what?  Tarrant County is the county to the west of Dallas, encompassing Fort Worth.  Henry Wade was the D.A. for Dallas County from '51 to '87.

"Also if you can believe this, he was also at one time a security guard at the Texas Theater which is a place where Oswald was arrested at. Again, maybe that's just a coincidence but I find that kind of interesting."

No.  Nothing interesting here.

Tippit was never a security guard at the Texas Theater.  He did however once work part-time security at the Stevens Park Theater.

I think some of your arguments are evasive. I think some are lame. I think some are nit-picky. And I think some are valid.

Although Mrs. Roberts did not specify the time of 1:04, her statements certainly support the time of 1:04 for Oswald's departure from the rooming house. The WC had to bend or ignore several facts just to get Oswald to his rooming house by right around 1:00. 

You are brushing aside serious problems with the Tippit shooting eyewitnesses. There is no valid reason to doubt Acquilla Clemons' account or her sincerity. 

You surely know, or certainly should now, that Jim is right about the Dallas police lineups. They were grossly, inexcusably unfair. 

Do you really, really believe that Poe did not mark the shells? Really? Even though Hill told him to be sure to mark them?  And when you note that Poe told the WC that he wasn't certain that he marked the shells, you're leaving out some important information, aren't you? You omitted the fact that Poe also testified that he "believed" he had marked the shells, and that Ball clearly seemed to believe that Poe was actually saying that, yes, he did mark the shells, yet Poe couldn't ID the marks as his. Let's read the relevant exchange:

Mr. BALL. Did you make a mark?
Mr. POE. I can’t swear to it; no, sir. 
Mr. BALL. But there is a mark on two of these? 
Mr. POE. There is a mark. I believe I put on them, but I couldn’t swear to it. I couldn’t make them out anymore. 
Mr. BALL. Now, the ones you said you made a mark on are--you think it is these two? Q-77 and Q-75? 
Mr. POE. Yes, sir; those two there. 

Perhaps you see nothing suspicious or unusual about the Tippit shooter being abjectly stupid enough to discard his shells at the crime scene in view of witnesses. I do.

Did the Tippit shooter use the same revolver about which the FBI crime lab made wildly conflicting claims? The firing pin was defective and the gun would not shoot vs. the gun fired over 100 bullets without misfiring when tested. 

Yes, later on Roger Craig made some inaccurate statements, and some of them were arguably fabrications. But his initial statements are credible and well supported. Any analysis of Roger Craig must consider what happened to him in the years that followed the assassination, and must also consider the fact that he had excellent record at the time of the shooting.

I just finished reading Dr. Mark Moyar's new book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (New York: Encounter Books, 2023). Simply put, the book is magnificent, absolutely magnificent. Of all the dozens of books I've read about the Vietnam War, this is one of the very best, definitely in the top three. The book presents new evidence on Westmoreland's performance, on the charge that Westmoreland was vastly underestimating enemy troop strength, and on McNamara's repeated use of deception and distortion to downplay the effectiveness of U.S. military operations, among many other issues.

H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, says the following about Dr. Moyar's book:

         This book is impeccably researched and elegantly written. Mark Moyar availed himself of newly available materials to shed fresh light and understanding on a crucial period of the Vietnam War. Triumph Regained poses a compelling reinterpretation that is bound to make uncomfortable those who contributed to or accepted the conventional wisdom on the war that emerged across the past half century.

One major contribution of the book is that it makes extensive use of declassified/newly published North Vietnamese sources that shed important light on numerous issues about the war. Among other things, these sources reveal the following:

-- The North Vietnamese suffered a long string of damaging, demoralizing defeats in 1966 and 1967 and began losing their grip on the countryside in mid-1966. Their grip on the countryside decreased even more substantially after the disastrous offensives in 1968. After suffering the horrific defeats of 1968, in some areas the Communists literally had no one left who was willing to continue the struggle, while in some other areas their presence was so vastly reduced that it was meaningless.

-- American estimates of North Vietnamese combat deaths were not wildly exaggerated but were fairly close to the numbers revealed in North Vietnamese sources. 

-- The North Vietnamese launched the January 1968 Tet Offensive because they concluded that they were losing the war, that time was no longer on their side, and that they could not withstand years of continued American bombing raids, even though those raids were restricted from hitting numerous vital targets.

-- American bombing raids hurt the North Vietnamese war effort even more than the most optimistic American analyses concluded they did. They did far more damage than Western powers suspected or realized at the time. 

-- The Tet Offensives in 1968 (Tet I, Tet II, and Tet III) were such devastating military disasters that even the Hanoi hardliners (Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, etc.) agreed to abandon the strategy of engaging in large offensives and to rely mainly on guerilla operations for the next three years. 

-- Mutinies and desertions in the North Vietnamese army were considerably more numerous than was previously suspected or identified.

-- The North Vietnamese assault on Khe Sanh was no feint. It was a full-scale assault that Hanoi hoped would be another Dien Bien Phu. Instead, it ended up being a lop-sided defeat that resulted in enormous North Vietnamese casualties.

-- The South Vietnamese army fought well in the majority of cases. Hanoi's leaders were surprised by how fiercely South Vietnamese forces fought in the first Tet Offensive and exercised more caution when attacking them in the next two offensives that year. 

The publisher's description of the book is as follows:

          Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side. Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America’s war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson’s refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate. 

          The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America’s defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America’s great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.

The book also contains new information from Soviet sources, such as the fact that the Soviets were so fearful of a Nixon victory in the 1968 election that they offered to provide money and other support to Hubert Humphrey's campaign. Soviet ambassador Dobrynin actually met with Humphrey to extend the offer. Humphrey declined the offer.

DELETED.

I wish more of the Kennedy family were as courageous and outspoken as RFK, Jr. I don't agree with many of his political views, but I admire and applaud his willingness to challenge the official version of his uncle's and father's deaths.

One of the silliest arguments I've heard is that Billy Grammer should have been one of the prosecution's star witnesses against Ruby. WC apologists repeat this dubious, illogical argument every time Grammer's account is discussed. 

If Grammer had been allowed to testify at Ruby's trial, his account would have raised all sorts of troubling questions. Thinking journalists and other logical observers would have asked, "Wait a minute, how did Ruby obtain inside information about Oswald's tranfser? Why was Ruby trying to get the police to change the transfer arrangements? Doesn't Ruby's phone call suggest that he was being coerced into shooting Oswald and was trying to give himself a way to avoid doing it?" 

In addition, Grammer's account would have destroyed Ruby's story that he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment in a spontaneous emotional reaction based on his alleged desire to spare the Kennedy women a trial. This, in turn, would have proved that Ruby's trip to the nearby Western Union office was a ruse designed to make his hit seem like an unplanned action.

Grammer's account would have also indicated that someone inside the DPD was feeding Ruby information about Oswald's transfer, and it would have logically suggested that Ruby was being pressured to silence Oswald and was trying to get out of having to do it.

And, again, why did not Ruby go to the Western Union office in Oak Cliff if he was in such a rush to wire money to Karen Carlin? Why did he go all the way downtown to the Western Union office that--by an amazing, cosmic "coincidence"--was across the street from the Dallas police HQ building?
 

I ask again, Why did Ruby go to the Western Union office near the Dallas police HQ building when there was a Western Union office much closer to him, right there in Oak Cliff, at 206 South Zangs Blvd., Oak Cliff? Why? If he was really in such a rush to wire money to Karen Carlin, why did he drive all the way downtown when there was a Western Union office much closer to his residence in Oak Cliff? Why? Obviously, because he was trying to make his Mob-ordered hit on Oswald look like a spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment action driven by his alleged desire to spare Jackie and Caroline a trial.

WC apologists' attacks on Billy Grammer and his account are a sad sight to behold. Here we have a police officer who had no conceivable motive to fabricate an account of a phone call from Ruby, who had a good record as a policeman, and who gave a consistent version of the account every time he was interviewed. But, since his account indicates conspiracy, WC apologists grasp for any lame excuse to reject it.

If Grammer had known Oswald and if Grammer had consistently reported that Oswald called him the night before the assassination and warned that he would shoot JFK if they didn't change the motorcade route, WC apologists would be falling all over themselves to trumpet this account as evidence of Oswald's guilt. They would cite Grammer's good record as a police officer. They would note that Grammer immediately reported the phone call to his superior. Etc., etc., etc. 

12 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

And Grammer doesn't mention Jack Ruby to Henry Hurt.  Right?

Yes, Grammer did mention Ruby in this interview with Hurt. He said he believed Ruby was the man who called. I take it you don't have a copy of Hurt's book?

12 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You don't really believe any of that, do you?

I'm familiar with the Grammer claim and none of that answered my question.

Grammer and his supervisor prepared a sworn affidavit in which Grammer identified Ruby as the caller that very night?  

During Ruby's trial, Bill Alexander (and in effect, Henry Wade) were trying to prove that Ruby murdered Oswald with malice and forethought.  They wanted the death penalty.  If Ruby really did make that phone call and Grammer really did recognize that it was Ruby, then Grammer would have been their star witness during Ruby's trial since he (Grammer) would have been the perfect witness to prove malice and forethought on Ruby's part.  Despite this, we do not hear from Grammer until 1988 in The Men Who Killed Kennedy.

Wow. You guys robotically repeat the argument that "someone would have talked if there had been a conspiracy," but every time a witness comes forward with evidence of conspiracy, you guys look for any excuse to discredit the person and their evidence. 

Now, why would Grammer have lied about this? Why would he continue to insist that the phone call happened and that the man sounded like Ruby? Why? 

It seems your only reason for rejecting Grammer's account is that it doesn't fit your see-no-evil-here narrative. 

By the way, in 2018, Grammer repeated his account of the call and stood by it:

Retired Dallas officer Billy Grammer remembers the call that could've stopped killing of JFK's assassin | Hometown Patriot | ktbs.com

On 2/13/2023 at 3:02 PM, David Von Pein said:

Which, of course, totally contradicts these words spoken by the same Jack Ruby during his WC testimony:

MR. RUBY -- "All I want to do is tell the truth, and that is all. There was no conspiracy." [5 H 212]

And he said it again at 14 H 543:  "There was no conspiracy." -- Jack Ruby

Sigh. . . .  You must be kidding. You simply must be kidding. Ruby was scared to death at that point, as anyone can readily see from his WC testimony. You omitted the fact that in that same WC interview, Ruby begged, literally begged, to be taken to DC to be questioned, and expressed his fear that he wouldn't be around long after Warren and Ford left, and that this was one reason they had to take him to DC.

You and Lance Payette always ignore evidence that doesn't fit your minority view of the assassination. Rather than fit your theory to the facts, you dismiss all facts that contradict your theory. You always insist on finding an innocent explanation for damning evidence, no matter how clearly that evidence points to guilt and crime.

You won't admit that Ruby did a flimsy job of trying to make his hit on Oswald appear to be a spontaneous, grief-driven, spur-of-the-moment action to spare Jackie and Caroline an Oswald trial, even though Ruby later admitted in writing that his professed desire to spare the Kennedys a trial was phony.

Why did Ruby go to the Western Union office near the DPD HQ when there was a Western Union office much closer to him, right there in Oak Cliff, at 206 South Zangs Blvd., Oak Cliff? This fact alone reveals the fraud, deception, and criminal intent in Ruby's actions.

And let's repeat the other evidence that belies Ruby's obviously phony spontaneity alibi: his lying about how he entered the basement, his interest in learning the time of Oswald's transfer the day before, the call that police dispatcher Billy Grammer received the night before from a man who "sounded like Ruby" and who warned the police to change the transfer plans, Ruby's apparent failing of the polygraph question about conspiracy, his numerous calls to Mafia contacts all over the country in the weeks before the assassination, his suspicious armed appearance at Wade's press conference where he revealed his knowledge of Oswald's involvement in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the credible report of Ruby's presence in a truck from which a man was seen departing with a rifle case and heading toward the grassy knoll earlier in the day, the considerable credible evidence that Ruby knew Oswald, and his video-taped admission shortly before he died that there had been a conspiracy.

3 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Those vacuous, obtuse arguments are known by another name outside of conspiracy world: Rationality, logic and common sense.

Chew on this, which I just posted on another thread, and get back to me when you've digested it. I even added a new #6 that occurred to me on my morning walk!

Let's put on our most basic thinking caps, the ones we wore back in Miss Muffy's JFKA Kindergarten, and THINK:

1. You - we'll say "you" is the Mafia or CIA, as the case may be - need Oswald dead before he talks. Elements of the DPD are on board. Nevertheless, he somehow survives the TSBD, his trip to the rooming house, his journey to the theater, his arrest, and two days in custody during which you parade him in front of the press. OK ...

2. You assign the task of eliminating Oswald to an erratic, two-bit nightclub owner. OK ...

3. You plan the entire elimination of Oswald around having the two-bit nightclub owner in place, even though he's at a Western Union office a block away four minutes before the deed, and the place you have chosen for the deed is exceedingly public with hordes of press and cameras. OK ...

4. You entrust the two-bit nightclub owner, whose only role is to eliminate Oswald, with details of the JFK assassination up to and including the involvement of LBJ. Compartmentalization is apparently not your forte. OK ...

5. Despite #1, you are desperately afraid Oswald will talk. You are not, however, afraid that the erratic, two-bit nightclub owner will talk. OK ...

6. Despite the erratic, two-bit nightclub owner having just handed your DPD insiders a golden opportunity to eliminate him with no questions asked and wrap up the entire tidy package with a bow, your DPD insiders nevertheless wrestle him to the ground and afford him years of opportunities to talk.

THINK. None of this makes any sense from any perspective other than, "I don't care about facts or logic. I want a conspiracy, dammit!!!"

Your post highlights what I see as a key problem. Too many CTers go right past rationality, logic and common sense and immerse themselves in a forest of dubious details and wild speculation. Rationality, logic and common sense are admittedly more dull than speculating about the autopsy photos, but they can prevent one from getting lost in the forest.

"A man who sounded like Ruby" ... "a slew of calls to Mafia contacts" ... "waited awhile in front of the Western Union office" ... "many close contacts in the DPD" ... "HSCA destroyed the myth" ... "failed the polygraph" ... "admitted the motive was phony" ... YEAH, BABY!

I actually have far too much respect for the professionalism of the Mafia to think the scenario you posit makes any sense at all. But chew on my six points above and get back to me.

How is it rational and logical to ignore evidence that plainly and clearly points to premeditation and deception? I find your arguments irrational and disingenuous. I notice you simply brushed aside with a smug summary dismissal evidence that you can't explain: Ruby's waiting outside the Western Union office, his asking about Oswald's transfer, his lying about how he got into the basement, his numerous calls to Mafia contacts in the weeks before the assassination, his written admission that his alleged motive was phony, his apparent (it's pretty clear) failing of the polygraph question about conspiracy, etc.

Once again, you resort to theory and speculation in dismissing evidence you can't explain.  You can't imagine, or claim you can't imagine, that the Mafia would use a guy like Ruby to hit Oswald. Yet, organized crime experts have noted that Ruby is exactly the kind of guy that the Mafia liked to use. 

"Dull speculating about the autopsy photos." There's no "speculating" involved. The evidence is open and shut. 

18 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I think you just made my very point: THERE HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY. Ergo, "never mind" why Ruby was nowhere to be seen when Oswald was supposed to have been moved and found himself in the Western Union office a block away four minutes before the murder. Without the benefit of cellphones or even pagers, it was all planned to the nanosecond because, well, THERE HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY.

Your capacity for ignoring evidence and making vacuous, obtuse arguments is once again evident.

You ignore the fact that Ruby was overheard the previous day asking about when Oswald would be transferred. (Now, gee, why did he do that?) You ignore the fact that the officer on dispatch duty the night before, Billy Grammer, said that a man who sounded like Ruby called the DPD, that the man knew about the actual time that Oswald would be transferred, and that the man warned that the police needed to change the transfer plan or else Oswald would be killed. You ignore the fact Ruby made a slew of calls to Mafia contacts in the weeks leading up to the assassination. You ignore the fact that Ruby waited awhile in front of the Western Union office before entering to buy the money order. (Gee, why?) You ignore the fact that Ruby had many close contacts inside the DPD. You ignore the fact that the HSCA destroyed the myth that Ruby entered the basement via the Main Street ramp. (Gee, why did Ruby lie about that?) You ignore the fact that the HSCA determined that analysis of Ruby's polygraph examination suggested that he actually failed the question about involvement in a conspiracy. You ignore the fact that it was later revealed that Ruby admitted, in writing, to his second attorney that his alleged motive for killing Oswald was phony. You ignore the fact that Ruby himself later said there was a conspiracy (and he seemed perfectly lucid when he said it).