Michael Griffith

Just to be clear, I condemn the January 6 riot. I think some of the sentences that have been handed down on some of the participants have been overly harsh, but storming the Capitol was an outrageous action, and everyone who took part deserves punishment. I also believe that the January 6 committee has presented credible evidence that after the riot started, Trump purposely delayed calling on his supporters to stand down. This, in my view, made him an accessory during the act. If this evidence had come to light while Trump was still in office, Congress would have had every right to impeach him and remove him from office, and I believe the GOP should repudiate Trump and expel from the party based on this evidence. All this being said, it should also be noted that before the rally, Trump called on his supporters to engage in peaceful protest. Most of the protestors at the rally did not take part in the riot. Before the rally, Trump made a sincere effort to ensure that there was adequate security around the Capitol, an effort that was rejected by Nancy Pelosi, as we now know. Even when Pelosi was notified of intelligence that indicated some of the protestors planned to storm the Capitol, she declined to implement added security measures suggested by Trump and others. If you are not aware of these facts, then your news sources have a liberal bias. Finally, although this is no excuse for his delay in calling on his supporters to stand down after the riot started, Trump and his supporters had every reason to be upset about the election because there was in fact substantial election fraud in seven key swing states and in at least two other states. If you care to read some of the election-fraud evidence, I maintain a website on the subject: Election Fraud in 2020 (google.com)

It is these kinds of extreme, wild far-left attacks that make so many conservatives think that if you believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy you must also believe all of the far-left politics that come with most pro-conspiracy books. Democrats had no problem claiming that the 2016 election was stolen via Russian interference, a myth that the Mueller Report debunked (and that subsequent investigation has proved came from the Hillary campaign and the DNC). Nor did Democrats have any problem claiming that the 2000 election was stolen. Gee, funny how those stolen-election claims did not "undermine democracy," "undermine the democratic process," "seek to overturn an election," etc., etc., but when many Republicans, for very good reasons, argue that the 2020 election was stolen via serious election fraud, suddenly it's undemocratic to question election results. But the key point is that such issues have no place in a book about an event that occurred in 1963. It should be enough to say that we cannot have powerful elites assassinating presidents because they don't like their policies, and we cannot have new media who sheepishly repeat the cover-up claims generated by those who were part of the crime.

I think that is patently absurd. I watched many, many Trump speeches too, and I heard him say over and over again that he was fine with legal immigration but opposed illegal immigration. He also made the common-sense point that at least some legal immigrants should have job skills that are needed in our economy, just as many European nations require. Although Trump was my fourth pick among GOP candidates in the 2016 GOP primary, I worked as a volunteer in his campaign in the general election, and I never heard anyone--not one single person--express the view that we should halt all forms of immigration, much less that we needed to "make America white again." I never heard a word of any such thing in all the many hours I spent among Trump supporters. Not once. Furthermore, in the Trump years, legal immigration largely mirrored what it was in previous decades: Key findings about U.S. immigrants | Pew Research Center The key point is that barbs against Trump over immigration policy, much less sweeping tar-brush attacks on conservatives, have no place in a book on the JFK assassination. The infusion of far-left politics into pro-conspiracy JFK books is the reason that so many people have the perception that only liberals doubt the WC, that only liberals believe in a JFK assassination plot, etc., etc.

I think the book is very important and worthwhile, but its needless and irrelevant heavy dose of ultra-liberal politics substantially ruined the book for me and will turn off many centrists and center-right people. I mean, it borders on fringe to claim that Trump's election in 2016 was based on a resurgence of fascism, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia, or all of the above. "Make America Great Again" and "America First" are "fascist," and even "neo-Na-i," ideas??? Really? I lost count how many times the book says that Trump and his supporters are "anti-immigration." No, they're not anti-immigration; they are anti-illegal immigration--there's a huge difference. I'm no big fan of Trump's as a person. I think he's a man of bad character and bad behavior, but he was not the first less-than-ideal man we've had in the White House. I was surprised by the book's poor scholarship on the Amerasia case (pp. 603-604). I don't know if Albarelli wrote the segment and then Kent and/or Sharp revised it, or if Kent and/or Sharp wrote the segment. The segment substantially misrepresents the evidence, especially the nature of the government docs that were found in the Amerasia office. The segment's argument that "even the Justice Department" concluded that the people involved were merely guilty of "an excess of journalistic zeal" is erroneous. In truth, the Truman Justice Department whitewashed the matter and ignored the clear evidence of serious espionage. Albarelli was a thorough researcher, so if he wrote that segment, that means he had a serious blind spot when it came to dealing with communist espionage in the 1940s.

I just wish I'd awakened in time to see it.

My wife saw a UFO in the 1990s while we were driving through Colorado. It was in the early morning, part of the way through sunrise. She was driving and I was sleeping. She said the UFO was gray-silver, made no noise, was shaped like a saucer, and was about 80 feet in diameter. She said that when she first noticed the UFO, it was about three football fields away (300 yards). She said that after a few seconds, it moved to a position about 200 feet directly in front of our car, enabling her to get a good look at it. A few seconds after it moved to that position and she got a good look at it, she realized that it was a UFO and tried to wake me up. She grabbed my arm and yelled "Mike, wake up," but in the 2-3 seconds it took me to fully awake, the UFO departed. She said that as she grabbed my arm, she also began to apply the brakes to stop the car. She said that while she was doing this, the UFO zoomed away as if it had been shot out of a canon. She said it moved so rapidly that one second it was there, and the next second it was so far away that it was barely visible as a small dot and then vanished out of sight. After I was fully awake, I could tell that she was very shaken up and excited. At first, she just said, in a very excited voice, "I just saw a UFO! I just saw a UFO!" Once she calmed down, she described the object and how rapidly it had moved after she began to stop the car and grabbed my arm.

And I think it needs to be emphasized that Oswald would have had only one attempt, one series. Another factor we should add is the cramped quarters of the sniper's nest, a factor that no rifle test has included. Further, we should require that the riflemen in any rifle test possess only the same mediocre skill that Oswald possessed. At Oswald's best day at the range in the Marines, he barely qualified in the second of three categories. He never qualified as an Expert, the highest category. And everyone who saw him shoot in Russia said he was a poor shot.

The simple fact of the matter is that no one has ever truly duplicated Oswald's alleged shooting feat of 2/3 in 6 seconds. The only way to expand the firing time is to assume that he missed the first shot, the closest and easiest shot. The only test that involved the alleged murder rifle itself is very revealing. The WC hired three Master-rated riflemen to attempt to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat. The three Master-rated shooters who participated in that test fired 18 rounds while using the scope and three rounds while using the iron sights. They used the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano that was traced to Lee Harvey Oswald. Tellingly, they missed the head and neck area of the target board silhouettes 18 out of 18 times when they used the scope, and 2 out of 3 times when they used the iron sights. In other words, they missed the head and neck area of the target silhouettes 20 out of 21 times. Several of their misses were far apart on the boards. Some of their shots missed the silhouettes entirely. It's revealing that they shot so poorly even though they were allowed to take as long as they wanted for the first shot, even though two of them took longer than 6 seconds to fire, even though they were only firing from 30 feet up, and even though they were shooting at stationary--yes, stationary--target boards. The three riflemen in the test were named Miller, Hendrix, and Staley. (Their first names were never given.) In the first series, Miller took 4.6 seconds to fire three shots, Staley took 6.75 seconds, and Hendrix took 8.25 seconds. In the next series, Miller took 5.15 seconds, Staley took 6.45 seconds, and Hendrix took 7 seconds. It bears repeating that Oswald would have had only one attempt, only one series. Oswald supposedly scored two hits out of three shots, yet Miller, Hendrix, and Staley—all Master-rated riflemen—missed the head and neck area of the target silhouettes 20 out of 21 times.

I think the released HSCA and ARRB interviews of the autopsy personnel have destroyed the credibility of the autopsy photos. We now know that the HSCA report lied when it said that the autopsy personnel contradicted the Dallas doctors about the right-rear head wound. In point of fact, most of them described the same wound that the Dallas doctors and nurses described.

I find Myers' research on the Tippit case to be severely flawed. See my review of his book With Malice: Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?

These criticisms strike me as a bit hyper-critical and nit-picky. To say he had "no clue" when Tippit was shot in 1968 seems a bit harsh, given that the time he gave was within 34 minutes of the actual time. I would agree that his later account in his book was embellished. Anyway, there is good evidence for Craig's November 1963 account of seeing someone who resembled Oswald run from the rear of the TSBD and jump into a Nash Rambler station wagon. Dr. Michael Kurtz:

I think Hunt's statement was a parting attempt to spread more disinformation. The anti-Castro Cubans who viscerally despised JFK, and who show up all over the place in the assassination, could not have cared less about whether or not JFK formally acknowledged the existence of aliens. Anyway, Unacknowledged is a fascinating documentary, and it is credible up until about the last 15-20 minutes, when it goes off the deep end, IMO.

Yes, I believe that Hiroshima was a war crime. I'm sure many here know that by June 1945 Japan was beaten and prostrate. Mainland Japan was virtually defenseless against air attacks. Bombing runs over the Japanese home islands were losing only 0.003 of our bombers in air raids on Japan—in other words, only 3 out of every 1,000 bombers were being shot down. Every major Japanese port had been mined. The Japanese people were on the verge of starvation. All this being said, if we had nuked a genuine military target, I would not object nearly as much.

Michael T. Griffith holds a Master’s degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance University, a Graduate Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from American Military University, a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from Excelsior College, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the Community College of the Air Force. He also holds an Advanced Certificate of Civil War Studies and a Certificate of Civil War Studies from Carroll College. He is a graduate in Arabic and Hebrew of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. In addition, he has completed Advanced Hebrew programs at Haifa University in Israel and at the Spiro Institute in London, England. He is the author of five books on Mormonism and ancient texts, including How Firm A Foundation, A Ready Reply, and One Lord, One Faith. He is also the author of a book on the JFK assassination titled Compelling Evidence (JFK Lancer, 1996), and of a book on the Pearl Harbor attack titled The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor (2021).