John Geraghty

I have been reading the book 'The Senator' by former Ted Kennedy aid Richard Burke. Naturally I was interested to read his impressions on the Kennedy families stance on the assassination, I found what he had to say quite interesting. 'Judith Exner's story brought back the entire controversy concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. It now appeared that Giancana had been recruited by the CIA to assist with various plots against Castro, and the whole thing smelled very suspicious. Congress held extensive hearings on the subject. The Senator had his own team of investigators nose into the story, and he studied their reports carefully, but he kept his own counsel. Using his own investigators, however, was interpreted by some of us as an expression of less than full confidence in the official reports. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the Senator still had questions. In public, he held to the family's traditional response concerning a possible assassination plot: that there had been a proper investigation and that they supported the conclusions of the Warren Report. Through private conversations over the years, I knew that several of the children had different opinions. Joe Kennedy tended toward the conspiracy theory, and he believed that whatever group was responsible for the death of the president had also killed his own father, Robert' Richard E. Burke, The Senator, My ten years with Ted Kennedy, (1992, New York) pp 82-83 A very telling passage from the book. If anyone comes across the thread of David Talbots new book, can they post the link here so that I can post this information there. John Geraghty

I have been reading the book 'The Senator' by former Ted Kennedy aid Richard Burke. Naturally I was interested to read his impressions on the Kennedy families stance on the assassination, I found what he had to say quite interesting. 'Judith Exner's story brought back the entire controversy concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. It now appeared that Giancana had been recruited by the CIA to assist with various plots against Castro, and the whole thing smelled very suspicious. Congress held extensive hearings on the subject. The Senator had his own team of investigators nose into the story, and he studied their reports carefully, but he kept his own counsel. Using his own investigators, however, was interpreted by some of us as an expression of less than full confidence in the official reports. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the Senator still had questions. In public, he held to the family's traditional response concerning a possible assassination plot: that there had been a proper investigation and that they supported the conclusions of the Warren Report. Through private conversations over the years, I knew that several of the children had different opinions. Joe Kennedy tended toward the conspiracy theory, and he believed that whatever group was responsible for the death of the president had also killed his own father, Robert' Richard E. Burke, The Senator, My ten years with Ted Kennedy, (1992, New York) pp 82-83 A very telling passage from the book. If anyone comes across the thread of David Talbots new book, can they post the link here so that I can post this information there. John Geraghty

For those of you familiar with facebook, I have created a group for COPA (The Coalition on Political Assassinations), the advocacy group who helped to get the JFK Act passed. They have also been working on a JFK grand jury project and the Martin Luther King records Act. Please join the group, we are trying to get a younger crowd interested in the assassinations and also to re-establish COPA as the researchers organisation. Facebook is a friend sharing network popular with most of the US high school and College students. The url for the group is http://nuim.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2261294162 Here are some links to previous COPA conferences in Dallas, including Peter Dale Scott's talk on the assassination and 9/11 2002 COPA conference http://www.parapolitics.info/copa/copa2002gallery/ 2001 COPA conference http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJu...OPAnov2001.html 2004 COPA Conference http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJu...OPAnov2004.html Video of Peter Dale Scott's presentation 'JFK and 9/11- Insights gained from studying both' at COPA 2006 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=74...eter+Dale+Scott Q and A session following Dale Scott's presentation http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=47...eter+Dale+Scott All the best, John Geraghty

Steve says this as a Manchester United fan. It is true that virtually every male (and an increased number of females) spend a lot of time watching and talking about football. I have to confess that I am also addicted to the game. In fact I am currently working on some materials so that youngsters can study it in depth. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ENCfootball.htm Steve is a Man Utd fan? And I thought we could be friends. Man City my friend, Man City. John

Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock singing 'I feel like', http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA I'm trying to find some Phil Ochs videos. John

From the March 24th 2007 Independent. A family tragedy: The troubled life of Woody Harrelson The star of 'Natural Born Killers' has an unusual Hollywood narrative - his father, who died last week, was a serial criminal imprisoned for the murder of a judge. Andrew Gumbel reports Published: 23 March 2007 Woody Harrelson is, by his own admission, a wild and crazy guy. On the one hand, he is a bleeding-heart Hollywood liberal straight out of central casting: a vegan, a peace activist, a warrior for the environment and an agitator for the decriminalisation of marijuana. On the other hand, he has quite a temper and a track record of drinking and brawling. During one stint on the London stage five years ago, he got into a shouting match with a taxi driver, ripped out an ashtray and smashed the door to override the central-locking system. (Charges were dropped after he agreed to pay for the damage.) Last year, he grabbed a paparazzo by the neck outside a Hollywood nightclub and, according to a subsequent complaint, broke the viewfinder on his camera. Just a couple of weeks ago, he got into a fight with a bouncer at a trendy watering hole in Venice, California, after he was told he could not leave the premises with a glass of wine in his hand. Two traffic cops writing a parking ticket on the other side of the street slapped him in handcuffs, but eventually let him go with a warning after it became clear he had damaged himself more than the bouncer. (He cut his hand on a broken wine glass.) The troubled times of Woody Harrelson are nothing, though, compared with the extraordinary life story of his father, Charles Voyde Harrelson. Harrelson Snr was a drifter, a serial monogamist and a self-admitted professional gambler who also, according to the best information available, developed a talent as a contract killer. In the mid-Seventies Charles Harrelson served five years for the murder of a Texas grain dealer, for which he was allegedly paid $2,000. In 1983, he received two life sentences for the murder of a federal judge in San Antonio - a crime that sensationalised west Texas at the time, since no other federal judge had been murdered anywhere in the United States since the 19th century. The case had more than its share of murkiness, involving a complex relationship between Harrelson and a family of corrupt lawyers from El Paso called the Chagras, but the conviction and sentence were serious enough to keep Harrelson behind bars for the rest of his life. After a botched escape attempt in the mid-Nineties, he wound up in the so-called "Supermax" - the highest security federal prison in the US in Florence, Colorado, which has been home to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber; Ramzi Yousef, responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993; and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Harrelson long ago resigned himself to the fact that he would die in the Supermax and that is exactly what has just happened. According to the county coroner, who announced the news, he died of a heart attack in his sleep nine days ago. Relationships between fathers and sons are complicated things. Woody, for his part, has always claimed to have been minimally affected by his father's inglorious career. But it is hard not to be intrigued by the relationship between the two of them, and the odd points of convergence between Charles's criminal history and Woody's path through the Hollywood snakepit. Consider: Woody first made his mark in feature films in the notorious Oliver Stone movie Natural Born Killers, a story that looks explicitly at a pair of runaways who view murder as an entirely amoral exercise. Charles, meanwhile, has been described by the Texas Ranger who spent more time than anyone pursuing him, as a man who killed not because he was crazy but because he could do it for money without losing any sleep. Stone, meanwhile, had previously made JFK, a potboiler that played fast and loose with conspiracy theories about the president's assassination. Charles Harrelson, intriguingly, once claimed to have been in on the assassination, and even hinted at one point that he might have been one of the triggermen supposedly firing from the "grassy knoll" above the roadway at Dallas's Dealey Plaza. That claim now appears, to the best of our knowledge, to have been pure hyperbole - much like the contentions in Stone's film. Harrelson's main claim was to have been one of three vagrants photographed and arrested in Dealey Plaza moments after the shooting. The Dallas police finally named the three vagrants in 1992 - almost 30 years after the assassination - and established that Harrelson was not among them. Harrelson himself later retracted the story, said he was having lunch with a friend in Houston at the time of the shooting, and added that he would never have accepted a contract to kill the president for fear that he would end up dead, just as Lee Harvey Oswald did. Hyperbole and extremes of behaviour are nevertheless things that run through the entertainment business, just as they do through the criminal world. It's certainly something that father and son have both been guilty of. Woody Harrelson once claimed that, as an emerging star on the hit comedy series Cheers, he picked up and slept with three women a day. He has claimed, at different times, to be either completely sober, or completely drunk and stoned. To his credit, Woody has never sought to trade off his father's story - either to generate sensational publicity for himself, or to elicit pity for his unorthodox upbringing. Even stripped of the hyperbole, though, it is quite some story. Charles Harrelson was born in 1939 near Huntsville, the small town north of Houston that is home to Texas's well-used execution chamber. He came from a family of policemen and prison wardens, but quickly moved in a very different direction. As a young man he moved to California, where he sold encyclopedias and developed a taste for armed robbery - the crime for which he served his first stretch in prison. Next he moved back to Texas, and sold dental equipment for while before becoming a full-time gambler and card shark. By the time he divorced Woody's mother in the mid-Sixties - Woody was born in 1961 - he had developed a notoriety as a "card mechanic", which meant he could stack a deck even when his unwitting victims had shuffled it themselves. His career choice brought him into contact with all sorts of unsavoury characters, at least some of whom were connected to the underworld of organised crime. By 1968, the Texas Rangers were after him for murder. He was acquitted of the slaying of a bookie called Alan Berg, and almost beat the rap for the killing of grain dealer Sam Degelia after a nightclub singer made a surprise last-minute appearance in court and testified that she had been with him at the time of the murder. Eleven jurors refused to believe the singer and voted for conviction, but one juror was swayed and the case had to be retried. The next time, though, Harrelson's prosecutors were ready - threatening the nightclub singer with an arrest warrant on perjury charges if she decided to show up in court. She did not, and Harrelson got 15 years, of which he served just under one-third. Then, in 1979, came the murder of federal judge John Wood - gunned down with a high-calibre rifle in the car park of his San Antonio condominium complex on the eve of a major trial in which a suspected El Paso mob leader, Jimmy Chagra, was facing federal drug-trafficking charges. Wood, nicknamed Maximum John, was known as a tough sentencer of drug offenders, and the Chagra family quickly came under suspicion. It wasn't until several years later that Texas Ranger Jack Dean pinned the crime on Harrelson, who knew the Chagras through his gambling activities. Jimmy's wife and brother were both convicted for their involvement in Judge Wood's death but Jimmy himself, incredibly, was acquitted after his lawyer argued that Harrelson had killed the judge on his own initiative and then sought to extort money from Jimmy Chagra by threatening to pin the killing on him. Harrelson, meanwhile, made a parallel argument, telling the jury in his separate trial that he only boasted of the murder as a means of forcing money out of the Chagras, but had not actually committed it. That argument failed. Woody Harrelson, meanwhile, was only peripherally involved in these extraordinary events. He and his two siblings had been raised by their strict Presbyterian mother, first in Texas and then in Ohio. He went through drama school, moved to New York and then landed his first big break when one of the lead actors on Cheers, Nicholas Colasanto, died suddenly and had to be replaced. Colasanto had played Coach, the straight-guy bartender to Ted Danson's more clownish Sam. Harrelson's character, called Woody, fulfilled a very similar function but did it with sufficient verve to help keep the show going for several more years. Harrelson's film career took a while to get going - not until Indecent Proposal, in 1993, did he attract much critical or popular attention. Natural Born Killers put him definitively on the map and that was followed by Kingpin, the Farrelly brothers comedy; The People vs. Larry Flynt, in which he played the eponymous wheelchair-bound publisher of Hustler magazine; and Wag The Dog, in which he played a mythologised soldier lost behind enemy lines in a non-existent war in Albania. Harrelson attracted ever more attention, meanwhile, for his off-screen activities: lowering a banner off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to protest against clear-cutting of California's redwood forests; advocating biodiesel fuel made from hemp; turning himself into the poster-child for the legal marijuana movement; and opening a raw food oxygen bar in West Hollywood, at which patrons were invited to inhale scented gases pumped in from Sunset Boulevard and purified to heighten their oxygen content. That venture was not a success. He also bankrolled an extensive effort in the late Nineties to have his father's case reopened in the appeals courts. "I can't attest to whether he's guilty or innocent," he said at the time. "But a lot of sources lead me to believe it wasn't a fair trial." The courts, however, did not agree, and Charles Harrelson was left to rot in prison. His son visited regularly, and they appear to have got along just fine. Following Charles's death, Woody has issued no statement or public comment. It's not often a movie star can claim to have a contract killer for a father, but Harrelson appears to have decided, once again, not to make hay of it.

I just found this on a blog, http://hnn.us/articles/36915.html The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: The Acoustics Evidence By Steve Barber Mr. Barber’s work was seminal in proving that the dictabelt recorded by the Dallas Police Department that allegedly contains sounds of the shots in the JFK assassination was actually recorded elsewhere. He worked directly with a panel of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics (CBA), which included two Nobel prize-winning physicists, Norman F. Ramsey, chairman of the committee, and the late Luis Alvarez, who were hired by the Justice Department to reexamine earlier findings of the acoustics experts hired by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who had concluded that the dictabelt contained the gunshots that killed President Kennedy. Most recently, Barber assisted several members of the CBA panel who regrouped for the purpose of examining a 2001 acoustics paper by Donald Thomas, published in the journal ‘Science and Justice’ (2001:41 p21-32). Thomas criticized the CBA's findings. Some years following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of June 4/5 1968 critics of the official version of the assassination said there were audio recordings of more than 8 shots fired when RFK was shot. Such conclusions, if correct, would have established that more than one gunman had been firing because the assassin’s gun could not hold more than 8 bullets. These claims of extra shots fired originated from television recording equipment located in the rear of the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, the scene of Robert Kennedy’s California Primary election victory speech. In his important book about the RFK assassination, The Killing Of Robert F. Kennedy (1995), veteran crime reporter Dan Moldea identified ABC News as the only television network broadcasting when the shooting began. Both Andrew West of Mutual Broadcasting and Jeff Brent of Continental Broadcasting were also recording but switched on their microphones after the shooting began. Moldea wrote, “In November and December 1982, these three audio sound recordings were subjected to scientific, but controversial, acoustical analysis, in an attempt to determine if a distinctive gunshot ‘audio signature’ can be identified and the number of gunshots counted. According to Dr Michael H.L. Hecker – an electrical engineer with the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California – who conducted the tests, ‘On the basis of auditory, oscillographic and spectrographic analyses of these three recordings, it is my opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that no fewer than 10 gunshots are ascertainable following the conclusion of the Senator’s victory speech until after the time Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was disarmed.’ ” In the 1980s I was given an opportunity to examine an audio copy of the ABC tape. A writer by the name of Robert Cutler had sent me the tape and I was asked to determine if any shots were audible. At that time I believe I was told I might hear balloons popping, and not to confuse this with gunshots. After examining the tape I wrote Cutler back and told him that I couldn’t hear anything except what could possibly be balloons being popped and that I could hear where the recorder was turned off and then back on in spots, but that I couldn’t determine whether or not with certainty that there were gunshots. In 2006, British author Mel Ayton, who has written books on the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, sent me an audio tape recording of live broadcasts made at the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel which had been compiled by JFK researcher and author Larry Sneed. The tape is a collection of the live news broadcasts on the night RFK was shot; none of the recordings were made in the pantry. Part of the compilation contains the broadcast made by ABC News, which was stationed in the Embassy Ballroom. After making a more thorough examination of the ABC tape I concluded that the recording was obviously made AFTER the shooting. The vocal contents of the pandemonium going on during the segment of the tape proves this. The screaming and shouting of people are those of panic stricken individuals who were reacting to the apparent gunshots. The sounds that I heard which suggested gunfire were nothing more than the sounds of the microphones held by the person recording the pandemonium, bumping either into things with it, or fumbling around with it, or something of that nature. They do not resemble gunfire at all. I concluded that the ABC tape was absolutely worthless. In order to carry out further research on these recordings Mel Ayton asked if I would work with Michael O’Dell who also had experience in acoustics research. I first became acquainted with O'Dell in 2001. O’Dell was a technical analyst who, from 2001 through 2005, worked with a committee of leading scientists when it reexamined the acoustics evidence in the JFK assassination. The committee included Norman F. Ramsey of the original CBA committee that I had worked with, during the period 1980-1982. O’Dell stated, “…I don’t believe any shots were captured on the ABC tape.... I think (the ABC tape) is worthless....” In early 2006 Ayton, who had been writing a book on the controversy over the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, discovered from one of his sources in the United States that there was a tape recording located at the California State Archives (CSA) that supposedly captured the actual gunshots as they were fired at Kennedy and that the recording was the only one in existence that captured the shooting from beginning to end. The recording was made by a freelance reporter, Stanislaw Pruszynski, on the night of June 4th 1968. Pruszynski told the Los Angeles Police Department his cassette recorder was running all through the shooting. The CSA records describe the tape as : “Pruszynski, Stus - At Ambassador Hotel on June 4th; tape is his recording of events at the hotel. Includes end of RFK’s speech, possible shots being fired, post-shooting hysteria in kitchen, and interviews with a man who claims Sirhan was not alone. Pruszynski narrates what he is seeing.” The tape was eventually lodged with the California State Archives. (The tape is mentioned in the California State Archives lists of the Investigation Records Audio Tapes, Appendix E.CSA-K123 I-4837 June 4-5 1968.) Mel Ayton asked me if I had knowledge of the tape recording and I replied in the negative. My initial reaction was that the “Pruszynski Tape” was probably not going to reveal anything more than the CBS and ABC tapes, which as stated before, revealed nothing but a lot of crowd noise, and what sounded like microphones banging into objects, and/or balloons popping here and there. Ayton asked the California State Archives to send me a copy of the tape recording. Later he was able to obtain a digitized copy of the recording and it was mailed to me. As I was working on the CSA Pruszynski audio cassette tape and the Pruszynski Tape digitized version, Moldea told Ayton that he had earlier been approached by a CNN journalist, Brad Johnson, who had told Moldea about the Pruszynski Tape. Among his hundreds of interviews about this case, Moldea had spent fourteen hours with Sirhan Sirhan and believed that the convicted assassin had murdered Senator Kennedy and acted alone. Despite Johnson’s enthusiasm for this new discovery, Moldea was skeptical, insisting that only eight shots had been fired and that Sirhan had fired all of them. During the Spring of 2006, I worked on the Pruszynski Tape with the assistance of Dr. Chad Zimmerman, a researcher who had some experience in examining the scientific aspects of the JFK assassination, and Michael O’Dell. After months spent examining the tape I concluded that I could not be certain that I hear more than seven shots. I heard what might have been the eighth shot, but couldn’t be absolutely certain at that point. The sound that may be the eighth shot appears just a millisecond before the sound of a very high pitched scream made by a female in or near the pantry. Michael O’Dell was in agreement with my findings but stated, “I still have a lot of uncertainty about how many shots are clearly identifiable on the Pruszynski Tape. Right now I’m willing to identify six for certain. But of course the real question is whether there is solid evidence for more than eight. I certainly don’t see how anyone can use it to claim more than eight and that’s the main point.” Chad Zimmerman examined the tape using computer software. Zimmerman stated, “I ran the audio through an analysis program, which provided [an] audio analysis. I took two different graphs and split them apart, enhanced the second to a different color then overlayed them with 50% opacity. You can see eight spikes that correlate to the audio gunshots. The last occurs just before the scream. However, I don’t think one can necessarily say that more shots couldn’t have existed after that point, but that they would have been drowned out by the scream. However, in my opinion, there are only eight, .22 caliber gunshots heard on that tape. Now, preceding these eight, I hear one deeper audible ‘pop’ just prior to the eight shots in rapid succession. However, this is a bit longer and deeper, which sounds more like a balloon pop than a gunshot….My only real contribution here is the spectrographic run that I did, which showed 8 spikes. [My conclusion is] 8 or fewer shots are heard and none would be a .38.” With regard to the possibility that RFK could have been shot by security guard Thane Cesar, who carried a .38 caliber pistol, Zimmerman said, “…there certainly isn’t a .38 shot on [the] tape.” Both Chad Zimmerman and I also agree that the conspiracy writers’ No. 1 suspect as the ‘second gunman,’ Thane Cesar, could not possibly have fired his .38 revolver. (Moldea, who had also interviewed Cesar dozens of times, had concluded in his book that Cesar, who passed a lie-detector test that Moldea had arranged, was an innocent man who had been wrongly accused.) There are three sounds which take place approximately 1 second before the string of shots fired from Sirhan’s weapon. Chad Zimmerman and myself identified one of them as a “deeper toned pop,” meaning that it doesn’t have the same popping sound as the string of 7 or 8 shots fired from Sirhan’s weapon. The sound which precedes the “deeper toned pop” is very difficult to reach a conclusion as to what, exactly, it is. I believe that the two sounds are connected to each other, physically, but that neither of them are gunshot sounds. Brad Johnson’s chronology of events of the Pruszynski tape, refers to one of these sounds as a “mysterious thump.’’ I will refer to the Johnson “mysterious thump” as sound #1, and the “deeper toned pop” as sound #3. I do not know which of the two sounds he considers the “mysterious thump,” but will assume that it is sound # 1. There is also a peculiar sound that occurs between sounds 1 and 3, which I refer to as “sound #2.” Sound #1 bears the resemblance of a microphone bumping into something solid, producing a tone that resonates briefly. There is the sound of an audible bassy-type “click," when the digital version of the Pruszynski recording is played. One can actually feel a “thump” emanating from the speakers. I noticed that the “thump” is not as pronounced on the cassette copy. Sound # 2 is a sound akin to someone running their finger up the lowest (or thickest) of the guitar strings on a guitar, which makes a sound such as “zzzziiip." Simultaneous with the “zzziiip" sound, a female voice can be heard saying something indecipherable, that rhymes with the word “Tuesday." These sounds are joined together, and one is left with the impression that the sound may be an appliance in the pantry turning on. There was a very large ice machine in the area where the shooting took place, which Sirhan was hiding behind, before he began shooting. It could have been an exhaust fan, or ventilator turning on. Sound # 3. This section of the recording peaked my interest, because I am reasonably certain that some will try to claim that sound #3 could be gunfire from a different weapon and not fired by Sirhan. Soon after I began studying the Pruszynski tape, I decided that I would be able to obtain more accurate results using my computer. I transferred the tape onto my computer hard drive, and used a tool on my computer which allows me to slow down a recording to a crawl without changing the pitch of the of the recording. When I slowed sound #3 I noticed that it didn’t make a singular sound, rather, it contained a double sound giving the impression that it contained echo. When played at true speed, however, the double sound cannot be detected by the human ear. None of the shots fired from Sirhan’s gun produced an echo-type sound, nor did the voices of the people in the pantry who were shouting. I can’t rule out echo altogether, but, it seems odd that this sound alone produced a double sound that can only be detected when the recording is slowed, but none of the voices or string of shots produced an echo. My first instinct was that since there were two swinging doors that led to the kitchen where Senator Kennedy was shot, it is possible that sound #3 is one of the two doors being pushed open and banging into the wall. Sometimes, when someone is pushing a door open, they keep their hand on the door all the while pushing on it while it hit’s the wall. Once it hit’s the wall, and with the hand still pushing on the door, the door bounces off the surface of the wall, then back again, causing a second “thump’’ when it hits the wall a second time. This is something that can easily be demonstrated. The sound does not sound like a gunshot to me. I would like to add that, after listening to the sounds very carefully, it is my conclusion that these sounds are not in the same location as Sirhan, who fired the 7or 8 gunshots. They seem to have slightly less volume than the string of 7 or 8 gunshots heard on the tape. This, to me, lends more support to the conclusion that if a .38 caliber weapon was fired from within the same location as Sirhan, the sound of the shot would be much louder since it was suggested it was a .38 caliber weapon, which would create a higher level of sound, than that of a .22 caliber. Furthermore while listening to a gentleman talking with Pruszynski, he actually stated that the shots ‘weren't very loud,’ and he thought the sounds were a 'Chinese type of fireworks.' This, to me, certainly adds to the fact that no .38 caliber weapon was fired. Whatever sound numbers 1 and 2 are, they do not bear any resemblance to a .38 caliber hand gun. In 2006, Mel Ayton asked a British acoustics firm, JP French Associates, to examine the Pruszynski Tape. Using state-of-the-art acoustics computer-based technology Philip Harrison, a JP French Associates acoustics expert, who was given the task of examining the tape, wrote a report for Ayton (appended to his book The Forgotten Terrorist). I worked closely with Philip Harrison and forwarded to him my analysis of the tape. Harrison looked at what information I had discovered and listened to those things I pointed out, before compiling his own analysis. Harrison’s report decisively concluded that only eight shots were fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. Harrison’s findings were examined and verified by Professor Peter French, visiting professor at the University of York. Professor French is an expert in the analysis of digital and magnetic recordings. The "High Pitched Scream” Within a millisecond of what appears to be the final gunshot, there is a high-pitched female scream coming from within, or near the pantry. After the blood curdling scream “AHHHHH!” the woman continues, saying, “I think my husband's been shot!” I believe that this may have been Ethel Kennedy, the Senator’s wife, who was not in the room when the shooting occurred. As the crowd reacts to the shooting, the woman is screaming "Back…No! “Get back...get back!’ These are the last words picked up by Pruszynski’s microphone of the woman at this point, probably due to her rushing to aid her husband. We do not know where Pruszynski was located when he captured the shooting. If the woman is Mrs. Kennedy, I believe that she holds the key as to just where Pruszynski was standing with his recorder In order for her voice to be so distorted, she had to be standing within inches of the microphone. Interestingly, immediately after the woman whom I believe to be Mrs. Kennedy, screams, “AHHHHHH! I think my husband's been shot!“ a distinct male voice utters the word “How?” I determined the voice to be that of Mr. Pruszynski by comparing this voice with Pruszynski's as he is interviewing witnesses about 20-25 minutes after the shooting on the tape. ALLEGATIONS OF EXTRA SHOTS FOUND ON THE PRUSYNSKI TAPE. In correspondence with Dan Moldea and me, CNN reporter Brad Johnson alleged that the Pruszynski Tape contains evidence of more than eight shots fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. Working with Philip Harrison, we had an opportunity to respond to the claims made by Johnson. The CNN journalist had told Moldea in 2005, “After having listened to this recording many times over a number of months, I believe that I am hearing 10 shots as follows: 2 shots fired in quick succession and then a string of 8 shots fired in quick succession. An acoustics expert here in Atlanta has just issued a confidential report on this recording that concludes there are 9 high-probability gunshots captured in this tape (one less than what I believe I'm hearing, but one more than Sirhan Sirhan could have fired).” Brad Johnson and his purported acoustics expert had matched the Pruszynski Tape to some CBS footage and counted 11 shots. Johnson provided Moldea a timeline in which he stated: 12:16:00.5 am PDT - The first shot or shots are fired in the kitchen pantry (to my hearing, there are two shots being fired in quick succession at this time but presently an examination of my acoustics expert can confirm the high probability of only one shot). 12:16:01.0 am PDT - A mysterious "thump" sound is heard but at this point in my research it appears unlikely this sound was a gunshot. 12:16:04.0 am PDT - By this time, a string of eight additional shots have been fired (all eight are high probability shots according to my acoustics expert). Our count of high-probability gunshots is now 9. 12:16:05.0 am PDT - A long, very high-pitched female scream is heard in the kitchen pantry. 12:16:18.5 am PDT - Andy West turns his tape recorder back on, upon entering the kitchen pantry (his recorder has been off for the past 66.5 seconds). 12:16:55.0 am PDT - Two more high probability shots are fired as a struggle with Sirhan Sirhan continues for his handgun (since Sirhan emptied his weapon, these could have been the last two bullets discharged as a result of the struggle). Our count of high-probability gunshots is now 11. 12:17:41.0 am PDT - Andy West shouts into his microphone, "Ladies and gentlemen, they have the gun away from the man.” Harrison responded to the timeline by stating: According to the timeline created by [brad Johnson] there is a period of 50 seconds between the ‘long, very high-pitched female scream’ and the ‘two more high probability shots … fired as a struggle with Sirhan Sirhan continues’. If his timings are correct then these events have not been captured on the Pruszynski recording. In terms of elapsed time the corresponding point on the Pruszynski recording is approximately 14 seconds into the interview with the man where ‘negroes’ are discussed. However, if [is] timings are wrong and the events he is referring to are those identified by Steve [barber] that occur at 6:00 and 6:01 on the CD then I cannot agree that they are gun shots. Firstly, the two sounds have very different auditory qualities. The first sound gives the impression that it occurred quite close to the microphone and could be described as a ‘light tap’, whilst the source of the second sound appears to have been further away. Neither of the two sounds shows any significant auditory or spectrographic similarity to either the 7 identified shots or the unknown sounds preceding them. Spectrographic analysis of the second sound at approximately 6:01 shows a clear ‘double impulse’ structure. The two impulses are about 20 milliseconds apart. This configuration is not found in the earlier section of the recording where the shots occur. As stated before it is not possible to accurately identify what these two sounds are but there is no evidence within the recording to support the claim that they are both shots. My findings are in agreement with Harrison’s. In examining Johnson’s claims I looked at the CBS news coverage and I was able to synchronize the film footage with audio to the Pruszynski tape, of the moment in question after the shooting. I concluded with 100% certainty that there are NO extra gunshots on the Pruszynski recording. They do not appear on the CBS footage, which is being shot just inches from where Senator Kennedy is lying on the floor, which would put the cameraman within only feet from where Sirhan would have been apprehended. I timed the section at the beginning of the Pruszynski Tape, and it adds up to approximately 16 seconds. This is the section during the wrestling with Sirhan, where you can hear a man yelling, ‘Break his hand...break his hand’ and scuffling in the background. Within this 16 seconds of audio, I hear nothing resembling gunfire. This new acoustics evidence in the RFK case suggests to a high degree of probability that on the night of June 4/5 1968 in the Ambassador Hotel pantry there were no other gunmen who fired shots at Senator Kennedy. Furthermore, this evidence negates to a high degree of probability the allegations by conspiracy advocates that extra bullets were either discovered or retrieved from the pantry’s swinging doors.

Peter, Thanks a million for posting that up. I had never heard that before and am glad that you directed me to it. It is truly a very moving speech. I'm not prone to sentimentality, but that was a real tear jerker. All the best, John

These 'murders' were reportedly commited as part of operation chaos, a war on the emerging counter culture. The best account of the deaths involving rock stars comes from Alex Constantine's book on the subject. I can't recall the name of the book at the moment as I left my copy of it in the U.S. John Judge and Mae Brussell have also done work in this field. I suggest that you google Mae Brussell, that will bring you to an archive of her work which has many references to operation chaos and the deaths mentioned above. John

Gill Woolmer is apparently wrong. It has just now been confirmed that Bob Woolmer was strangled. A full murder investigation is now ensuing. Details here, http://www.jamaicapolice.org.jm/index.html . This is probably the worst website that I have ever seen for a police force. Let us hope that they are more professional in their policing than they are in their web design. John

Would this have had anything to do with Ferenc Nagy? John

While checking on William Kelly's JFK grand jury petition I noticed that two of the last signatories were 'John Simkin ESQUIRE' and 'Howard Hunt'. Now, I know that John is not from 'suckit England' and it is debatable whether Hunt is from 'Burning in Hell', so I would assume that someone else wrote these signatures. Did we not have a very disgruntled member of the forum a few weeks ago? Other signatories include, 'Dawn MOUTH Meredith', 'Terry Tits Mauro' 'Jack Rubenstein', 'Marilyn Monroe', 'Lee Harvey Oswald', 'Ashole Gray' The friendly nicknames inserted would lead me to believe that the offender frequents the forum, though they may only read it. Somebody has an axe to grind and will not take the matter up in open discussion. Would they care to do so now? Perhaps Bill Kelly, being the creator of the petition, might be able to identify what email address the multiple signatory used. A very strange and childish act. Would anyone care to hold up their hand or email me their reason for doing this? johnpetergeraghty@gmail.com All the best, John

James, He said nothing in his letters about gun running, but I'm close to finding a concrete link. I can definitely link him with several of the main players in those operations. I'm trying to secure arrest records for him in Florida, which should prove interesting. I firmly believe that he was involved in the gun running. Given the close circle that he ran in it is very unlikely that he was not involved. In two one weeks free time from college work I was able to find a mountain of material on Harrelson that has not yet been written about in any coherrent form. All I need now is to get funding to do this stuff. I wouldn't know if publishers would have an interest in this sort of stuff. John

James, I agree that this point is quite important. The passer by also takes the inside line and does not attempt to give them a wide birth. One can not dismiss Lois Gibson's identification of Harrelson as one of the tramps. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=56...p;q=lois+gibson I would dearly like to see some facial reconition software to put this matter to rest one way or another. John

Thanks Gil, I have been adding them to the political assassinations group on youtube, please join us and share your videos there http://www.youtube.com/group/assassination We have 109 videos and 68 members. I have added you as a friend on youtube. Al the best, John

Charles Harrelson died in the early hours of the morning due to a heart attack. Harrelson is the father of actor Woody Harrelson and is suspected of being one of the three tramps arrested near Dealey Plaza following the Kennedy assassination. I have been working on a presentation on Harrelson for this weekends Caterbury Seminars for Dealey Plaza UK. In my presentation I was going to share a small piece of information that, if fully researched, could prove Harrelson's innocence in the murder of Judge John Wood. I have, in the past, corresponded with Harrelson a few years ago with regard to the assassination. I had intended to contact Harrelson again, but now I will not have the chance. My research into Harrelson will cntinue much as it has, as Harrelson was not particularly open in his letters. One wonders what secrets Harrelson took to the grave with him. One also wonders whether Harrelson left any secrets with his attorneys as so many of his ilk have done. I can not help but be saddened at his death, though he was a murderer and a con-man. I will post up a type up of my Canterbury presentation for others to read. My presentation on Harrelson from a few yeas ago is available in the online seminars section of the forum http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2371 . Bear in mind that I was 17 when I wrote this earlier account and am now 21. http://www.elpasotimes.com/breakingnews/ci_5486103 John

Tariq Ali I should have said. John

Hi Gil, The video is listed as private. Would you be able to make it publicly viewable. John

John, If you don't mind me asking, were you involved in lefty student activism with Tariq Aziz and others in the 60's. I'm just trying to pin down your claim to fame! All the best, John

The finding of this document could be timed to coincide with the increased coverage of the RFK assassination. Shane O'Sullivan's Newsnight piece would have upset a few in Langley and D.C., perhaps this is a reprisal of sorts. John mentioned the fact that Talbot's book will be coming out soon. And of course the Dealey Plaza UK conference is this weekend, let us not forget that. The Australian press are obviously giving us something to talk about in the pub in Canterbury. John

Mr. Baker seems indeed to be an honorable man. I wrote him an email when I first heard that he was conducting an investigation into the death of David Kelly and he very promptly responded and answered my questions. http://www.normanbaker.org.uk/ John

I'm not too sure about the media having stopped it, but GI resistance certainly had a lot to do with it. Media portrayal of GI resistance is quite interesting. The topic is very well covered in the documentary 'Sir, no Sir!'. You can view a 12 minute preview of it here .To purchase it you can go to http://www.sirnosir.com/ I attended a screening of the film on capitol hill organised by John Judge. It is quite fascinating and makes a very good case for the GI movement having stopped the war. All the best, John

I'm not too sure about the media having stopped it, but GI resistance certainly had a lot to do with it. Media portrayal of GI resistance is quite interesting. The topic is very well covered in the documentary 'Sir, no Sir!'. You can view a 12 minute preview of it here .To purchase it you can go to http://www.sirnosir.com/ I attended a screening of the film on capitol hill organised by John Judge. It is quite fascinating and makes a very good case for the GI movement having stopped the war. All the best, John

I have a subscription to sky sigital, so I will have the opportunity to view the channel. I am still unsure as to what format it will take and what the video quality will be like (presumably if people send footage via the net, there will be a loss of quality). I can't really comment on how effective this channel will prove to be until I view it. I would think that organised hroups could mkae thier own videos and use their membership to promote the screening of a video. I would presume that the 9/11 turht movement will try to use this resource in some way. John

Hi Len, Unfortunately I was unable to attend. I recently started a newspaper and have been extremely busy getting that done AND doing my academic work. I know a guy who saw the talk in London recently. I will ask him what it was like. John