What's the point ?

[François Carlier]

Hello everybody,

I have been quite busy these past few days. I don't have the time to come here as often as I would like so unfortunately I sometimes fail to answer interesting questions (or vicious attacks, as the case my be).

That's too bad, since there is soooo much to say.

This morning, rapidly, I would like to send a general message to the audience here. I would like to lay the foundations, give the basics of who I am, what I think, where I'm going, so everybody can understand my point before we go on debating specific subjects.

I'll address miscellaneous points, in no special order.

--> 1. I started my adult life being very interesting in science and critical thinking. In 1994 I was one a seven founding members of a critical-thinking organization in France, very much like the American "Committee for Skeptical Inquiry" (previously called the CSICOP - http://www.csicop.org/). We were skeptics, and organized activities to try to develop an understanding of critical thinking in France. Well, we did try. I personally embarked on a hard-working journey, visiting so-called haunted houses, meeting mediums, sorcerers, seers, parapsychologists, … what have you (everything that has to do with the occult or as I call it pseudoscience). At the same time, I studied magic and conjuring intensely. I have become a fairly good amateur conjuror. My attitude has always been to read as much as possible (I think you can learn a lot from books), and SO, as sure as I have more than a hundred books on the Kennedy assassination alone, I have many more on science and pseudoscience as well as conjuring and magic and linked fields.

To give an example, spoon bending now has no secret for me. I give magic shows on a regular basis. (one little video of me, among others, can be found on my ZEC2ZEC YouTube page). So I perfectly know the difference between frauds (the name Uri Geller comes to mind) who can do nothing but cheat and use magic tricks (mostly misdirection) while pretending they are real (what a joke !) and people like me, who do cheat and use misdirection but only to provide entertainment and never claiming anything but the desire go give fun. I have no powers whatsoever and have yet to find anybody who has any paranormal ability (who is not a fraud).

Anyway.

My point is, I studied the art of critical thinking and how to separate facts from fiction.

Among the many books I own (most of them in English) are the following :

Antony Flew, How to think straight, Prometheus Books, 1998

William D. Gray, Thinking critically about new-age ideas, Wadsworth Publishing. Company, 1991

Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness testimony, Harvard University Press, 1996

Hy Ruchlis, Clear thinking, Prometheus Books, 1990

Hy Ruchlis, How do you know it's true ?, Prometheus Books, 1991

I really think that EVERYBODY HERE SHOULD READ THEM. There are essential to anyone who wants to really research any serious subject. Indeed, you have to have the tools. It's no use to gather evidence if you don't know how to analyze that evidence that you have gathered. Now, that makes sense, doesn't it ?

So I encourage all of you to read those books. And by reading this forum I suspect not everybody has read them yet. Am I wrong ?

On top of that, I read a great amount of books by people who used their critical-thinking skills and applied them to pseudoscience and that was very enlightening.

Just to give you a few examples :

Robert A. Baker et Joe Nickell, Missing pieces, Prometheus Books, 1992

Ronald Binns, The Loch Ness Mystery solved, Prometheus Books, 1984

Bart J. Bok et Lawrence E. Jerome, Objections do Astrology, Prometheus Books, 1975

Kendrick Frazier, Paranormal borderlands of science, Prometheus Books, 1981

Kendrick Frazier, Science confronts the paranormal, Prometheus Books, 1986

Kendrick Frazier, The hundredth monkey, Prometheus Books, 1991

Kendrick Frazier, Encounters with the paranormal, Prometheus Books, 1998

Martin Gardner, Fads & fallacies in the name of science, Dover Publications, Inc., 1957

Martin Gardner, Science : good, bad and bogus, Prometheus Books, 1989

Martin Gardner, The new age, notes of a fringe watcher, Prometheus Books, 1991

Martin Gardner, On the wild side, Prometheus Books, 1992

Martin Gardner, Weird water & fuzzy logic, Prometheus Books, 1996

Terence Hines, Pseudoscience and the paranormal, Prometheus Books, 1988

Paul Kurtz, A skeptic's handbook of parapsychology, Prometheus Books, 1985

Larry Kusche, The Bermuda triangle mystery solved, Prometheus Books, 1995

James Randi, The truth about Uri Geller, Prometheus Books, 1982

James Randi, Flim-flam, Prometheus Books, 1987

Carl Sagan, Broca's brain, Ballantine's books, 1990

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Ballantine's books, 1993

All those books are "a must read". No question. I love all of them. And they are just a few.

By the way, it shows you that I am a great James Randi fan. I have been for years. I share his approach on the so-called paranormal. And I love his critical-thinking way of researching debated topics.

Well, in a nutshell, I am a follower of the critical-thinking method of investigating.

Oh, please allow me to copy/paste below an extract of an article I wrote in the spring of 1997, for my research journal FACTS, where I told of my previous trip to Dallas to attend Kennedy-assassination conferences. In that article I mentioned just what I am talking about today :

"I went to Dallas last November! I was very excited. I had been interested in the Kennedy assassination for years, I had read dozens of books, and there, for the first time, I was going to attend conferences by the best-known researchers in the world, I would have a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of listening to them and talking to them. Most important I expected to hear the most convincing arguments against the Warren Commission version.

Well, let me tell you very briefly what kind of guy I am. As far as making an opinion goes, I am a follower of the scientific method. To give you a good idea of my approach I read books by authors such as James Randi, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, Joe Nickell, and other people from the CSICOP. I particularly like the way they debunk hoaxers. I am myself an amateur conjurer, and a founder member of a French scientific association that copies the CSICOP. One thing was important for me. I had twice read "Case closed" by Gerald Posner. I had been impressed. Then I had bought and read "Case open" by Harold Weisberg. And I had been very disappointed. I had hoped Weisberg would address the criticisms raised by Posner but he did not do that to my satisfaction, far from it. I was hoping I could ask every researcher what they thought of the book, and what they had to answer to the criticism. I expected to see debates; researchers and experts confronting arguments. Then the assistance could ask questions; I had hundreds of questions to ask. (But soon enough I would discover that that was not to be!). On the plane from Paris to the USA I was reading an American book by William D. Gray "Thinking critically about New Age ideas", a book which teaches critical-thinking skills and among others how to identify arguments, to recognize fallacies and other bad arguments. I wondered how many people in the JFK critical community had read that fascinating book.

I had registered to attend the COPA conference and the JFK-Lancer conference. Excitement grew as the JFK-Lancer conference began. I was all ears. I was impressed by what I was showed. The speakers were indeed very good! But the assistance had very little time - if any - to ask questions. And we came nowhere near having any kind of debate! But let me now give you an example that speaks for itself and illustrates the point I want to make. On day one, a researcher called Mark Oakes gave a lecture. It was about the Paschall film and Dallas witnesses. All right, I said, that's interesting. Then the day after, in the same room, under the auspices of the same JFK-Lancer, there was a lecture on the Zapruder film. The Zapruder film symposium, with David Mantik, David Lifton, James Fetzer and Jack White. I talked to Mantik and Fetzer afterwards. They were utterly convinced the Zapruder film was altered. But then, the day after, still in the same room, I saw Mark Oakes again and decided to go and talk to him. I asked him his opinion about the possibility of the Zapruder film being a forgery. His answer startled me, to say the least. He wasn't aware that it was an issue, nor was he aware that some people had talked about that on the previous day, for he was out of town making filmed interviews! I then realized that the speakers were separate and had not met. All that was well, but here I was realizing I was not about to reach certainty on any given issue. It was clear to me that not everybody agreed with each other among the experts invited by JFK-Lancer. More important, some of them were not even aware of what the others were saying. All this showed me that I had overestimated the organizers' grasp of the zetetician way of thinking, the scientific method, the rational, unbiased and foolproof way of investigating. The day after, Mantik and Fetzer had an argument with Robert Groden during one of the COPA lectures, concerning the Zapruder film. It was clear to me that I would go back to France with more questions than I had when leaving. And I had better forget about any chance of having answers; thirty-three years after the assassination, the top experts in the field did not even agree on whether the film of the assassination was forged or not!"

(http://zec-world.pagesperso-orange.fr/facts1.htm)

So, as you can see, already in 1997 I was a person well-versed in critical thinking methods and being saddened by the fact that I found that knowledge lacking among the Kennedy-assassination community.

Things have not changed, it seems, and that's sad.

I state that it would be good if "researchers" in the Kennedy assassination community started to do their homework by learning about critical thinking methods.

One more thing : I have had the pleasure of finding such qualities as honesty, sincerity, humility and critical-thinking skills in researchers defending the Warren Commission conclusions. Yes indeed.

And I sure found the same critical-thinking methods and logic, and common sense in Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History". Oh yes, a big yes ! What a joy ! But bad faith prevented lots of people here from realizing it.

--> 2. I used to be a subscriber of The Assassination Chronicles. And here, I would like to mention one thing and again I think I can quote myself. As I wrote on another issue of my research journal FACTS, in1999

"The first time I heard that some people talked of the Zapruder film possibly being altered was when I was at the JFK-Lancer-November-in-Dallas conference in 1996. Prior to that time I had not been aware that it had been an issue. There, two people I had never heard about were scheduled to speak: James Fetzer and David Mantik. On November 22, 1996, Fetzer was the moderator to the Zapruder film symposium. As I was also attending the COPA conference I took the opportunity of asking Robert Groden for his opinion. He was very adamant that the Zapruder film was genuine and had not been altered. I did not share Groden's conclusions regarding the assassination, but I sure considered him to be an authority on the Zapruder film. So I came back to the Dallas Grand Hotel and talked to Mantik and Fetzer. The three of us met across the corridor from the conference room. Fetzer did most of the talking. He looked a very excited man. He talked at length listing all the reasons why he believed the Zapruder film had been altered. At that point, I had no opinion, and although I was approaching the subject with suspicion I had an open mind and was ready to believe whatever was presented before me with sound arguments made by experts. Fetzer was more impressive when he talked about the alteration of the film than when he tried to explain why the film would be altered at all! As I did not consider myself as an expert on this (I was in Dallas to learn and listen, not to teach and speak) I suggested Fetzer and Mantik should accompany me to Groden's lecture that he was to give at the COPA conference. I explained to Mantik and Fetzer that I was attending both conferences and therefore I was aware of all the scheduled lectures in both conferences. I was looking forward to Groden's lecture for COPA, and I advised Fetzer to come and attend it, since Groden had told me that morning that the Zapruder film had never been altered. It was my opinion that it would be a good idea to confront Groden and Fetzer. I was sure the audience would be interested. Fetzer and Mantik told me they would come. I went back to tell Robert Groden that I had seen Fetzer who had assured me that he had proof that the Zapruder film had been altered and that he had given a lecture on that at the JFK-Lancer conference. In the evening, when the COPA conference began, Groden was going to show us some films. I told my neighbor that two men were going to interrupt the lecture. And sure they did. As Groden was saying publicly that even if some people were talking about the alteration of the Zapruder film, that was completely wrong, Fetzer burst and sprang off his chair. He challenged Groden. And then, I was impressed: Robert Groden had the courage, the guts and the intellectual honesty to tell Fetzer to come forward and although it was Groden's lecture, he said he was willing to give his time to Fetzer who was free to talk and give his arguments to prove the Zapruder film was altered. Now, I take my hat off to Groden for that. But Fetzer backed off. He said it would take too long to show the Zapruder film was altered, and he had not enough time. Groden replied that he was open and willing to listen to everything Fetzer would say, and that it would only take one minute, and it would be easy, to prove an alteration of the film; "Just show me the alteration". But Fetzer and Mantik had nothing to say and they left the room. I was disappointed. It took me little time to understand Fetzer can blow a gasket easily but doesn't dare proving his case when he is offered a royal opportunity! So I went back to France not knowing whether the film was altered or not, but willing to read all I could on that issue, because I knew that if indeed the film had been tampered with, that would be proof that there had been a conspiracy. I read all I could, and one day I found an article by Fetzer in The Assassination Chronicles (Vol.2, Issue Winter 1996, p.40) "The Zapruder film and the language of proof". As far as the part of the article about the meaning and the language of "proof" is concerned, I can only say that to anyone familiar with the writings of people such as Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, William D. Gray or Terence Hines (see references in the previous issue of F.A.C.T.S.). Fetzer's writing is very low quality. I was surprised, but I felt I was beginning to see Fetzer for what he was. The more this guy talks, the less people will believe him! Anyway, a debate between Fetzer and Martin Shackelford started on the following issue of The Assassination Chronicles. It was very interesting, as Shackelford tore to pieces everything Fetzer said. It was clear that informed researchers like Shackelford were not impressed by Fetzer's research. At that point, at least it was interesting to know that some people knew about Fetzer's research and had listened to his arguments carefully, only to find flaws in his reasoning. It showed that Fetzer's evidence was not as convincing as he wanted us to believe. It soon became clear that it was low quality."

(http://zec-world.pagesperso-orange.fr/facts2.htm)

Well, that was more than ten years ago.

But today, things have not changed at all. Jim Fetzer keeps claiming that the Zapruder film was altered. Well, guess what, I have bought and have read all of Jim Fetzer's Kennedy assassination books. Indeed my attitude has always been to buy all the books I could, in order to have the right to criticize them. I buy the book, I read it, and then I think I have earned the right to give an opinion on it.

I try to follow high standards.

The same cannot be said of all conspiracy-theorists. While James DiEugenio did read Vincent Bugliosi's book, who else did in the conspiracy community ? Come on, be honest. I seem to remember having read somewhere that Gary Aguilar was quoted as saying that he had not read it (correct me if I'm wrong). It also looks like Len Osanic has not read it either. The list could go on, I'm sure. As for me, I try my best to read ALL POSSIBLE BOOKS thoroughly.

Well, to go back to Jim Fetzer, I have a lot to say about his ideas and the theories he puts forward. I now can safely say that he is making the anti-Warren community look bad with all his farfetched theories that don't hold water.

As for his "No moon landing" or "No planes in the towers" theories, my God, how idiotic can you be ? Next, he will tell us that Elvis Presley is not dead and the earth is square. Watch out, it won't be long before he will surely shout such outlandish ideas !

Well to cut a long story short, I have much to say about Jim Fetzer and his wrong theories. I will be traveling abroad soon, but I will definitely try to begin posting articles in this forum laying the sound arguments I have against Fetzer's theories. I'll do my best to write good-quality articles, trust me.

--> 3. I have not been here long but I already have made "enemies", or people who show they dislike me.

Well, so be it.

Still, I would like to say a few important things regarding that side of our taking part in this forum.

First of all, I want everybody to know that I am here for one reason only : to defend the truth. Indeed I sense that I have a certain knowledge of the facts in this event (the Kennedy assassination) and a few interesting ideas to share. I really believe that I have serious and good things to say.

Most of all, after twenty years of studying the case, I have become convinced that the case against Lee Oswald was proven BEYOND ANY DOUBT. So I want to share my convictions.

I am here to defend the official version, not because I want to waste my time (out of stupidity), or because I want to bother any of you (out of nastiness), but simply because I really believe in what I write. I really believe that Lee Oswald killed Kennedy. I really believe that facts prove his guilt. I really believe that conspiracy theorists are wrong in their conclusions. I really believe that I am serving the truth by writing messages here.

So, what do you all decide ?

Do I have the right to say the Warren Commission got it right ? Do I have the right to say that Lee Oswald was guilty and those who do not accept that fact are wrong ?

Am I allowed to post messages here ?

Or do you all want to prevent me from writing here on the grounds that I don't buy your conspiracy stuff ?

Must we believe in a conspiracy in order to be allowed to be a member here ?

So, to cut a long story short, and I am asking that question to everybody here : do you agree to debate with me, or do you want to choose to ignore me because I don't share your views ?

Shall we try to debate and enlighten each other, or keep on fighting, fueled only by pride ?

I have read carefully several threads here. My God. Sometimes it reaches very low levels, EVEN INSIDE THE RANKS OF CONSPIRACY THEORISTS.

In this forum, I have learned that David Lifton owes money to Jim Fetzer and still has not paid back… I mean, how low can we get. I don't think this should have been shared by anybody on any forum.

I don't want to know what Jim Fetzer and David Lifton do with their money, if you ask me.

Next, I have read Jim Fetzer's (and Jack White's) harsh comments on James DiEugenio, saying he is incompetent and should not talk about something he doesn't know. As if James DiEugenio or anybody else in the world did not have the right to say they believe that indeed two aircraft crashed into the twin towers on 09/11. No, we can't say that, because Jim Fetzer is an expert and he knows a lot more than us and he knows what's right and what's wrong, so we should keep our mouths shut !

Mister DiEugenio, I'll tell you what : we are not friends, I know, but in the thread "Lifton vs. Fetzer", you were attacked by Jim Fetzer and I read your posts and I thought you were very good and calm and I was 100% behind you on that !

But you see, Jim Fetzer as the same attitude toward you as you have toward me. He rejects you out of hand, with contempt, just as you are doing against me. So I hope what you have suffered from him will make you realize what you are doing to me, so in the future you may try to show a little more respect for me.

A little of the same applies to Pat Speer. He rushed on this thread to accuse me of being a McAdams newsgroup regular. When I said I was not, he posted a message accusing me of having posted 93 messages on McAdams newsgroup since the Summer of 2009. 93 messages in a year ! Boy ! Then, at my request, he checked again and found out that I had sent 82 messages in eleven years, which amounts to around 7 messages a year, on an average.

So, I must have sent about seven messages when Pat Speer accused me of sending 93 ! Talk of a difference !

Pat Speer is an honest person so he publicly acknowledged his mistake, without even being asked by me. Thank you, Sir.

Still, why the rush to come forward with a "93" number taken out of nowhere ? Was the intent to make me look bad ? Is it fair tactics ?

But James DiEugenio had the answer ready. He wrote that well, Pat Speer was almost right after all, for McAdams's newsgroup is kind of the same as alt.conspiracy.jfk (although the latter is NOT moderated).

You have a lot of nerve !

Well, allow me to differ.

Anyway…

At any rate, before I leave for today, let me, again state in the clearest fashion that I do have great admiration for people such as Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi, Dale Myers, Gary Mack and David Von Pein.

I have never met David Von Pein. But I love reading his articles. I think he is definitely one of the best !

I find it funny when I read accusations of me having been "sent" by McAdams, or things like that.

I have never met John McAdams, and I understand he is not very fond of me, if he remembers me at all, for that matter.

But that's not important. We are all working independently.

I can swear that all authors who defend the Warren Report's conclusions do so out of honesty, and because they REALLY BELIEVE in what the say and write.

To us, from Gerald Posner to David Von Pein, is it obvious that the evidence points to Oswald and that conspiracy theories are wrong, so we honestly claim that we believe in Oswald's sole guilt.

Is it so hard to understand for you conspiracy-minded people ? We don't do it for the money. We do it because we have studied the evidence and we have concluded that Oswald is guilty. Period.

We have the right to say it. We have the right to say you are wrong, when we see the flaws in your theories.

Resorting to ad hominem attacks is bad. But conspiracy theorists do that a lot. And they stop at nothing to make Warren-report defenders look bad.

For instance, Len Osanic's attacks on Gary Mack and the Sixth Floor museum are vicious, nasty, and completely off the mark. Recently, on this thread James DiEugenio accused Gary Mack of being a xxxx. I did resent that. I do think that Gary Mack is one of the most honest people the Kennedy-assassination community has known.

He is interested in the truth, and he wants to go where the facts lead. And he is doing a fine job. Can't conspiracy-minded folks realize that Gary Mack's decisions are made following reason and logic and common sense ? Why always accuse everybody who doesn't share your views as being "manipulated by big money" ?

That's being very, very unfair. Mister Len Osanic, please reconsider you position. Even better, please apologize.

And I am saying that as a perfectly independent person.

As I used to defend Gerald Posner a few years back on alt.conspiracy.jfk, I shall always try to defend honest people against vicious and dishonest attacks by people who should know better.

And finally, I had titled the thread "What's the point ?", because I am afraid newsgroups or forums have proved over the years that they do not produce any movement toward consensus or a shared body of sane conclusions, because people are here to talk or shout, not listen.

I do wish I were wrong, though…

OK. So, I promise to come back soon and try to answer all relevant questions, and go to the bottom of things and present sound and serious and reasonable arguments for the guilt of Lee Oswald and the absence of any conspiracy.

Have a good week-end.

/François Carlier/

Edited July 24, 2010 by François Carlier

[Bernie Laverick]

Fascinating stuff Francois. But tell me, when did Oswald first decide he was going to kill Kennedy?

[William Kelly]

Francois,

Thanks for coming clean and explaining your background and interests. Many if not most of the members of the Ed Forum really are eductaors or students or teachers of some speciality, and I think everybody ought to add some little tidbits about their major influences in their bios, like Francois has done.

Personally, I recall my logic professor Mrs. Labidie, and first political science teacher, Father Quinton Walsh, a Jesuit. There's also the special influence of one book that Doug Horne also recommends, Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

Such a revolutionary approach must be found regarding President Kennedy's assassination or it will forever be bogged down in endless intellectual debates on the subject.

As a Frenchman, you must be familair with the book Fairwell America and Heve Lemarr?

"President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians," said Heve Lemarr of French Intelligence. "It was a stage trick, complete with actor's accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way."

From The Big Con at Dealey Plaza:

Al Navis on Fariwell America:

Bill Turner on Fairwell America:

Bill Kelly

http://jfkcountercoup.wordpress.com/

Edited July 24, 2010 by William Kelly

[Greg Parker]

A little of the same applies to Pat Speer. He rushed on this thread to accuse me of being a McAdams newsgroup regular. When I said I was not, he posted a message accusing me of having posted 93 messages on McAdams newsgroup since the Summer of 2009. 93 messages in a year ! Boy ! Then, at my request, he checked again and found out that I had sent 82 messages in eleven years, which amounts to around 7 messages a year, on an average.

So, I must have sent about seven messages when Pat Speer accused me of sending 93 ! Talk of a difference !

Pat Speer is an honest person so he publicly acknowledged his mistake, without even being asked by me. Thank you, Sir.

Still, why the rush to come forward with a "93" number taken out of nowhere ? Was the intent to make me look bad ? Is it fair tactics ?

Was it a fair tactic, François? That is an accusation that Pat's error was deliberate. What critical thinking was used to come to the basis for this allegation?

What critical thinking and verification methods did you use when endorsing the claim that ammo boxes were found among Oswald's possessions? Why the "RUSH TO COME FORWARD" with that "evidence"?

Can't conspiracy-minded folks realize that Gary Mack's decisions are made following reason and logic and common sense ?

Was his decision to tell you about the ammo boxes an example of his reasoning, logic and search for the facts?

[Pat Speer]

Francois, since you have so much respect for Von Pein and Bugliosi, I am wondering if you are aware of the following...

From patspeer.com, chapter 9b:

In 2008, it became apparent that Vincent Bugliosi's misrepresentation of the Kennedy assassination witness statements was no one-time mistake, and that such misrepresentations were for him quite possibly business as usual. A website was created for his book, with excerpts from many of the positive reviews cited above. Included in these quotes, however, was a quote from an unexpected source, noted conspiracy theorist Dr. David Mantik. The quote read: "It is likely that [Reclaiming History] will stand forever as the magnum opus of this case. . . . It is a masterpiece." This was a bold and deliberate misrepresentation of Mantik's actual comments, however, which read, in part:

"It is likely that this book will stand as the magnum opus of this case--though not without serious flaws...I would liken the book to a house held aloft by a multitude of stilts...The problem, as we shall amply soon see, is that he (Bugliosi) wears permanent blinders, particularly when it comes to experts, and especially so for those from science...As I see it, the fundamental difference between scientists and lawyers lies in epistemology—i.e., how does one define, or even find, truth? For lawyers, steeped in the adversarial system, the answer is clear-cut: use expert witnesses, and then let a jury vote. For a scientist, the very notion of a debate, and then a vote on truth, would be absurd, simply laughed out of court in a nanosecond. Instead, the scientist would set up a controlled experiment, perform multiple measurements, and then publish his results in a peer reviewed journal. But for his work to be accepted as part of the scientific corpus, it would likely be repeated several times over by independent groups...B’s book represents a massive, even prodigious, outpouring of work. One must be either mad or a genius to wallow for 20 years in such an interminable project..In its own way, it is a masterpiece--a truly great prosecutorial brief...As would be expected, he sometimes misuses medical terms (and even misunderstands what I know), but overall he communicates these issues well, though we often disagree profoundly on interpretation. Whenever possible, though, he prefers simply to quote the experts who side with him, especially those from the WC and House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Of course, that’s precisely what we should expect: lawyers are paid for presenting the experts, not for presenting the evidence. B rarely shows much originality or personal ability to analyze the medical or scientific data. In essence, he operates with a crutch virtually all of the time—without these experts at his side he is a near cripple. As for me, coming from a scientific background, and being thoroughly familiar with virtually all of this JFK (medical and scientific) evidence, I found B’s myopic and closed-minded view of this critical data acutely disappointing. How can one dialogue with a lawyer who hides behind his chosen experts? Somehow, from such a brilliant mind, I had hoped for more. It was, of course, unreasonable of me. The gap between the different cultures is simply too large."

Now this was clearly a negative review, calling into question not only the accuracy of the information presented in the book, but Bugliosi's ability to interpret the information. Even so, in May 2008 the abbreviated quote in which Mantik appeared to rave about a "masterpiece" was put on the jacket of Four Days in November, the scarcely-noticed paperback abbreviation of Bugliosi's monstrous book.

On 6-12-2008, Bugliosi's number one fan David Von Pein sent Bugliosi's secretary an e-mail complaining about this and other developments. He posted this online. It concluded:

"I really wanted Vince B. to know about these things (which

I truly don't think he's aware of at all) -- especially the Mantik

review blurbs, which, as mentioned, are just flat-out embarrassing

after reading Mantik's WHOLE review.

It makes it look as if the publisher (Norton) is so desperate for ANY

kind of praise from the pro-conspiracy crowd that they are willing to

bend the context of Mantik's words to suit their own pro-RH purposes.

And that's not a good thing at all, in my view."

Von Pein received no response to his complaint, and the bastardized "quote" of Mantik praising Reclaiming History is still featured on its website.

This was actually not surprising. You see, what Von Pein failed to realize was that the deliberate misuse of Mantik's words was quite possibly not thought up by Bugliosi's publisher, but by Bugliosi himself. In late 2007, when the first negative reviews of Reclaiming History started trickling to the surface, Bugliosi chose to respond by attacking his critics, and to try to show them the error of their ways. To do this, he threatened them with lawsuits and quoted liberally from what he contended were positive reviews of his book. One such quote came from David Mantik's largely negative review of his book. It went like this: "It is likely that (Reclaiming History) will stand forever as the magnum opus of this case...It is a masterpiece."

While it's certainly possible that someone from Bugliosi's publisher furnished him this quote, and that he innocently repeated it, it seems highly unlikely that Bugliosi would fail to read a review by a prominent conspiracy theorist, particularly one in which the writer called his book "a masterpiece." As a result we can feel quite certain that Bugliosi knows full well his use of the quote is deceptive. And that he simply doesn't care.

So, Francois, 1)do you agree that Bugliosi's use of Mantik's quote is deceptive? And 2)if you believe it to be deceptive, does this not cast doubt upon his character, and the accuracy of his book?

[Guest Tom Scully]

Hello everybody,

I have been quite busy these past few days. I don't have the time to come here as often as I would like so unfortunately I sometimes fail to answer interesting questions (or vicious attacks, as the case my be).

That's too bad, since there is soooo much to say.

This morning, rapidly, I would like to send a general message to the audience here. I would like to lay the foundations, give the basics of who I am, what I think, where I'm going, so everybody can understand my point before we go on debating specific subjects...

...I'll address miscellaneous points, in no special order.

First of all, I want everybody to know that I am here for one reason only : to defend the truth. Indeed I sense that I have a certain knowledge of the facts in this event (the Kennedy assassination) and a few interesting ideas to share. I really believe that I have serious and good things to say.

Most of all, after twenty years of studying the case, I have become convinced that the case against Lee Oswald was proven BEYOND ANY DOUBT. So I want to share my convictions.

I am here to defend the official version, not because I want to waste my time (out of stupidity), or because I want to bother any of you (out of nastiness), but simply because I really believe in what I write. I really believe that Lee Oswald killed Kennedy. I really believe that facts prove his guilt. I really believe that conspiracy theorists are wrong in their conclusions. I really believe that I am serving the truth by writing messages here.

So, what do you all decide ?

Do I have the right to say the Warren Commission got it right ? Do I have the right to say that Lee Oswald was guilty and those who do not accept that fact are wrong ?

Am I allowed to post messages here ?

Or do you all want to prevent me from writing here on the grounds that I don't buy your conspiracy stuff ?

Must we believe in a conspiracy in order to be allowed to be a member here ?

So, to cut a long story short, and I am asking that question to everybody here : do you agree to debate with me, or do you want to choose to ignore me because I don't share your views ?

Shall we try to debate and enlighten each other, or keep on fighting, fueled only by pride ?

I have read carefully several threads here. My God. Sometimes it reaches very low levels, EVEN INSIDE THE RANKS OF CONSPIRACY THEORISTS....

/François Carlier/

Until I read this post of yours, François I had decided that my fellow forum members were making a mistake by responding to you. I was not going to grow this thread any further by posting anything here. I did keep reading the posts on the thread as it grew, and the contents of your most recent post conveyed your sincerity and your frustration, so here I am. Welcome to the forum.

You have the same right to post your opinions here as any other member. You'll have to earn the trust and respect

of other members, and your last post has persuaded me to respect you and to trust you believe what you are posting.

From my point of view, your trust in the findings of the Warren Commission surprises me because, in order to trust the findings you have to trust the processes of that Commission and the integrity of the Commissioners and of the important senior investigative counsels. You have to trust the integrity of the FBI and of the completeness and the integrity of the evidence it turned over to the Warren Commission.

Since I have found glaring conflicted interests of some of the commissioners and of a key senior assistant investigative counsel, and of two of three people who recommended that counsel to the Commission for its approval, and of the evidence the FBI presented, and withheld, I cannot trust the reliability of the findings in the Warren Report, especially with regard to its findings related to the involvement of organized crime in either of the two

assassinations the report's findings cover.

I don't have to provide an alternative explanation as to what happened, I don't have to engage you in a debate. I

only have to present and defend my findings and supporting citations to make my case that the Warren Report is too compromised to be believed. It was required that none of the Commissioners or counsel even be suspected of being influenced by, or to have relationships with organized crime figures and that the FBI disclose all that it knew related to the evidence and to the names and the statements of any and all witnesses it interviewed and submitted statements from.

I can present enough solid information to prove that those requirements were grossly violated.

So, I know that you say you trust the Warren Commission's findings. I know that the findings were based on a flawed and compromised process, and that is the only truth about the findings that I can trust. If the findings are reliable, it is due to a fortunate accident and not because of the integrity, intent, and methods of the commissioners and all senior assistant investigative counsels, because I can prove it was lacking to the point that invalidated the reliability of the findings in the Warren Report.

You say you are open to the truth and that you believe you have found it. The possibility exists, then, for you to

consider the information I can share with you. You could end up agreeing that a reasonable person, knowing what I know, could believe the findings of the report are compromised because of the flaws I described above. It would be difficult then, to say that a reasonable person could ignore the flaws and believe in the accuracy of the findings in the report.

[William Kelly]

F.A.C.T.S.

Frenchman Against Conspiracy TheorieS

Bulletin anglophone réalisé par François Carlier.

Vous pouvez réagir à ce dossier dans son forum en ligne associé. http://www.zetetique....org/facts.htmlgoogle_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);

VOLUME 1, NUMBER1 - November 1998

Contentshttp://www.zetetique.ldh.org/facts.html

• editorial
• an article by F.C.
• a few thoughts
• selected bibliography
  Editorial
  Dear reader, you are now holding (or seeing on your computer screen) the new international JFK assassination research journal. It is written by me, François Carlier, a French researcher. This journal has two advantages. Firstly, it is free ! And secondly, it is written with an open-mind. My aim is to apply critical-thinking methods to the JFK-assassination mystery. Contrary to what is too often seen with would-be researchers, here reason is placed above passion ; in "F.A.C.T.S." I will weigh evidence, separate facts from fiction, distinguish between what is relevant and what is not, identify arguments ; make sure fallacies and bad arguments are avoided, and most of all, call a spade a spade ! Some people only care about making a big name for themselves, others care only about making money. I do not belong to either category ! Well, I know I don't live in Dallas, and unlike some writers, I do not claim to have learned the whole 26 volumes by heart ! But I have enough common sense, I am intelligent enough, I know enough of science to be able to tell what's possible and what is not, what is clever and what is ludicrous. I have nothing to sell. Put simply I only want to apply honesty and logic in order to seek and tell the truth !
  PS : Needless to say, you are welcome to give your feedback, opinion, reaction. Passion and insults don't belong here. Reason, logic and healthy debate, that's what's "F.A.C.T.S." is all about.
  Enjoy your reading
  An outsider's view of the Kennedy assassination community.
  (The following is an article that I had written in the spring of 1997. It dealt with my previous trip to Dallas. I had sent it to many people in the research community. It is reproduced here for those didn't have the chance to receive it, and because it is worth reading for anybody !)
  I went to Dallas last November ! I was very excited. I had been interested in the Kennedy assassination for years, I had read dozens of books, and there, for the first time, I was going to attend conferences by the best-known researchers in the world, I would have a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of listening to them and talking to them. Most important I expected to hear the most convincing arguments against the Warren Commission version.
  Well, let me tell you very briefly what kind of guy I am. As far as making an opinion goes, I am a follower of the scientific method. To give you a good idea of my approach I read books by authors such as James Randi, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, Joe Nickell, and other people from the CSICOP. I particularly like the way they debunk hoaxers. I am myself an amateur conjurer, and a founder member of a French scientific association that copies the CSICOP. One thing was important for me. I had twice read "Case closed" by Gerald Posner. I had been impressed. Then I had bought and read "Case open" by Harold Weisberg. And I had been very disappointed. I had hoped Weisberg would address the criticisms raised by Posner but he did not do that to my satisfaction, far from it. I was hoping I could ask every researcher what they thought of the book, and what they had to answer to the criticism. I expected to see debates ; researchers and experts confronting arguments. Then the assistance could ask questions ; I had hundreds of questions to ask. (But soon enough I would discover that that was not to be !).. On the plane from Paris to the USA I was reading an American book by William D. Gray "Thinking critically about New Age ideas", a book which teaches critical-thinking skills and among others how to identify arguments, to recognize fallacies and other bad arguments. I wondered how many people in the JFK critical community had read that fascinating book.
  I had registered to attend the COPA conference and the JFK-Lancer conference. Excitement grew as the JFK-Lancer conference began. I was all ears. I was impressed by what I was showed. The speakers were indeed very good ! But the assistance had very little time - if any - to ask questions. And we came nowhere near having any kind of debate ! But let me now give you an example that speaks for itself and illustrates the point I want to make. On day one, a researcher called Mark Oakes gave a lecture. It was about the Paschall film and Dallas witnesses. All right, I said, that's interesting. Then the day after, in the same room, under the auspices of the same JFK-Lancer, there was a lecture on the Zapruder film. The Zapruder film symposium, with David Mantik, David Lifton, James Fetzer and Jack White. I talked to Mantik and Fetzer afterwards. They were utterly convinced the Zapruder film was altered. But then, the day after, still in the same room, I saw Mark Oakes again and decided to go and talk to him. I asked him his opinion about the possibility of the Zapruder film being a forgery. His answer startled me, to say the least. He wasn't aware that it was an issue, nor was he aware that some people had talked about that on the previous day, for he was out of town making filmed interviews ! I then realized that the speakers were separate and had not met. All that was well, but here I was realizing I was not about to reach certainty on any given issue. It was clear to me that not everybody agreed with each other among the experts invited by JFK-Lancer. More important, some of them were not even aware of what the others were saying. All this showed me that I had overestimated the organizers' grasp of the zetetician way of thinking, the scientific method, the rational, unbiased and foolproof way of investigating. The day after, Mantik and Fetzer had an argument with Robert Groden during one of the COPA lectures, concerning the Zapruder film. It was clear to me that I would go back to France with more questions than I had when leaving. And I had better forget about any chance of having answers ; thirty-three years after the assassination, the top experts in the field did not even agree on whether the film of the assassination was forged or not !
  In Dallas I learned more about the quarrels between different researchers than about the Kennedy case proper. And at no time was I or anybody who was attending the conferences, for that matter, given a chance of asking pertinent questions to speakers. It was always a race in-between lectures, to get an opportunity of interviewing some of them. Good thing I was French and coming from far away : it gave me the right to ask questions that was not granted to other people ! Looking back it was a disappointing experience. I had thought the research community was a group of people working together with the common aim of getting at the truth (that would sound logical to me). On the contrary I found men speaking ill of their colleagues (so-and-so is a thief, so-and-so is a xxxx) and working each in their corner. But never did I find men having debates. Yet, that should be the thing to do.
  Another thing which I would like to mention is the difficulty I have encountered when trying to have an answer to even simple questions. It seems as if the JFK assassination researchers are inaccessible men. There are so many of them to whom I wrote, asking interesting questions, but who never seemed to find the time to reply. I have to say that Doctor Wecht has always been very nice, always showing great patience, always replying to my letters rapidly and sending lots of interesting documents. I owe him a lot. But in contrast, I have got to say that some researchers are not willing to help. One of them, whom I will not name, to whom I had written in order to have his opinion on specific points, sent me a letter saying he had no time to answer, but remembered to put an order slip for his new book in the envelope !
  Anyway my quest for clear-cut answers continues. On the Internet I have found lots of interesting articles. I hereby would like to mention two of them, which I urge everybody to read.

1. 
   Well I think that will do, if you do read all those sources. It all adds up to a huge number of arguments against Lifton's theory by knowledgeable people. I state it again : David Lifton is no physician. Yet he writes a medical theory that is ridiculed by doctors. At the very least, we should use caution with his theory and avoid jumping to conclusions. Was Lifton trained as a physician, a pathologist ? Drs Baden, Lattimer and Wecht are far better trained than he is, but all three say Lifton's theory is crap ! Then he claims the body was taken off its casket, when Dave Powers says the casket was never left unguarded. What do you make of all this ? I mean, Dave Powers was on board the plane. Lifton was not ! Some people never learn.
   A lot of people (not me, I am talking about Artwohl, Wecht, Groden Posner, Moore, Powers, etc.) have criticized David Lifton's theory. They say it is wrong, they say it is ludicrous, they say it is just impossible. So now, it is your turn, Mister Lifton, to answer. Either you can answer, and in that case please do it, for we are all waiting for your answer, or you can't, which means you were wrong. We want to know ! It is put up or shut up.
   (Addendum : This article was recently posted on an Internet newsgroup. Needless to say, some people liked it and others didn't. But instead of giving arguments, those you disagreed could only write insults with their keyboard ! Following is a summing up of what I replied to angry posts.)
   The point is, this fellow Lifton wrote a book in which he puts forth a new theory. But when knowledgeable people such as doctors (take Artwohl, Wecht and Baden, for instance) read that book, they say it is absurd and ludicrous as well as impossible. And also Lifton, 17 years after the event, writes a book saying the body was stolen from the casket, when the very people who actually were there swear the casket was never left unattended. And those are just a few examples (I listed more in my article). So to the reader it surely looks like this theory is wrong. So it seems quite evident that its author has to explain why he still believes in it and why he wants us to believe in it. In short, if he wants to convince us, he will have to be convincing ! That means he will have to prove he is right. And that means he must answer the points raised by so many people who read the book, and they are people who are either better trained than Lifton is (Wecht and all) or who actually were there when Lifton was not !
   I mean Weisberg, Groden, Wecht, Aguilar, Kurtz, and lots of other people who are conspiracy theorists, that is they do not believe in the Warren report, say that Lifton is wrong. They have read his book but they do not believe his theory of body alteration and stuff. What I mean, and you should stop to think about it, is that the fact that those people reject Lifton's theory should make people realize what is obvious to anybody who can apply critical thinking methods. If Lifton is right, why isn't he believed by other conspiracy theorists ? If he is right, if his theory can so well explain the discrepancies between Dallas and Bethesda, why are there so few people who follow him ? I say that if Weisberg, Wecht, Groden, Aguilar, not to mention others, say that Lifton is wrong, that surely suggests he is indeed wrong !
   More to the point : people like Wecht, Moore Artwohl and Posner have challenged Lifton. He has never been able to answer them. Wouldn't he have answered if he could have ?
   Most people who believe in conspiracy theories lack the understanding that witnesses accounts must not be taken at face value. Whenever you investigate a crime or any affair, you have to base your conclusion on facts and scientific evidence, certainly not on what the witnesses tell. That is because out of any given number of witnesses to the same event, none will have remembered the event the same way. That was bound to happen in Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, in Bethesda, etc. like anywhere else. JFK was shot, and everybody remembered things that are utterly incompatible with one another. That was to be expected. It happens all the time and everywhere ! That does not mean that people were lying. It means human recollections are not something you should rely on. But critics rely on nothing but the witness statements that suit them. Lifton has gathered statements by witnesses that suit him. But there are as many statements by witnesses that destroy his theory. But those who want to believe him read only the eyewitnesses accounts that they like. But if they were smart, they would take into account all the eyewitness accounts. The conspiracy theorists would then see that those accounts contradict one another (that is normal) and realize that the majority of them destroy Lifton's theory.
   When David Lifton can convince Artwohl + Wecht + Baden that his theory is indeed a medical possibility, when he can convince Groden + Weisberg that his scenario makes sense, when he can answer to the sound arguments made by Posner + Moore + Kurtz in a convincing manner, then he will have gone a long way to prove his case. If he were right, that should be very easy to do ! But I am not holding my breath. This day will never happen. Only gullible people think he will ever be able to do that !
   a few thoughts
   I visited Internet newsgroups in order to check a few things, but I was kind of dumb - I admit that to expect people on these newsgroups to have anything interesting to say. I learned nothing. But I read countless posts full of garbage and insults and emptiness.
   People like me try to be constructive, and honestly debate, discuss, think, give arguments, weigh evidence, and move forward ! But most people can do nothing but insult others, try to make fun of them, resort to ad hominem attacks, and duck the issues by refusing to answer. They don't know what critical thinking is. Now, I admit that answering my questions is hard, certainly harder than insulting me via a computer !
   Conspiracy theorists can't be stopped in their dream world : they claim the X-rays were altered, the autopsy photos were altered, the backyard photos were altered, the body was altered, the Zapruder film was altered... What else ? I wonder what was genuine ?
   The also say the Mafia + the CIA + Johnson + the FBI + oil men + the DPD did it together. What a terrible country they are painting ! But I will tell you what. As a Frenchman, I believe in your institutions. Your government is legal and sound and clear. There never was a conspiracy. You live in a democracy. Your country is a fine one, and I like it a lot. A lone nut killed your president, and that's all there is to it. It was a sad event. I liked John Kennedy a lot, he was a great president. I wish he was still alive ! But I, for one, trust your government and your institutions. And I am not going to think otherwise because gullible people paint a big conspiracy where everybody was involved and every document forged !
   It is hard to have a debate on the JFK assassination issue. The whole field is plagued by passion and guts, and therefore instead of arguments and logic and reasoning, we too often can only read ad hominem attacks. What is that ? That occurs when someone attempts to refute a person's claim by attacking that person rather than the claim. It is a fallacy, i.e. a defective argument, one in which the premises do not provide an adequate basis for the conclusion. Indeed it is a fallacy because the person's character has no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim. Too many people in the JFK research community resort to ad hominem attacks. And Gerald Posner is the person who has suffered the most ad hominem attacks ! You all have forgotten that the truth or falsity of a claim depends ultimately on the facts, not on who makes it. I think I have read all that was written against Posner. And this is precisely what convinced me he must be right after all. Because all the criticism I found against him was ad hominem attacks, nothing of substance against the facts. Because those who criticize Posner don't give arguments pertaining to the facts of November 22, 1963. Instead they say Posner made a spelling mistake, or he said such WC member attended eight meetings when in fact it was only five. Who gives a damn ? I mean, Posner could have misspelled my name, for all I care. That has no bearing on the real issues ! For instance, the book "Case open" is the most empty book I have ever read. It is full of unnecessary commentary and insults. The books claims Posner took credit for other people's research. So what ? A critical thinker doesn't care who takes the credit for what. But he tries to know whether the research is good quality or not. And indeed Posner gives lots of intelligent arguments. For example, Posner is more honest that any critic because he openly says that experts (I mean, real experts, not self-proclaimed experts) of the HSCA have said, beyond any doubt, that the documents are real. Only a few conspiracy theorists, who are far from having the credentials of the HSCA experts, claim that they are forged ! Now that is a fact, and I thank Posner to have made it clear !
   Now, I admit he should make public his tape of his telephone interview with Boswell. If I were him I would surely do it at once. So on this particular aspect, I certainly support Gary Aguilar. No question.
   There is one aspect I thought about a long time ago. Critics claim Oswald had not enough time to go from the sixth floor to the second floor where Marion Baker and truly met him. So critics claim Oswald was on the second floor during the shooting and not on the sixth floor. They say Oswald was set up as the fall guy. But that does not make sense. In other words, critics are saying that plotters were very clever in their scenario, they had someone shoot at Kennedy, they made sure Oswald would be the accused by tying the shots to the rifle and the rifle to him, but they forgot to make sure he had no alibi. Indeed if I were to commit a crime and blame it on somebody else, I would make sure that person was not seen by anybody during the time of the crime. If you want to blame the assassination on Oswald, but let him go loose so he is seen on the second floor by a policeman too early after the shots to have been the shooter, then the patsy scenario collapses. I mean, it is clear that if whatever group of plotters had wanted to blame Oswald, they would have made sure he was not seen far from the sixth floor around the time of the shots ! Because otherwise anybody could have come forward saying they had seen Oswald on the second floor at, or just after the time of the shooting ! The whole plot (which had been prepared for months, according to the conspiracy theorists) would have collapsed on the spot ! That does not make sense. Do I make myself clear ? Anyway, it was indeed possible for Oswald to be on the second floor when he encountered Baker, as Jim Moore has written in his book.
   As far as the "research community" is concerned, one thing is obvious. I have realized that it is possible to write empty books that become best-sellers, it is possible to be considered as an expert even when that's not true, it is possible to earn lots of money without merit, it is possible to be admired by lots of people for no reason at all. The Kennedy assassination research community is full of people who consider themselves as intelligent experts. But they are not.
   The research community, as a whole, has to discard wrong theories. But you haven't had such courage yet. One example : Armstrong has a theory of two Oswalds that seems impressive. But David Lifton, who has researched that area, says it is all wrong. Now, organize a confrontation, and let them both debate in public. Then you can move from there. But you owe the public to say who was right and who was wrong. You cannot go on with both researchers keeping on claiming that "the other one is wrong". Because not both of them can be right. Only if you discard one of them can you keep your credibility as a research group. So what I'm saying is this : there are a lot of theories out there that may be true, or not. But it is high time you checked once and for all. You have to move forward. You are all wasting so much time making fun of those who don't share your opinions, but the inquiry into the case doesn't move a bit ! It's time to face FACTS.
   <A name=biblio>
   selected bibliography
   

• Kendrick Frazier, "Paranormal borderlands of science"
• Kendrick Frazier, "Science confronts the paranormal"
• Kendrick Frazier, "The hundredth monkey"
• Martin Gardner, "Fads and fallacies in the name of science"
• Martin Gardner, "Science : good, bad and bogus"
• Martin Gardner, "The New-Age : notes of a fringe watcher"
• Martin Gardner, "On the wild side"
• William D. Gray, "Thinking critically about new-age ideas"
• Terence Hines, "Pseudoscience and the paranormal"
• Ray Hyman, "The elusive quarry"
• Philip Klass, "UFO's : the public deceived"
• Philip Klass, "UFO abductions : a dangerous game"
• Paul Kurtz, "A skeptic's handbook of parapsychology"
• Larry Kusche, "The Bermuda triangle mystery - solved"
• James Randi, "The truth about Uri Geller"
• James Randi, "Flimflam"
• James Randi, "The faith healers"
  Talk to you next time
  This journal of research on the Kennedy assassination is sent free either by electronic mail or by snail mail to the following people : Doctor Cyril Wecht, David Lifton, Gary Aguilar, Jim Marrs, Robert Groden, Gerald Posner, Clint Bradford, John Mc Adams, Debra Conway, Jack White, George Michael Evica, John Judge, Anthony Summers, Walt Brown, Henri Hurt, Michael Kurtz, Michael Griffith, Ed Dolan, Jim Moore, Carl Oglesby, Craig Roberts, Robert Harris, Anthony Marsh, Gary Mack, Jerrol Custer, David Scheim, Mark Oakes, Thierry Lentz, William Reymond, Gary Shaw, Jo Backes, Greg Jaynes, Barb Junkkarinen, John Kelin, Jerry Organ, Larry Charbonneau, Ian Griggs, Gaeton Fonzi and Paul-Eric Blanrue.
  (About the author : François Carlier is a Frenchman who has spent his last ten years researching the JFK assassination and writing a book. He swears his next ten years will be spent differently, with more interesting topics : music and girls J ! In the meantime, you can send him your messages at : <A href="mailto:F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr">F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr )

Edited August 15, 2010 by William Kelly

[Bernie Laverick]

F.A.C.T.S.

Frenchman Against Conspiracy TheorieS

Bulletin anglophone réalisé par François Carlier.

Vous pouvez réagir à ce dossier dans son forum en ligne associé. http://www.zetetique....org/facts.htmlgoogle_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);

VOLUME 1, NUMBER1 - November 1998

Contentshttp://www.zetetique.ldh.org/facts.html

• editorial
• an article by F.C.
• a few thoughts
• selected bibliography
  Editorial
  Dear reader, you are now holding (or seeing on your computer screen) the new international JFK assassination research journal. It is written by me, François Carlier, a French researcher. This journal has two advantages. Firstly, it is free ! And secondly, it is written with an open-mind. My aim is to apply critical-thinking methods to the JFK-assassination mystery. Contrary to what is too often seen with would-be researchers, here reason is placed above passion ; in "F.A.C.T.S." I will weigh evidence, separate facts from fiction, distinguish between what is relevant and what is not, identify arguments ; make sure fallacies and bad arguments are avoided, and most of all, call a spade a spade ! Some people only care about making a big name for themselves, others care only about making money. I do not belong to either category ! Well, I know I don't live in Dallas, and unlike some writers, I do not claim to have learned the whole 26 volumes by heart ! But I have enough common sense, I am intelligent enough, I know enough of science to be able to tell what's possible and what is not, what is clever and what is ludicrous. I have nothing to sell. Put simply I only want to apply honesty and logic in order to seek and tell the truth !
  PS : Needless to say, you are welcome to give your feedback, opinion, reaction. Passion and insults don't belong here. Reason, logic and healthy debate, that's what's "F.A.C.T.S." is all about.
  Enjoy your reading
  An outsider's view of the Kennedy assassination community.
  (The following is an article that I had written in the spring of 1997. It dealt with my previous trip to Dallas. I had sent it to many people in the research community. It is reproduced here for those didn't have the chance to receive it, and because it is worth reading for anybody !)
  I went to Dallas last November ! I was very excited. I had been interested in the Kennedy assassination for years, I had read dozens of books, and there, for the first time, I was going to attend conferences by the best-known researchers in the world, I would have a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of listening to them and talking to them. Most important I expected to hear the most convincing arguments against the Warren Commission version.
  Well, let me tell you very briefly what kind of guy I am. As far as making an opinion goes, I am a follower of the scientific method. To give you a good idea of my approach I read books by authors such as James Randi, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, Joe Nickell, and other people from the CSICOP. I particularly like the way they debunk hoaxers. I am myself an amateur conjurer, and a founder member of a French scientific association that copies the CSICOP. One thing was important for me. I had twice read "Case closed" by Gerald Posner. I had been impressed. Then I had bought and read "Case open" by Harold Weisberg. And I had been very disappointed. I had hoped Weisberg would address the criticisms raised by Posner but he did not do that to my satisfaction, far from it. I was hoping I could ask every researcher what they thought of the book, and what they had to answer to the criticism. I expected to see debates ; researchers and experts confronting arguments. Then the assistance could ask questions ; I had hundreds of questions to ask. (But soon enough I would discover that that was not to be !).. On the plane from Paris to the USA I was reading an American book by William D. Gray "Thinking critically about New Age ideas", a book which teaches critical-thinking skills and among others how to identify arguments, to recognize fallacies and other bad arguments. I wondered how many people in the JFK critical community had read that fascinating book.
  I had registered to attend the COPA conference and the JFK-Lancer conference. Excitement grew as the JFK-Lancer conference began. I was all ears. I was impressed by what I was showed. The speakers were indeed very good ! But the assistance had very little time - if any - to ask questions. And we came nowhere near having any kind of debate ! But let me now give you an example that speaks for itself and illustrates the point I want to make. On day one, a researcher called Mark Oakes gave a lecture. It was about the Paschall film and Dallas witnesses. All right, I said, that's interesting. Then the day after, in the same room, under the auspices of the same JFK-Lancer, there was a lecture on the Zapruder film. The Zapruder film symposium, with David Mantik, David Lifton, James Fetzer and Jack White. I talked to Mantik and Fetzer afterwards. They were utterly convinced the Zapruder film was altered. But then, the day after, still in the same room, I saw Mark Oakes again and decided to go and talk to him. I asked him his opinion about the possibility of the Zapruder film being a forgery. His answer startled me, to say the least. He wasn't aware that it was an issue, nor was he aware that some people had talked about that on the previous day, for he was out of town making filmed interviews ! I then realized that the speakers were separate and had not met. All that was well, but here I was realizing I was not about to reach certainty on any given issue. It was clear to me that not everybody agreed with each other among the experts invited by JFK-Lancer. More important, some of them were not even aware of what the others were saying. All this showed me that I had overestimated the organizers' grasp of the zetetician way of thinking, the scientific method, the rational, unbiased and foolproof way of investigating. The day after, Mantik and Fetzer had an argument with Robert Groden during one of the COPA lectures, concerning the Zapruder film. It was clear to me that I would go back to France with more questions than I had when leaving. And I had better forget about any chance of having answers ; thirty-three years after the assassination, the top experts in the field did not even agree on whether the film of the assassination was forged or not !
  In Dallas I learned more about the quarrels between different researchers than about the Kennedy case proper. And at no time was I or anybody who was attending the conferences, for that matter, given a chance of asking pertinent questions to speakers. It was always a race in-between lectures, to get an opportunity of interviewing some of them. Good thing I was French and coming from far away : it gave me the right to ask questions that was not granted to other people ! Looking back it was a disappointing experience. I had thought the research community was a group of people working together with the common aim of getting at the truth (that would sound logical to me). On the contrary I found men speaking ill of their colleagues (so-and-so is a thief, so-and-so is a xxxx) and working each in their corner. But never did I find men having debates. Yet, that should be the thing to do.
  Another thing which I would like to mention is the difficulty I have encountered when trying to have an answer to even simple questions. It seems as if the JFK assassination researchers are inaccessible men. There are so many of them to whom I wrote, asking interesting questions, but who never seemed to find the time to reply. I have to say that Doctor Wecht has always been very nice, always showing great patience, always replying to my letters rapidly and sending lots of interesting documents. I owe him a lot. But in contrast, I have got to say that some researchers are not willing to help. One of them, whom I will not name, to whom I had written in order to have his opinion on specific points, sent me a letter saying he had no time to answer, but remembered to put an order slip for his new book in the envelope !
  Anyway my quest for clear-cut answers continues. On the Internet I have found lots of interesting articles. I hereby would like to mention two of them, which I urge everybody to read.

1. 
   Well I think that will do, if you do read all those sources. It all adds up to a huge number of arguments against Lifton's theory by knowledgeable people. I state it again : David Lifton is no physician. Yet he writes a medical theory that is ridiculed by doctors. At the very least, we should use caution with his theory and avoid jumping to conclusions. Was Lifton trained as a physician, a pathologist ? Drs Baden, Lattimer and Wecht are far better trained than he is, but all three say Lifton's theory is crap ! Then he claims the body was taken off its casket, when Dave Powers says the casket was never left unguarded. What do you make of all this ? I mean, Dave Powers was on board the plane. Lifton was not ! Some people never learn.
   A lot of people (not me, I am talking about Artwohl, Wecht, Groden Posner, Moore, Powers, etc.) have criticized David Lifton's theory. They say it is wrong, they say it is ludicrous, they say it is just impossible. So now, it is your turn, Mister Lifton, to answer. Either you can answer, and in that case please do it, for we are all waiting for your answer, or you can't, which means you were wrong. We want to know ! It is put up or shut up.
   (Addendum : This article was recently posted on an Internet newsgroup. Needless to say, some people liked it and others didn't. But instead of giving arguments, those you disagreed could only write insults with their keyboard ! Following is a summing up of what I replied to angry posts.)
   The point is, this fellow Lifton wrote a book in which he puts forth a new theory. But when knowledgeable people such as doctors (take Artwohl, Wecht and Baden, for instance) read that book, they say it is absurd and ludicrous as well as impossible. And also Lifton, 17 years after the event, writes a book saying the body was stolen from the casket, when the very people who actually were there swear the casket was never left unattended. And those are just a few examples (I listed more in my article). So to the reader it surely looks like this theory is wrong. So it seems quite evident that its author has to explain why he still believes in it and why he wants us to believe in it. In short, if he wants to convince us, he will have to be convincing ! That means he will have to prove he is right. And that means he must answer the points raised by so many people who read the book, and they are people who are either better trained than Lifton is (Wecht and all) or who actually were there when Lifton was not !
   I mean Weisberg, Groden, Wecht, Aguilar, Kurtz, and lots of other people who are conspiracy theorists, that is they do not believe in the Warren report, say that Lifton is wrong. They have read his book but they do not believe his theory of body alteration and stuff. What I mean, and you should stop to think about it, is that the fact that those people reject Lifton's theory should make people realize what is obvious to anybody who can apply critical thinking methods. If Lifton is right, why isn't he believed by other conspiracy theorists ? If he is right, if his theory can so well explain the discrepancies between Dallas and Bethesda, why are there so few people who follow him ? I say that if Weisberg, Wecht, Groden, Aguilar, not to mention others, say that Lifton is wrong, that surely suggests he is indeed wrong !
   More to the point : people like Wecht, Moore Artwohl and Posner have challenged Lifton. He has never been able to answer them. Wouldn't he have answered if he could have ?
   Most people who believe in conspiracy theories lack the understanding that witnesses accounts must not be taken at face value. Whenever you investigate a crime or any affair, you have to base your conclusion on facts and scientific evidence, certainly not on what the witnesses tell. That is because out of any given number of witnesses to the same event, none will have remembered the event the same way. That was bound to happen in Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, in Bethesda, etc. like anywhere else. JFK was shot, and everybody remembered things that are utterly incompatible with one another. That was to be expected. It happens all the time and everywhere ! That does not mean that people were lying. It means human recollections are not something you should rely on. But critics rely on nothing but the witness statements that suit them. Lifton has gathered statements by witnesses that suit him. But there are as many statements by witnesses that destroy his theory. But those who want to believe him read only the eyewitnesses accounts that they like. But if they were smart, they would take into account all the eyewitness accounts. The conspiracy theorists would then see that those accounts contradict one another (that is normal) and realize that the majority of them destroy Lifton's theory.
   When David Lifton can convince Artwohl + Wecht + Baden that his theory is indeed a medical possibility, when he can convince Groden + Weisberg that his scenario makes sense, when he can answer to the sound arguments made by Posner + Moore + Kurtz in a convincing manner, then he will have gone a long way to prove his case. If he were right, that should be very easy to do ! But I am not holding my breath. This day will never happen. Only gullible people think he will ever be able to do that !
   a few thoughts
   I visited Internet newsgroups in order to check a few things, but I was kind of dumb - I admit that to expect people on these newsgroups to have anything interesting to say. I learned nothing. But I read countless posts full of garbage and insults and emptiness.
   People like me try to be constructive, and honestly debate, discuss, think, give arguments, weigh evidence, and move forward ! But most people can do nothing but insult others, try to make fun of them, resort to ad hominem attacks, and duck the issues by refusing to answer. They don't know what critical thinking is. Now, I admit that answering my questions is hard, certainly harder than insulting me via a computer !
   Conspiracy theorists can't be stopped in their dream world : they claim the X-rays were altered, the autopsy photos were altered, the backyard photos were altered, the body was altered, the Zapruder film was altered... What else ? I wonder what was genuine ?
   The also say the Mafia + the CIA + Johnson + the FBI + oil men + the DPD did it together. What a terrible country they are painting ! But I will tell you what. As a Frenchman, I believe in your institutions. Your government is legal and sound and clear. There never was a conspiracy. You live in a democracy. Your country is a fine one, and I like it a lot. A lone nut killed your president, and that's all there is to it. It was a sad event. I liked John Kennedy a lot, he was a great president. I wish he was still alive ! But I, for one, trust your government and your institutions. And I am not going to think otherwise because gullible people paint a big conspiracy where everybody was involved and every document forged !
   It is hard to have a debate on the JFK assassination issue. The whole field is plagued by passion and guts, and therefore instead of arguments and logic and reasoning, we too often can only read ad hominem attacks. What is that ? That occurs when someone attempts to refute a person's claim by attacking that person rather than the claim. It is a fallacy, i.e. a defective argument, one in which the premises do not provide an adequate basis for the conclusion. Indeed it is a fallacy because the person's character has no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim. Too many people in the JFK research community resort to ad hominem attacks. And Gerald Posner is the person who has suffered the most ad hominem attacks ! You all have forgotten that the truth or falsity of a claim depends ultimately on the facts, not on who makes it. I think I have read all that was written against Posner. And this is precisely what convinced me he must be right after all. Because all the criticism I found against him was ad hominem attacks, nothing of substance against the facts. Because those who criticize Posner don't give arguments pertaining to the facts of November 22, 1963. Instead they say Posner made a spelling mistake, or he said such WC member attended eight meetings when in fact it was only five. Who gives a damn ? I mean, Posner could have misspelled my name, for all I care. That has no bearing on the real issues ! For instance, the book "Case open" is the most empty book I have ever read. It is full of unnecessary commentary and insults. The books claims Posner took credit for other people's research. So what ? A critical thinker doesn't care who takes the credit for what. But he tries to know whether the research is good quality or not. And indeed Posner gives lots of intelligent arguments. For example, Posner is more honest that any critic because he openly says that experts (I mean, real experts, not self-proclaimed experts) of the HSCA have said, beyond any doubt, that the documents are real. Only a few conspiracy theorists, who are far from having the credentials of the HSCA experts, claim that they are forged ! Now that is a fact, and I thank Posner to have made it clear !
   Now, I admit he should make public his tape of his telephone interview with Boswell. If I were him I would surely do it at once. So on this particular aspect, I certainly support Gary Aguilar. No question.
   There is one aspect I thought about a long time ago. Critics claim Oswald had not enough time to go from the sixth floor to the second floor where Marion Baker and truly met him. So critics claim Oswald was on the second floor during the shooting and not on the sixth floor. They say Oswald was set up as the fall guy. But that does not make sense. In other words, critics are saying that plotters were very clever in their scenario, they had someone shoot at Kennedy, they made sure Oswald would be the accused by tying the shots to the rifle and the rifle to him, but they forgot to make sure he had no alibi. Indeed if I were to commit a crime and blame it on somebody else, I would make sure that person was not seen by anybody during the time of the crime. If you want to blame the assassination on Oswald, but let him go loose so he is seen on the second floor by a policeman too early after the shots to have been the shooter, then the patsy scenario collapses. I mean, it is clear that if whatever group of plotters had wanted to blame Oswald, they would have made sure he was not seen far from the sixth floor around the time of the shots ! Because otherwise anybody could have come forward saying they had seen Oswald on the second floor at, or just after the time of the shooting ! The whole plot (which had been prepared for months, according to the conspiracy theorists) would have collapsed on the spot ! That does not make sense. Do I make myself clear ? Anyway, it was indeed possible for Oswald to be on the second floor when he encountered Baker, as Jim Moore has written in his book.
   As far as the "research community" is concerned, one thing is obvious. I have realized that it is possible to write empty books that become best-sellers, it is possible to be considered as an expert even when that's not true, it is possible to earn lots of money without merit, it is possible to be admired by lots of people for no reason at all. The Kennedy assassination research community is full of people who consider themselves as intelligent experts. But they are not.
   The research community, as a whole, has to discard wrong theories. But you haven't had such courage yet. One example : Armstrong has a theory of two Oswalds that seems impressive. But David Lifton, who has researched that area, says it is all wrong. Now, organize a confrontation, and let them both debate in public. Then you can move from there. But you owe the public to say who was right and who was wrong. You cannot go on with both researchers keeping on claiming that "the other one is wrong". Because not both of them can be right. Only if you discard one of them can you keep your credibility as a research group. So what I'm saying is this : there are a lot of theories out there that may be true, or not. But it is high time you checked once and for all. You have to move forward. You are all wasting so much time making fun of those who don't share your opinions, but the inquiry into the case doesn't move a bit ! It's time to face FACTS.
   <A name=biblio>
   selected bibliography
   

• Kendrick Frazier, "Paranormal borderlands of science"
• Kendrick Frazier, "Science confronts the paranormal"
• Kendrick Frazier, "The hundredth monkey"
• Martin Gardner, "Fads and fallacies in the name of science"
• Martin Gardner, "Science : good, bad and bogus"
• Martin Gardner, "The New-Age : notes of a fringe watcher"
• Martin Gardner, "On the wild side"
• William D. Gray, "Thinking critically about new-age ideas"
• Terence Hines, "Pseudoscience and the paranormal"
• Ray Hyman, "The elusive quarry"
• Philip Klass, "UFO's : the public deceived"
• Philip Klass, "UFO abductions : a dangerous game"
• Paul Kurtz, "A skeptic's handbook of parapsychology"
• Larry Kusche, "The Bermuda triangle mystery - solved"
• James Randi, "The truth about Uri Geller"
• James Randi, "Flimflam"
• James Randi, "The faith healers"
  Talk to you next time
  This journal of research on the Kennedy assassination is sent free either by electronic mail or by snail mail to the following people : Doctor Cyril Wecht, David Lifton, Gary Aguilar, Jim Marrs, Robert Groden, Gerald Posner, Clint Bradford, John Mc Adams, Debra Conway, Jack White, George Michael Evica, John Judge, Anthony Summers, Walt Brown, Henri Hurt, Michael Kurtz, Michael Griffith, Ed Dolan, Jim Moore, Carl Oglesby, Craig Roberts, Robert Harris, Anthony Marsh, Gary Mack, Jerrol Custer, David Scheim, Mark Oakes, Thierry Lentz, William Reymond, Gary Shaw, Jo Backes, Greg Jaynes, Barb Junkkarinen, John Kelin, Jerry Organ, Larry Charbonneau, Ian Griggs, Gaeton Fonzi and Paul-Eric Blanrue.
  (About the author : François Carlier is a Frenchman who has spent his last ten years researching the JFK assassination and writing a book. He swears his next ten years will be spent differently, with more interesting topics : music and girls J ! In the meantime, you can send him your messages at : <A href="mailto:F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr">F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr )

I interviewed a guy last week for an important role in my organization. He spent nearly two hours telling me what he would do if he got the job. In those two hours he didn't define "how" he would do "what" he said he would do. Needless to say he received a regret letter.

Frank says; "People like me try to be constructive, and honestly debate, discuss, think, give arguments, weigh evidence, and move forward!"

My question is this, "how" has Frank demonstrated this over the last month? There is no debate, no discussion, no arguments, no evidence and no honesty in any of his posts thus far. Is there any discussion or debate of the evidence in his article that Bill has posted?

I respectfully asked him about Mexico City and the impersonation of Oswald on the telephone calls. He told me to read "case closed" and referred me to the Slawson report that was produced for the Warren Commission.

The guy is a waste of time. In the final sentence of his meaningless drivel he says after spending 10 years researching the JFK assassination he "...swears his next ten years will be spent differently, with more interesting topics : music and girls"

Let's hope so but I think he's going to be listening to a lot more music than he anticipated.

Why do we bother conversing with such a professional idiot?

[François Carlier]

F.A.C.T.S.

Frenchman Against Conspiracy TheorieS

Bulletin anglophone réalisé par François Carlier.

Vous pouvez réagir à ce dossier dans son forum en ligne associé. http://www.zetetique....org/facts.htmlgoogle_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);

VOLUME 1, NUMBER1 - November 1998

Contentshttp://www.zetetique.ldh.org/facts.html

• editorial
• an article by F.C.
• a few thoughts
• selected bibliography
  Editorial
  Dear reader, you are now holding (or seeing on your computer screen) the new international JFK assassination research journal. It is written by me, François Carlier, a French researcher. This journal has two advantages. Firstly, it is free ! And secondly, it is written with an open-mind. My aim is to apply critical-thinking methods to the JFK-assassination mystery. Contrary to what is too often seen with would-be researchers, here reason is placed above passion ; in "F.A.C.T.S." I will weigh evidence, separate facts from fiction, distinguish between what is relevant and what is not, identify arguments ; make sure fallacies and bad arguments are avoided, and most of all, call a spade a spade ! Some people only care about making a big name for themselves, others care only about making money. I do not belong to either category ! Well, I know I don't live in Dallas, and unlike some writers, I do not claim to have learned the whole 26 volumes by heart ! But I have enough common sense, I am intelligent enough, I know enough of science to be able to tell what's possible and what is not, what is clever and what is ludicrous. I have nothing to sell. Put simply I only want to apply honesty and logic in order to seek and tell the truth !
  PS : Needless to say, you are welcome to give your feedback, opinion, reaction. Passion and insults don't belong here. Reason, logic and healthy debate, that's what's "F.A.C.T.S." is all about.
  Enjoy your reading
  An outsider's view of the Kennedy assassination community.
  (The following is an article that I had written in the spring of 1997. It dealt with my previous trip to Dallas. I had sent it to many people in the research community. It is reproduced here for those didn't have the chance to receive it, and because it is worth reading for anybody !)
  I went to Dallas last November ! I was very excited. I had been interested in the Kennedy assassination for years, I had read dozens of books, and there, for the first time, I was going to attend conferences by the best-known researchers in the world, I would have a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of listening to them and talking to them. Most important I expected to hear the most convincing arguments against the Warren Commission version.
  Well, let me tell you very briefly what kind of guy I am. As far as making an opinion goes, I am a follower of the scientific method. To give you a good idea of my approach I read books by authors such as James Randi, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, Joe Nickell, and other people from the CSICOP. I particularly like the way they debunk hoaxers. I am myself an amateur conjurer, and a founder member of a French scientific association that copies the CSICOP. One thing was important for me. I had twice read "Case closed" by Gerald Posner. I had been impressed. Then I had bought and read "Case open" by Harold Weisberg. And I had been very disappointed. I had hoped Weisberg would address the criticisms raised by Posner but he did not do that to my satisfaction, far from it. I was hoping I could ask every researcher what they thought of the book, and what they had to answer to the criticism. I expected to see debates ; researchers and experts confronting arguments. Then the assistance could ask questions ; I had hundreds of questions to ask. (But soon enough I would discover that that was not to be !).. On the plane from Paris to the USA I was reading an American book by William D. Gray "Thinking critically about New Age ideas", a book which teaches critical-thinking skills and among others how to identify arguments, to recognize fallacies and other bad arguments. I wondered how many people in the JFK critical community had read that fascinating book.
  I had registered to attend the COPA conference and the JFK-Lancer conference. Excitement grew as the JFK-Lancer conference began. I was all ears. I was impressed by what I was showed. The speakers were indeed very good ! But the assistance had very little time - if any - to ask questions. And we came nowhere near having any kind of debate ! But let me now give you an example that speaks for itself and illustrates the point I want to make. On day one, a researcher called Mark Oakes gave a lecture. It was about the Paschall film and Dallas witnesses. All right, I said, that's interesting. Then the day after, in the same room, under the auspices of the same JFK-Lancer, there was a lecture on the Zapruder film. The Zapruder film symposium, with David Mantik, David Lifton, James Fetzer and Jack White. I talked to Mantik and Fetzer afterwards. They were utterly convinced the Zapruder film was altered. But then, the day after, still in the same room, I saw Mark Oakes again and decided to go and talk to him. I asked him his opinion about the possibility of the Zapruder film being a forgery. His answer startled me, to say the least. He wasn't aware that it was an issue, nor was he aware that some people had talked about that on the previous day, for he was out of town making filmed interviews ! I then realized that the speakers were separate and had not met. All that was well, but here I was realizing I was not about to reach certainty on any given issue. It was clear to me that not everybody agreed with each other among the experts invited by JFK-Lancer. More important, some of them were not even aware of what the others were saying. All this showed me that I had overestimated the organizers' grasp of the zetetician way of thinking, the scientific method, the rational, unbiased and foolproof way of investigating. The day after, Mantik and Fetzer had an argument with Robert Groden during one of the COPA lectures, concerning the Zapruder film. It was clear to me that I would go back to France with more questions than I had when leaving. And I had better forget about any chance of having answers ; thirty-three years after the assassination, the top experts in the field did not even agree on whether the film of the assassination was forged or not !
  In Dallas I learned more about the quarrels between different researchers than about the Kennedy case proper. And at no time was I or anybody who was attending the conferences, for that matter, given a chance of asking pertinent questions to speakers. It was always a race in-between lectures, to get an opportunity of interviewing some of them. Good thing I was French and coming from far away : it gave me the right to ask questions that was not granted to other people ! Looking back it was a disappointing experience. I had thought the research community was a group of people working together with the common aim of getting at the truth (that would sound logical to me). On the contrary I found men speaking ill of their colleagues (so-and-so is a thief, so-and-so is a xxxx) and working each in their corner. But never did I find men having debates. Yet, that should be the thing to do.
  Another thing which I would like to mention is the difficulty I have encountered when trying to have an answer to even simple questions. It seems as if the JFK assassination researchers are inaccessible men. There are so many of them to whom I wrote, asking interesting questions, but who never seemed to find the time to reply. I have to say that Doctor Wecht has always been very nice, always showing great patience, always replying to my letters rapidly and sending lots of interesting documents. I owe him a lot. But in contrast, I have got to say that some researchers are not willing to help. One of them, whom I will not name, to whom I had written in order to have his opinion on specific points, sent me a letter saying he had no time to answer, but remembered to put an order slip for his new book in the envelope !
  Anyway my quest for clear-cut answers continues. On the Internet I have found lots of interesting articles. I hereby would like to mention two of them, which I urge everybody to read.

1. 
   Well I think that will do, if you do read all those sources. It all adds up to a huge number of arguments against Lifton's theory by knowledgeable people. I state it again : David Lifton is no physician. Yet he writes a medical theory that is ridiculed by doctors. At the very least, we should use caution with his theory and avoid jumping to conclusions. Was Lifton trained as a physician, a pathologist ? Drs Baden, Lattimer and Wecht are far better trained than he is, but all three say Lifton's theory is crap ! Then he claims the body was taken off its casket, when Dave Powers says the casket was never left unguarded. What do you make of all this ? I mean, Dave Powers was on board the plane. Lifton was not ! Some people never learn.
   A lot of people (not me, I am talking about Artwohl, Wecht, Groden Posner, Moore, Powers, etc.) have criticized David Lifton's theory. They say it is wrong, they say it is ludicrous, they say it is just impossible. So now, it is your turn, Mister Lifton, to answer. Either you can answer, and in that case please do it, for we are all waiting for your answer, or you can't, which means you were wrong. We want to know ! It is put up or shut up.
   (Addendum : This article was recently posted on an Internet newsgroup. Needless to say, some people liked it and others didn't. But instead of giving arguments, those you disagreed could only write insults with their keyboard ! Following is a summing up of what I replied to angry posts.)
   The point is, this fellow Lifton wrote a book in which he puts forth a new theory. But when knowledgeable people such as doctors (take Artwohl, Wecht and Baden, for instance) read that book, they say it is absurd and ludicrous as well as impossible. And also Lifton, 17 years after the event, writes a book saying the body was stolen from the casket, when the very people who actually were there swear the casket was never left unattended. And those are just a few examples (I listed more in my article). So to the reader it surely looks like this theory is wrong. So it seems quite evident that its author has to explain why he still believes in it and why he wants us to believe in it. In short, if he wants to convince us, he will have to be convincing ! That means he will have to prove he is right. And that means he must answer the points raised by so many people who read the book, and they are people who are either better trained than Lifton is (Wecht and all) or who actually were there when Lifton was not !
   I mean Weisberg, Groden, Wecht, Aguilar, Kurtz, and lots of other people who are conspiracy theorists, that is they do not believe in the Warren report, say that Lifton is wrong. They have read his book but they do not believe his theory of body alteration and stuff. What I mean, and you should stop to think about it, is that the fact that those people reject Lifton's theory should make people realize what is obvious to anybody who can apply critical thinking methods. If Lifton is right, why isn't he believed by other conspiracy theorists ? If he is right, if his theory can so well explain the discrepancies between Dallas and Bethesda, why are there so few people who follow him ? I say that if Weisberg, Wecht, Groden, Aguilar, not to mention others, say that Lifton is wrong, that surely suggests he is indeed wrong !
   More to the point : people like Wecht, Moore Artwohl and Posner have challenged Lifton. He has never been able to answer them. Wouldn't he have answered if he could have ?
   Most people who believe in conspiracy theories lack the understanding that witnesses accounts must not be taken at face value. Whenever you investigate a crime or any affair, you have to base your conclusion on facts and scientific evidence, certainly not on what the witnesses tell. That is because out of any given number of witnesses to the same event, none will have remembered the event the same way. That was bound to happen in Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, in Bethesda, etc. like anywhere else. JFK was shot, and everybody remembered things that are utterly incompatible with one another. That was to be expected. It happens all the time and everywhere ! That does not mean that people were lying. It means human recollections are not something you should rely on. But critics rely on nothing but the witness statements that suit them. Lifton has gathered statements by witnesses that suit him. But there are as many statements by witnesses that destroy his theory. But those who want to believe him read only the eyewitnesses accounts that they like. But if they were smart, they would take into account all the eyewitness accounts. The conspiracy theorists would then see that those accounts contradict one another (that is normal) and realize that the majority of them destroy Lifton's theory.
   When David Lifton can convince Artwohl + Wecht + Baden that his theory is indeed a medical possibility, when he can convince Groden + Weisberg that his scenario makes sense, when he can answer to the sound arguments made by Posner + Moore + Kurtz in a convincing manner, then he will have gone a long way to prove his case. If he were right, that should be very easy to do ! But I am not holding my breath. This day will never happen. Only gullible people think he will ever be able to do that !
   a few thoughts
   I visited Internet newsgroups in order to check a few things, but I was kind of dumb - I admit that to expect people on these newsgroups to have anything interesting to say. I learned nothing. But I read countless posts full of garbage and insults and emptiness.
   People like me try to be constructive, and honestly debate, discuss, think, give arguments, weigh evidence, and move forward ! But most people can do nothing but insult others, try to make fun of them, resort to ad hominem attacks, and duck the issues by refusing to answer. They don't know what critical thinking is. Now, I admit that answering my questions is hard, certainly harder than insulting me via a computer !
   Conspiracy theorists can't be stopped in their dream world : they claim the X-rays were altered, the autopsy photos were altered, the backyard photos were altered, the body was altered, the Zapruder film was altered... What else ? I wonder what was genuine ?
   The also say the Mafia + the CIA + Johnson + the FBI + oil men + the DPD did it together. What a terrible country they are painting ! But I will tell you what. As a Frenchman, I believe in your institutions. Your government is legal and sound and clear. There never was a conspiracy. You live in a democracy. Your country is a fine one, and I like it a lot. A lone nut killed your president, and that's all there is to it. It was a sad event. I liked John Kennedy a lot, he was a great president. I wish he was still alive ! But I, for one, trust your government and your institutions. And I am not going to think otherwise because gullible people paint a big conspiracy where everybody was involved and every document forged !
   It is hard to have a debate on the JFK assassination issue. The whole field is plagued by passion and guts, and therefore instead of arguments and logic and reasoning, we too often can only read ad hominem attacks. What is that ? That occurs when someone attempts to refute a person's claim by attacking that person rather than the claim. It is a fallacy, i.e. a defective argument, one in which the premises do not provide an adequate basis for the conclusion. Indeed it is a fallacy because the person's character has no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim. Too many people in the JFK research community resort to ad hominem attacks. And Gerald Posner is the person who has suffered the most ad hominem attacks ! You all have forgotten that the truth or falsity of a claim depends ultimately on the facts, not on who makes it. I think I have read all that was written against Posner. And this is precisely what convinced me he must be right after all. Because all the criticism I found against him was ad hominem attacks, nothing of substance against the facts. Because those who criticize Posner don't give arguments pertaining to the facts of November 22, 1963. Instead they say Posner made a spelling mistake, or he said such WC member attended eight meetings when in fact it was only five. Who gives a damn ? I mean, Posner could have misspelled my name, for all I care. That has no bearing on the real issues ! For instance, the book "Case open" is the most empty book I have ever read. It is full of unnecessary commentary and insults. The books claims Posner took credit for other people's research. So what ? A critical thinker doesn't care who takes the credit for what. But he tries to know whether the research is good quality or not. And indeed Posner gives lots of intelligent arguments. For example, Posner is more honest that any critic because he openly says that experts (I mean, real experts, not self-proclaimed experts) of the HSCA have said, beyond any doubt, that the documents are real. Only a few conspiracy theorists, who are far from having the credentials of the HSCA experts, claim that they are forged ! Now that is a fact, and I thank Posner to have made it clear !
   Now, I admit he should make public his tape of his telephone interview with Boswell. If I were him I would surely do it at once. So on this particular aspect, I certainly support Gary Aguilar. No question.
   There is one aspect I thought about a long time ago. Critics claim Oswald had not enough time to go from the sixth floor to the second floor where Marion Baker and truly met him. So critics claim Oswald was on the second floor during the shooting and not on the sixth floor. They say Oswald was set up as the fall guy. But that does not make sense. In other words, critics are saying that plotters were very clever in their scenario, they had someone shoot at Kennedy, they made sure Oswald would be the accused by tying the shots to the rifle and the rifle to him, but they forgot to make sure he had no alibi. Indeed if I were to commit a crime and blame it on somebody else, I would make sure that person was not seen by anybody during the time of the crime. If you want to blame the assassination on Oswald, but let him go loose so he is seen on the second floor by a policeman too early after the shots to have been the shooter, then the patsy scenario collapses. I mean, it is clear that if whatever group of plotters had wanted to blame Oswald, they would have made sure he was not seen far from the sixth floor around the time of the shots ! Because otherwise anybody could have come forward saying they had seen Oswald on the second floor at, or just after the time of the shooting ! The whole plot (which had been prepared for months, according to the conspiracy theorists) would have collapsed on the spot ! That does not make sense. Do I make myself clear ? Anyway, it was indeed possible for Oswald to be on the second floor when he encountered Baker, as Jim Moore has written in his book.
   As far as the "research community" is concerned, one thing is obvious. I have realized that it is possible to write empty books that become best-sellers, it is possible to be considered as an expert even when that's not true, it is possible to earn lots of money without merit, it is possible to be admired by lots of people for no reason at all. The Kennedy assassination research community is full of people who consider themselves as intelligent experts. But they are not.
   The research community, as a whole, has to discard wrong theories. But you haven't had such courage yet. One example : Armstrong has a theory of two Oswalds that seems impressive. But David Lifton, who has researched that area, says it is all wrong. Now, organize a confrontation, and let them both debate in public. Then you can move from there. But you owe the public to say who was right and who was wrong. You cannot go on with both researchers keeping on claiming that "the other one is wrong". Because not both of them can be right. Only if you discard one of them can you keep your credibility as a research group. So what I'm saying is this : there are a lot of theories out there that may be true, or not. But it is high time you checked once and for all. You have to move forward. You are all wasting so much time making fun of those who don't share your opinions, but the inquiry into the case doesn't move a bit ! It's time to face FACTS.
   <A name=biblio>
   selected bibliography
   

• Kendrick Frazier, "Paranormal borderlands of science"
• Kendrick Frazier, "Science confronts the paranormal"
• Kendrick Frazier, "The hundredth monkey"
• Martin Gardner, "Fads and fallacies in the name of science"
• Martin Gardner, "Science : good, bad and bogus"
• Martin Gardner, "The New-Age : notes of a fringe watcher"
• Martin Gardner, "On the wild side"
• William D. Gray, "Thinking critically about new-age ideas"
• Terence Hines, "Pseudoscience and the paranormal"
• Ray Hyman, "The elusive quarry"
• Philip Klass, "UFO's : the public deceived"
• Philip Klass, "UFO abductions : a dangerous game"
• Paul Kurtz, "A skeptic's handbook of parapsychology"
• Larry Kusche, "The Bermuda triangle mystery - solved"
• James Randi, "The truth about Uri Geller"
• James Randi, "Flimflam"
• James Randi, "The faith healers"
  Talk to you next time
  This journal of research on the Kennedy assassination is sent free either by electronic mail or by snail mail to the following people : Doctor Cyril Wecht, David Lifton, Gary Aguilar, Jim Marrs, Robert Groden, Gerald Posner, Clint Bradford, John Mc Adams, Debra Conway, Jack White, George Michael Evica, John Judge, Anthony Summers, Walt Brown, Henri Hurt, Michael Kurtz, Michael Griffith, Ed Dolan, Jim Moore, Carl Oglesby, Craig Roberts, Robert Harris, Anthony Marsh, Gary Mack, Jerrol Custer, David Scheim, Mark Oakes, Thierry Lentz, William Reymond, Gary Shaw, Jo Backes, Greg Jaynes, Barb Junkkarinen, John Kelin, Jerry Organ, Larry Charbonneau, Ian Griggs, Gaeton Fonzi and Paul-Eric Blanrue.
  (About the author : François Carlier is a Frenchman who has spent his last ten years researching the JFK assassination and writing a book. He swears his next ten years will be spent differently, with more interesting topics : music and girls J ! In the meantime, you can send him your messages at : <A href="mailto:F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr">F-Carlier@wanadoo.fr )

I interviewed a guy last week for an important role in my organization. He spent nearly two hours telling me what he would do if he got the job. In those two hours he didn't define "how" he would do "what" he said he would do. Needless to say he received a regret letter.

Frank says; "People like me try to be constructive, and honestly debate, discuss, think, give arguments, weigh evidence, and move forward!"

My question is this, "how" has Frank demonstrated this over the last month? There is no debate, no discussion, no arguments, no evidence and no honesty in any of his posts thus far. Is there any discussion or debate of the evidence in his article that Bill has posted?

I respectfully asked him about Mexico City and the impersonation of Oswald on the telephone calls. He told me to read "case closed" and referred me to the Slawson report that was produced for the Warren Commission.

The guy is a waste of time. In the final sentence of his meaningless drivel he says after spending 10 years researching the JFK assassination he "...swears his next ten years will be spent differently, with more interesting topics : music and girls"

Let's hope so but I think he's going to be listening to a lot more music than he anticipated.

Why do we bother conversing with such a professional idiot?

What ?

I don't like it !

/F.C./

Edited August 15, 2010 by François Carlier

[François Carlier]

Let it be known that I shall from now on IGNORE ALTOGETHER four people in this forum : Bill Kelly, Dean Hagerman, Lee Farley and Bernie Laverick.

The four of them have proved impolite, disrespectful, sarcastic and empty. I shall never again read even a word they might write.

I still wish to continue debating with the rest of this forum.

/F.C./

[Dean Hagerman]

Let it be known that I shall from now on IGNORE ALTOGETHER four people in this forum : Bill Kelly, Dean Hagerman, Lee Farley and Bernie Laverick.

Are you going to ignore yourself for the same reasons that you listed?

[François Carlier]

To James DiEugenio, or whoever feels like reading my posts :

I wish to go back to the "two empty boxes" topic. The debate on that subject was open a few weeks ago and I had failed to answer you. I wish to answer you today.

First of all, I would like to tell you that your writing (I quote) "You are a sucker for Gary Mack" was very rude and disrespectful.

Well, I guess that's the trend in this forum. I mean, some members here have been very rude to me. Moreover, I have read the "Lifton vs Fetzer" thread and I must say that Jim Fetzer attacked you and smeared you so much that I said to myself "Boy, those CT are very vicious toward each other, they don't need any LN to add anything".

So I shall just try to focus on the essence of my topic.

A few weeks ago, you wrote : "there were no boxes of MC ammo found among Oswald's possessions".

I then wrote that it was a mistake on your part, and provided a link to a message by a Mike Williams on another forum. It showed a document stipulating : Two empty boxes marked "6,5 Italian ammunition".

Then you proceeded to show I was wrong and you had been right all along.

Well, it's time I answered.

OK.

-1. First of all, regardless of what anybody here might think of me, I am a honest person, in that I always speak my mind. I say what I want to say, and NO-one can force me to say anything I wouldn't want to say. My only master is the truth. I am a honest truth-seeker, pure and simple.

-2. Like most people here (if not everybody here) I have spent years of my life studying the Kennedy assassination case (through books, videos, documentaries, visits, interviews, exchanges of letters, etc.). I know all the big names. I have exchanged letters or e-mail messages with most of them (from both sides of the fence). There are some people whom I like (which does not mean that they do). I am honored to count Gerald Posner among the people with whom I maintain an epistolary relationship. He is a person whom I admire. I have also great admiration for Dale Myers. It so happens that I have admiration for authors whom I consider intelligent and reasonable and that I do believe that it is reasonable to admit that Oswald acted alone. Well, I am surely entitled to that, aren't I ? I don't suppose you would want to prevent me from choosing my friends ? So, I have known Gary Mack through documentaries (in the TMWKK series, among others). I have never met him, but I do send him an e-mail message once in a while and he has always been very polite with me and has always answered with honesty. I thank him for that. I have great admiration and respect for him, too. I think he is an honest man, a real truth-seeker, not afraid to change his mind if need be (he will go where evidence leads). Having said that, I want to be perfectly clear : whatever I say or write is independent of him. He has never said that he confirms anything I say or write. He may even disagree with me, for all I know. So please, judge me on my own merits or on my own flaws.

-3. I have no problem whatsoever in admitting my mistakes. I hereby publicly acknowledge that I was wrong in suggesting that the document shown by Mike Williams proved the empty cases had been found in Oswald's belongings, because it did not. It is true that Gary Mack provided me with the link, but I should have checked myself. I have great confidence in Gary Mack, but no human being is above making mistakes, once in a while. So, I repeat, according to the evidence I have seen (and pending further research on my part), the two boxes were not found at Mrs. Paine's house, and so can reasonably be said not to have come from Lee Oswald's belongings. So, to put it simply, Mister DiEugenio, when you said that there were no boxes of MC ammo found among Oswald's possessions, you were right. And I was wrong to say otherwise.

-4. Having said that, I do think we should try to go further. The link

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/gallery/ASSASSIONATION/Documents/Exhibit-D-79-pic_13.htm

provided by Greg Parker shows that the two boxes were found in the vicinity of an abandoned gravel pit. Well, that's agreed. But you did notice, didn't you, that the header says "RE: Lee Harvey Oswald".

To be sure, that document pertains to Lee Harvey Oswald. And there is no denying that NO ONE CAN YET SAY FOR SURE that those boxes have nothing to do with Lee Oswald. The boxes were found in Irving. Didn't Ruth Paine live in Irving ?

-5. And let me ask you a question. Are you suggesting that Lee Oswald bought a rifle with no ammunition ? Have you ever heard of anybody, in any country, who buys a rifle but does not buy some ammunition ? Surely, as night follows day, it is obvious to me that if Oswald bought a rifle (and his wife confirms he had a rifle), he must have also bought some ammunition. So to my mind, finding some boxes of ammunition belonging to Oswald would not be of much significance, one way or another. Are you afraid of the idea of Oswald having bought some ammunition ?

-6. OK, I wasn't born in 1963. But let me ask you : were there any regulations then in Dallas, requiring a record of bullet purchases ? I mean, don't you think it was highly possible for Oswald to buy some ammunition ? I am not the least surprised if the clerks did not remember. They deal in cash, not names, not faces either. I don't know what job you do. But I challenge you to remember the face or name of a customer after several months. No one could.

-7. I wonder what D78, D79 and D80 stand for ? Do you know the exact source ? I mean, D78 and D80 were (I quote) "obtained from Mrs. Ruth Paine". So, my question is : are we sure that the boxes which were found in the vicinity of an abandoned gravel pit were the two boxes marked D79 ? It's just a simple question from me. If it is a silly question, please forgive me. But could it be that two boxes were found at Mrs. Paine's house, on top of the two found at the gravel pit ? Am I too far off, here ? If I am, I won't deny.

-8. I do resent your suggestion (or is it an accusation) that the Paines may have had any role in a plot. I think that's absurd. I even think it is outrageous. Please stop accusing people like that. I also think it is an easy way for you to explain away whatever evidence that bothers you. All you have to do is accuse still more people of being in on the plot.

Well I don't think we can ever agree on the extent of the plot anyway…

/F.C./

Edited August 15, 2010 by François Carlier

[François Carlier]

Let it be known that I shall from now on IGNORE ALTOGETHER four people in this forum : Bill Kelly, Dean Hagerman, Lee Farley and Bernie Laverick.

Are you going to ignore yourself for the same reasons that you listed?

Sir, I do think that if YOU ignored me, once and for all, everybody would be happy.

/F.C./

[Ian Kingsbury]

Let it be known that I shall from now on IGNORE ALTOGETHER four people in this forum : Bill Kelly, Dean Hagerman, Lee Farley and Bernie Laverick.

Are you going to ignore yourself for the same reasons that you listed?

Yes for the next 10 years anyway

I guess that means no Elvis tickets for anybody...... bugger!

[François Carlier]

Let it be known that I shall from now on IGNORE ALTOGETHER four people in this forum : Bill Kelly, Dean Hagerman, Lee Farley and Bernie Laverick.

Are you going to ignore yourself for the same reasons that you listed?

Yes for the next 10 years anyway

I guess that means no Elvis tickets for anybody...... bugger!

Another very clever member....

Boy ! ...

Thanks for your arguments. They really help us know who killed JFK !

/F.C./