Josiah Thompson & the Umbrella man

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Please Check out this interview with Josiah Thompson in yesterday's New York Times.

The interview was conducted by Errol Morris.

I am a longtime fan of Dr. Thompson

and I think SIX SECONDS was,

in many ways

a great book,

but this interview leaves me cold.

It neglects all the real evidence in the case.

Like Sylvia Meagher, Thompson was a great researcher,

and the JFK inquiry was going somewhere

until that stupid oaf Garrison

with his size 14 shoes

screwed up the case to a fare-thee well.

But I am disappointed to now see Thompson

pontificating about an extraneous issue

like the UMBRELLA MAN!

By ERROL MORRIS

Published: November 21, 2011

For years, I’ve wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?

Years ago, Josiah Thompson, known as Tink, a young, Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar wrote the definitive book on the Zapruder film — “Six Seconds in Dallas.” Thompson eventually quit his day job as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College to become a private detective and came to work with many of the same private investigators I had also worked with in the 1980s. We had so much in common — philosophy, P.I. work and an obsessive interest in the complexities of reality. But we had never met.

Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.

Errol Morris is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (“The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara”) and a recent New York Times best-selling author (“Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography”). His first film, “Gates of Heaven,” is on Roger Ebert’s list of the 10 best movies ever made, and his latest, “Tabloid,” has just been released on DVD. Mr. Morris has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and two French bulldogs.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 22, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Josiah Thompson’s career. He left his job as a professor at Haverford College to become a detective — not to write “Six Seconds in Dallas,” which had been written earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/the-umbrella-man.html

[Pat Speer]

I liked the film a lot. It's entertaining. It's also revealing. Sometimes the seemingly sinister is just silly. I did resent Tink's using the term "wingnut" to describe Cutler, however, as it feeds those ignoramuses trying to pigeon-hole all CTs as wingnuts. But that's another matter.

More troubling for me were the comments on the film. The film did not debunk anything. It reported on a conspiracy theory abandoned by most researchers decades ago. And yet, a number of the comments were by people believing the film offered something new and "debunked" the "Umbrella man" theory, or some such thing. What hooey! Would a new film commenting on the silliness of the "Paul is dead!" phenomena be considered a breakthrough, and proof all current Beatles fans are idiots? Of course not!

[Andric Perez]

Has it been determined at which Z-frame the umbrella man began pumping his umbrella? Since the first shot seemed to have been fired at around frame 190 (Speer and other researchers) then the umbrella-pumping action should have begun shortly before that frame in order for it to be considered suspicious.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Andric Perez

[John Dolva]

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=11517&view=findpost&p=205748

De Witt is interesting. Does anyone know if there's any connection to Elizabeth De Witt, Ohio?

[Pat Speer]

I don't understand why it troubles you, Pat. There is a whole new generation of folk out there who find this information "new".

They don't spend nearly the time on this subject that we do, and there is, (I can think of at least one), current researcher who believes that Umbrella Man shot the President.

I think it is vastly different than the "Paul is dead" thing. McCartney is still running around, and with respect to the Kennedy Assassination, we can say know who did it, but few agree on the "how". Maybe we need a plethora of these little video interviews that can help folks who do not spend a good chunk of their lives studying, to get a quick bit of information to dispel such myths.

I agree that more short films like this one might help increase interest in the assassination. Hopefully, Morris has it within him to create a few where the mysterious aspects only get more mysterious with time, e.g. the medical evidence, Hunt, or De Mohrenschildt.

To be clear, what troubled me wasn't that some people thought this was "new," but that they thought the film was "debunking" the "Umbrella Man," when it was not. Tink makes quite clear that Witt came forward over 30 years ago, and that, in retrospect, he found the whole "Umbrella Man" red herring a bit humorous.

[Bernice Moore]

HI Pat ; Sorry I DISAGREE, SOMEWHAT, i found it somewhat of a back pedalling by Josiah or what could be taken as such, in giving the impression, to those that do not know, that the weapon was not a possible, guffaw, As many well know, and he foremost seeing he found and named, the UMBRELLAMAN, and this research has been out for many years now, there was such a weapon at that time..........ready and available, I also did not appreciate, to me someone who is a conspiracist , re his book etc, suddenly making a short video for anyone thinking such as Morris does, that is what I personally do and did not agree to...thanks b.

INTELLIGENCE: Of Dart Guns and Poisons

1975-09-09, Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/...,913459,00.html

For nearly nine months the congressional investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency have been conducted behind closed doors. In the old Senate caucus room the ten members of the select Senate committee were questioning CIA officials, including Director William Colby and the deputy director for science and technology, Sayre Stevens, about 11 gm. of shellfish toxin and 8 mg. of cobra venom discovered last May in a CIA storeroom. Colby revealed that the agency in 1952 began a supersecret research program, code-named M.K. Naomi, partly to find countermeasures to chemical and biological weapons that might be used by the Russian KGB. CIA researchers ... came up with an array of James Bond weaponry that could use the shellfish toxin and other poisons as ammunition. To illustrate his testimony, Colby handed a pistol to Committee Chairman Frank Church. Resembling a Colt .45 equipped with a fat telescopic sight, the gun fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so tinythe width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch longas to be almost indetectable, and the poison leaves no trace in a victim's body. Charles Senseney, an engineer for the Defense Department, told the Senators that he had devised dart launchers that were disguised as walking canes and umbrellas.

Note: To watch an incredible one-minute video clip on this silent, lethal dart gun which causes a heart attack, click here. To watch the full, highly revealing Warner Brothers documentary Secrets of the CIA, click here. For other riveting major media articles along these lines, click here.

Edited November 24, 2011 by Bernice Moore

[Bernice Moore]

House Select Committee On Assassinations - "Umbrella Man" Testimony

http://scribblguy.50megs.com/hscaumbr.htm

[Pat Speer]

HI Pat ; Sorry I DISAGREE, SOMEWHAT, i found it somewhat of a back pedalling by Josiah or what could be taken as such, in giving the impression, to those that do not know, that the weapon was not a possible, guffaw, As many well know, and he foremost seeing he found and named, the UMBRELLAMAN, and this research has been out for many years now, there was such a weapon at that time..........ready and available, I also did not appreciate, to me someone who is a conspiracist , re his book etc, suddenly making a short video for anyone thinking such as Morris does, that is what I personally do and did not agree to...thanks b.

INTELLIGENCE: Of Dart Guns and Poisons

1975-09-09, Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913459,00.html

For nearly nine months the congressional investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency have been conducted behind closed doors. In the old Senate caucus room the ten members of the select Senate committee were questioning CIA officials, including Director William Colby and the deputy director for science and technology, Sayre Stevens, about 11 gm. of shellfish toxin and 8 mg. of cobra venom discovered last May in a CIA storeroom. Colby revealed that the agency in 1952 began a supersecret research program, code-named M.K. Naomi, partly to find countermeasures to chemical and biological weapons that might be used by the Russian KGB. CIA researchers ... came up with an array of James Bond weaponry that could use the shellfish toxin and other poisons as ammunition. To illustrate his testimony, Colby handed a pistol to Committee Chairman Frank Church. Resembling a Colt .45 equipped with a fat telescopic sight, the gun fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so tiny—the width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch long—as to be almost indetectable, and the poison leaves no trace in a victim's body. Charles Senseney, an engineer for the Defense Department, told the Senators that he had devised dart launchers that were disguised as walking canes and umbrellas.

Note: To watch an incredible one-minute video clip on this silent, lethal dart gun which causes a heart attack, click here. To watch the full, highly revealing Warner Brothers documentary Secrets of the CIA, click here. For other riveting major media articles along these lines, click here.

I think you make a good point. As I recall the CIA actually HAD developed an umbrella gun, of some sort. This should have been mentioned in the short film, as it only adds to the weirdness of the story. (If it was mentioned and I forgot about it, please correct me.)

[Bernice Moore]

hi pat; i did reply but it is not showing now.......??.....no you are correct he did not happen to mention the research done in the past, tons of it, nor the study by the gov. committee nor any reference to it's finding, i believe in the link above post, they the cia had 60 of those weapons available at that time, in umbrellas as well as canes, there also within somewhere, the info that the weapon had been used in europe to assassinate, a man, name gone sorry, i find his deliberate ommission and imo it is to be so apparent seeing it was his discovery all those years ago, therefore he certainly would have been more than aware of the findings released many years ago....to me this is like some who only produce the doc that agrees with their theory or finding, i was and am not impressed by such omission by dr.thompson....nor a guffaw attitude towards it..as it certainly was possible not, saying, halo !!!!!that it happened, but the gov proved for us, it was a possible through the use of a cia umbrella weapon system....thanks b

http://www.ratical.o...lle/JFK/TUM.txt The following article appeared in the June 1978 issue of "Gallery Magazine,"

and is reprinted here with permission of Mr. Sprague. The possibility that

a very rare and special secret weapon system, developed by the CIA at Fort

Detrick, Maryland, was used to immobilize JFK, and thus ensure the success

of "the turkey shoot" carried out in Dealey Plaza is explored in great

detail below.

Consider also that until the day of the JFK assassination in 1963,

there was *no place* that *anybody* outside of the very small CIA

and Special Forces group (perhaps as many as twenty people) could

get access to that flechette-launching weapon system or anything

like it.

To arrive at a solution to a murder as enigmatic and convoluted as that of

JFK, we must confront the existence of the netherworld of secret operations

carried out by covert agencies within our own government: "We have to

start thinking like the CIA, people. . . . Black is white, and white is

black." --ratitor

_____________________________________________________________________________

November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was slain, was bright

and sunny in Dallas. Why, then, was there a young man with an open

umbrella on Elm Street, less than 30 feet from the President's car

as it slowly passed by? Presented below is an answer to this

puzzle by a former consultant to the House Select Committee on

Assassinations.

THE UMBRELLA SYSTEM: PRELUDE TO AN ASSASSINATION

by Richard E. Sprague and Robert Cutler

Edited November 24, 2011 by Bernice Moore

[Bernice Moore]

Pat It may be within the info provided at this site...b

http://www.wanttoknow.info/assassinationsnewsarticles

happy thanksgiving...

[Bernice Moore]

These two go with past research...showing the possible dart and the use of such in a gun as well as umbrella and or cane as mentioned...b

Edited November 24, 2011 by Bernice Moore

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I see that Our friend Josiah

is currently viewing the forum

and I want to say that my respect for Josiah

remains undimmed.

I have no doubt that the snippet

posted by Errol Morris

is taken out of context.

[Bernice Moore]

Pat; you may be interested...b

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=k3TNrObZ-o4

i found this on the web, from a popular mechanics article...1962 ..thanks whomever appreciated, on how they worked with the gun as the weapon and directive...

Edited November 24, 2011 by Bernice Moore

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

So 9 minutes after I have initiated a thread about this subject, Ray initiates another?

Tink's performance in The New York Times Josiah Tompson shows his true colors

#1 James H. Fetzer

Posted Today, 03:39 AM

A very curious interview with Mary Moorman who seems to have fallen out with Jean Hill,

http://www.conspirac...er-silence.html

An even more peculiar interview with Tink in The New York TImes on the Umbrella Man,

http://www.nytimes.c...brella-man.html

OP-DOCS

‘The Umbrella Man’: A video interview with the author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967)

The Umbrella Man: On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Errol Morris explores the story behind the one man seen standing under an open black umbrella at the site.

By ERROL MORRIS

Published: November 21, 2011

COMMENTS (254)

For years, I’ve wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?

Years ago, Josiah Thompson, known as Tink, a young, Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar wrote the definitive book on the Zapruder film — “Six Seconds in Dallas.” Thompson eventually quit his day job as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College to become a private detective and came to work with many of the same private investigators I had also worked with in the 1980s. We had so much in common — philosophy, P.I. work and an obsessive interest in the complexities of reality. But we had never met.

Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.

Errol Morris is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (“The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara”) and a recent New York Times best-selling author (“Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography”). His first film, “Gates of Heaven,” is on Roger Ebert’s list of the 10 best movies ever made, and his latest, “Tabloid,” has just been released on DVD. Mr. Morris has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and two French bulldogs.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 22, 2011 An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Josiah Thompson’s career. He left his job as a professor at Haverford College to become a detective — not to write “Six Seconds in Dallas,” which had been written earlier.

where this reader's comment (and there are more than 250) speaks volumes about Josiah:

23. HIGHLIGHT (What's this?)

Mark M

New York, NY

November 22nd, 2011

6:16 am

This was wonderful. The best - and most convincing - debunking of any and all conspiracy theories I have ever seen, and in just 6 minutes too.

Here is what I have submitted, but if the Times is running performance art like this from Josiah, it is not likely that they are going to publish it:

Your Submitted Comment

Display Name

James H. Fetzer

Location

Oregon, WI

Comment

How can Josiah Thompson have written "the definitive book" on the Zapruder film when its fabrication has been proven beyond reasonable doubt? The limo stop was removed, the wounds were changed, and, having reduced the time frame, Clint Hill's activities--about which he has been consistent for more than 47 years--contradict what we see in the extant film. See, for example, "JFK: Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?" For more on how it was done, see "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication". For a tutorial on some of the ways we know the film we have is not the original, see John Costella, "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax", http://assassination...ella/jfk/intro/ I dismembered Josiah's feeble defense of the authenticity of the film in THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Check it out. The American people are entitled to the truth about the assassination of our 35th president. It isn't a close call.

I hate to say "I told you so", but I nailed Tink as an op a long time ago and was attacked for doing so. I also observed earlier that he was setting himself up to proclaim that there was no conspiracy, after all. How many falsehoods and misrepresentations does Josiah Thompson make in this six minute video?

Jim

Please Check out this interview with Josiah Thompson in yesterday's New York Times.

The interview was conducted by Errol Morris.

I am a longtime fan of Dr. Thompson

and I think SIX SECONDS was,

in many ways

a great book,

but this interview leaves me cold.

It neglects all the real evidence in the case.

Like Sylvia Meagher, Thompson was a great researcher,

and the JFK inquiry was going somewhere

until that stupid oaf Garrison

with his size 14 shoes

screwed up the case to a fare-thee well.

But I am disappointed to now see Thompson

pontificating about an extraneous issue

like the UMBRELLA MAN!

By ERROL MORRIS

Published: November 21, 2011

For years, I’ve wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?

Years ago, Josiah Thompson, known as Tink, a young, Yale-educated Kierkegaard scholar wrote the definitive book on the Zapruder film — “Six Seconds in Dallas.” Thompson eventually quit his day job as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College to become a private detective and came to work with many of the same private investigators I had also worked with in the 1980s. We had so much in common — philosophy, P.I. work and an obsessive interest in the complexities of reality. But we had never met.

Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.

Errol Morris is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (“The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara”) and a recent New York Times best-selling author (“Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography”). His first film, “Gates of Heaven,” is on Roger Ebert’s list of the 10 best movies ever made, and his latest, “Tabloid,” has just been released on DVD. Mr. Morris has received five fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and two French bulldogs.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 22, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Josiah Thompson’s career. He left his job as a professor at Haverford College to become a detective — not to write “Six Seconds in Dallas,” which had been written earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/the-umbrella-man.html

[Greg Burnham]

The Umbrella Delivery System is real and it is accurate. I do not know if it was employed that day or not, but to dismiss it as if it was impossible is irresponsible.