The Future of the JFK Forum

[Thomas H. Purvis]

My problem is with those who repeatedly state as fact things that have no basis whatsoever in fact, and try to pass off this information as accepted truth. If a person who makes an occasional mistake admits that they have made a mistake, I don't consider that person to be a xxxx. I've made my share of honest mistakes, and I try to make sure that I correct them. Some folks make untrue statements SO often here, it begins to fall into a pattern...as if they're trying to slide something by the unsuspecting folks.

We are, after all, part of something called The Education Forum. If we cannot stick to the truth, exactly how accurate an "educational service" are we providing to those who come behind us? My position here is that you are entitled to manufacture your own theories as to how the JFK assassination came to occur; you are NOT entitled to manufacture your own facts. Those who attempt to do so should, by everything that is right in the universe, be called out for that; and those who repeatedly do so should be called exactly what they are.

Apparently, my position conflicts with that of Mr. Simkin. For that, I will never apologize. But it causes me sadness to know that what began as an educational resource is now a forum in which the value of truth becomes secondary to decorum.

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Yes, but!--------Look at how much you have actually (re)-learned about the facts of the assassination.

Tom

[Paul Trejo]

I wonder sometimes if my world experience is vastly different from that of my fellow forum members.

The reality, IMO, is that very few people EVER admit their mistakes, and that writers--once their brilliant words have been carved in gold--almost NEVER admit their mistakes.

The best one can hope for on a public forum, therefore, is to point out "Well, hmmm, look at this, I think you're wrong and here's why" and hope those following the forum come to believe you. Pushing the issue--and trying to make the writer or fellow forum member AGREE with you--is, IMO, a de facto form of harassment, designed to make that writer or member quit the forum.

I wish it weren't true, but 'tis so. We have many members, with a variety of opinions, and variety of approaches to the evidence. Whittling it down to a few whose facts are completely in order would lead to a very quiet forum, in which few ideas are explored, IMO.

People need room to breathe, and come to their own decision about their having made a mistake. Pressuring them to do so leads nowhere, unfortunately...which is why this case drags on...and on...and on...

This is the voice of reason, Pat. Many thanks for your objective perspective.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

[David G. Healy]

I wonder sometimes if my world experience is vastly different from that of my fellow forum members.

The reality, IMO, is that very few people EVER admit their mistakes, and that writers--once their brilliant words have been carved in gold--almost NEVER admit their mistakes.

The best one can hope for on a public forum, therefore, is to point out "Well, hmmm, look at this, I think you're wrong and here's why" and hope those following the forum come to believe you. Pushing the issue--and trying to make the writer or fellow forum member AGREE with you--is, IMO, a de facto form of harassment, designed to make that writer or member quit the forum.

I wish it weren't true, but 'tis so. We have many members, with a variety of opinions, and variety of approaches to the evidence. Whittling it down to a few whose facts are completely in order would lead to a very quiet forum, in which few ideas are explored, IMO.

People need room to breathe, and come to their own decision about their having made a mistake. Pressuring them to do so leads nowhere, unfortunately...which is why this case drags on...and on...and on...

This is the voice of reason, Pat. Many thanks for your objective perspective.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

any port in a storm, eh Paul? btw, the Warren Report is kaput, how's that for reason!

[Paul Trejo]

any port in a storm, eh Paul? btw, the Warren Report is kaput, how's that for reason!

David, I think you're missing some nuances. The Warren Commission conclusions are indeed compromised because of the self-evident folly of the Lone Assassin theory.

Nevertheless, it's a mistake to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

There's gold inside the Warren Commission volumes. Admittedly such gold requires the hard work of mining, but there are witnesses and statements found there that are found noplace else.

The HSCA attempted to interview some of the same folks -- with poor results. Marina Oswald Porter, for example, gave substantially no new information -- how could she? She told everything she knew the first time.

George De Mohrenschildt, who kept so many secrets from the Warren Commission, chose instead to commit suicide rather than to face his oath again. (His substitute testimony, I'm A Patsy, I'm A Patsy!, was not an affidavit submitted under oath. If it were, George would have been guilty of perjury for claiming that he didn't remember Volkmar Schmidt's name, but thought he was 'Jewish' -- yet only weeks beforehand George had begged Volkmar Schmidt to let him move into the Schmidt home.)

The final conclusion of the Warren Commission is defunct. Almost everybody on the Forum agrees with that. However, IMHO the testimony from Marina Oswald is the TRUTH, and so is the testimony from most other witnesses.

Of the perjuries committed, they are few and far between, and consist mainly of lies of omission rather than lies of commission.

The Warren Commission had its conclusion at the start, namely, the Lone Assassin theory articulated by J. Edgar Hoover on the evening of the JFK assassination itself. Therefore, the Warren Commission attorneys did not satisfactorily pursue contradictions in testimony.

Much was omitted from the Warren Commission testimony -- but the HSCA did not recover those omissions. The key data from the HSCA, IMHO, was about the Mexico City episode, the Sylvia Odio episode starring Loran Hall, and the proximity of Gerry Patrick Hemming and Interpen to the Lake Pontchartrain paramilitary training camp directed by Guy Banister and David Ferrie.

The Warren Commission failed us in many ways -- but there is much that it successfully pursued, and we should treasure much of that testimony for the cause of US History.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited June 18, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

Not enough attention is given this argument -- that Oswald is both innocent (in a way) and guilty (in a way) at the same time.

Sorry, Paul, that sounds like double-think to me.

This antiquated and disproved theory is just a variation on the official story. Old wine in new bottles.

The Warren Commission could not find a motive for Lee, and neither could Garrison.

Have you had any better luck in finding a motive?

Also, Raymond, although I've offered a primary motive for Oswald above, namely, that Oswald was motivated by efforts to do well in an undercover operation for Guy Banister, e.g. pretend to be an FPCC officer to fool the Cuban Embassy clerks in Mexico City to admit him into Cuba to meet Castro -- there is a secondary motive I'd like to clarify.

The secondary motive for Oswald in his obsessive cooperation with Guy Banister was to atone for his crime of attempting to kill the resigned General Edwin Walker for his role in the Ole Miss racial riots in September 1962.

This idea came to me years ago when reading Ron Lewis book, Flashback: The Untold Story of Lee Harvey Oswald (1993), and was confirmed for me by reading Harry Dean's, Crosstrails (2001), but especially driven home by the personal papers of resigned General Edwin Walker himself, which are partially laid out at my web site at www.pet880.com.

These three sources tend to agree that the testimony we find in the Warren Commission reports about Lee Harvey Oswald spending significant time and effort to kill Edwin Walker is valid, believable testimony.

Ron Lewis claims to have known Lee Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. So Ron knew Lee for only a few weeks, yet they established a rapport based on the fact that both had an undesirable discharge status from the Marines. Lee recruited Ron to report to Guy Banister (through Lee) about Long family political campaigns. Ron claims to have met Banister and Ferrie for a few minutes at a bar -- once.

In any case, Ron also claims that during the course of that summer, when Lee Oswald was anxious about getting into Cuba, and considered hijacking a plane to get there, he confessed to Ron that Guy Banister was blackmailing him because he had tried to kill General Walker; and as it turned out they were close friends. Ron encouraged Lee to escape, but Lee was committed to redeem himself in the eyes of Guy Banister, i.e. he believed that by completing his "mission" that Guy Banister would release him from his paramilitary sentence.

My point is that ex-General Edwin Walker plays a motivating role for Oswald during his New Orleans episode, according to Ron Lewis.

As for Harry Dean, he claims that in early September 1963, he attended an exclusive meeting with top John Birch Society officials in Southern California at which ex-General Walker was the guest. Walker explained to those few present that a scheme was in progress to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of JFK. Present at that meeting were (among others) Loran Hall and Larry Howard (whom Harry is convinced were the Leopoldo and Angelo, or rather, Lorenzo and Alonzo, who in late September visited Sylvia Odio along with Lee Harvey Oswald on their way to Mexico City).

But most vitally, the personal papers of ex-General Edwin Walker reveal that he was aware of Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of JFK, even though he told the Warren Commission he wasn't. (In my humble opinion, Walker committed perjury more than any other witness before the Warren Commission.) Walker's phone call to the German newspaper, Deutsche Nationalzeitung, citing Lee Harvey Oswald only 18 hours after the killing of JFK is only the start of the evidence.

http://www.pet880.com/images/19631129_Deutsche_NZ.jpg

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

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Edited June 18, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Brancato]

Paul - you are hijacking this thread, I am sure inadvertantly.

[Paul Trejo]

Paul - you are hijacking this thread, I am sure inadvertantly.

No, Paul B., I'm not hi-jacking this thread. It's about the "future of the JFK Forum" in general, and about the dismissal of the moderator Tom Scully (as well as Jim Di Eugenio) in particular.

Part of the reason for Tom's dismissal was that he harrassed my posts -- he didn't criticize them with facts or counter-arguments, but with insults and accusations.

Tom Scully led a counter-culture of insults and accusations on this Forum in recent months, often in response to my opinions. That is self-evident from threads in 2013.

Now, IMHO, the future of the JFK Forum will be characterized by the sort of exchange that I engage here with Raymond -- we disagree sharply, but neither of us stoops to name-calling, insults or accusations. Thus this thread is also partly a demonstration of the kind of decorum that John Simkin explicitly demands for his web site in this very thread.

I'm quite aware that my opinions are controversial -- they challenge most other positions out there. I don't take an Either/Or approach (either Oswald was innocent or guilty with no middle term; or, either the Warren Commission was correct or was a coup'd'etat with no middle term). My position is a dialectical synthesis, and it's rare anywhere, not just on John Simkin's Education Forum on JFK.

So, no, I'm not hi-jacking this thread -- I'm pushing it forward.

And finally, I think my double-response to Raymond regarding Oswald's "motive" merits a response.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited June 18, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Thomas Graves]

Paul - you are hijacking this thread, I am sure inadvertantly.

No, Paul B., I'm not hi-jacking this thread. It's about the "future of the JFK Forum" in general, and about the dismissal of the moderator Tom Scully (as well as Jim Di Eugenio) in particular.

Part of the reason for Tom's dismissal was that he harrassed my posts -- he didn't criticize them with facts or counter-arguments, but with insults and accusations.

Tom Scully led a counter-culture of insults and accusations on this Forum in recent months, often in response to my opinions. That is self-evident from threads in 2013.

Now, IMHO, the future of the JFK Forum will be characterized by the sort of exchange that I engage here with Raymond -- we disagree sharply, but neither of us stoops to name-calling, insults or accusations. Thus this thread is also partly a demonstration of the kind of decorum that John Simkin explicitly demands for his web site in this very thread.

I'm quite aware that my opinions are controversial -- they challenge most other positions out there. I don't take an Either/Or approach (either Oswald was innocent or guilty with no middle term; or, either the Warren Commission was correct or was a coup'd'etat with no middle term). My position is a dialectical synthesis, and it's rare anywhere, not just on John Simkin's Education Forum on JFK.

So, no, I'm not hi-jacking this thread -- I'm pushing it forward.

And finally, I think my double-response to Raymond regarding Oswald's "motive" merits a response.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Dear Paul,

Nice spin job.

Sincerely,

--Tommy

[Ian Kingsbury]

Paul T

Is this the antithesis stage of your investigation or are We

Meant to supply this?.

Ian

Edited June 18, 2013 by Ian Kingsbury

[Thomas Graves]

Paul T

Is this the antithesis stage of your investigation or are We

Meant to supply this?.

Ian

Ian,

OMG! You mean he's gonna develop a synthesis, too?

Heaven forbid.

--Tommy

[Ken Pierce]

Mr(s)Trejo and Morrow have both hijacked this thread.

[Paul Brancato]

And both blissfully unawares.

[David Lifton]

Simkin: "Tom Scully and Jim DiEugenio were not removed from this Forum for any individual breach of Forum rules. My decision was based on what I considered a long-term campaign into bullying members into not posting on this forum."

What really blew my mind re: Scully is that I was not allowed to call Bill Clinton a rapist & pervert when that topic came up. After all the documentation of Bill Clinton's long history of rape including several cases of biting lips, serial sexual assault, exposing himself, unwanted hard passes ... and yet in Scullyworld this was somehow a verbotten topic.

David Lifton says that in the 1992 Bill Clinton on the campaign trail (privately) revealed himself to be quite a conspiracy buff in the JFK assassination. Yet today in 2013 Bill Clinton is publicly a complete supporter of the Warren Reporter laugher. I think that says a lot about Bill Clinton.

Scully was an intolerant bully, a little man with a Napolean complex, who is psychologically unsuited to be a an impartial moderator anywhere. Yes, his efforts were to bully people into not expressing their opinions as *he* the Scullinator violated forum rules left & right with his personal attacks.

I do think Education Forum, especially when combined with the Spartacus enclyclopedia, is the best place to learn about the JFK assassination on the internet. Ed Forum was where I was introduced to the JFK assassination in spring, 2008 (reading, learning).

Regarding the statement in your post. . : "David Lifton says that in the 1992 Bill Clinton on the campaign trail (privately) revealed himself to be quite a conspiracy buff in the JFK assassination. . "

Yes, that is true. My very good friend, the late Robert Chapman (who, btw, was also a close friend of Mary Ferrell, and did a lot of the "dog work" in connection with setting up the Ferrell Foundation), was the owner of a restaurant in Memphis: "Mollies". There was an occasion--and perhaps more than one--when candidate Clinton came by, and Robert spoke to him, at length. Without question, Bill Clinton followed the case. Remember what he said to Hubble (when he appointed him AG): that he wanted him to get to the bottom of two things, UFO's and the Kennedy assassination.

Some six months before she died, Jacqueline Kennedy spent time with Clinton, on a yacht (there are photographs of all this) and I think that it was made clear to Clinton that Jacqueline Kennedy did not want President Clinton to pursue the matter. (I have my own beliefs as to why). But, I believe, that goes to the root of why Clinton changed his position, which indeed he did. And I believe one can find that laid out in NY Times accounts of a press conference he held around the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.

I am writing this post from memory, but I want to reiterate that Robert Chapman definitely had talks with Bill Clinton, when he was a candidate, and yes, Clinton was most interested in the Kennedy assassination.

DSL

6/18/13; 8:40 PM PDT

Los Angeles, California

[David Lifton]

June Oswald, LHO's daughter, in June, 1995 in NYT Magazine: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=675

Q: Do you and Rachel [June's sister] argue much about this?

A: Yes. Just in recent years; but yes. We are very close - except when these kinds of things come up. See, this is the difference. We visited the set of "JFK" when it was going on, and somebody said, "Your father was a hero." Well, that's what Rachel wants to believe. Rachel loved listening to that. She got all caught up, because she wants so badly to have this identification with her father.

That didn't set well with me. If they could prove somehow that he was innocent, he'd still not be a hero, he'd be a martyr. I have to remind Rachel that this is the man who beat our mother, who didn't provide for his children. I tell her, "Rachel, for all we know, we could have been living in the streets." Because that's mostly what I think of when I think of Lee. As for what his exact role in the assassination was - well, he'll have to be judged for that before God.

Well, Robert, here's another dialectical paradox about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Marguerite Oswald often claimed that her son was 'the greatest hero' because he died in the line of duty, working for one of the Intelligence Agencies.

In my theory, Marguerite Oswald was half-right. IMHO we know that Lee Oswald was not a full-time employee of any Intelligence Agency -- however, insofar as he was falsely but deliberately made into the Lone Assassin by the Warren Commission for the specific purpose of National Security, then we might easily argue that Lee Harvey Oswald single-handedly prevented World War 3.

So, June and Rachel can both be right, within these nuances. Oswald was a martyr -- because he was victimized by his own associates; and yet Oswald was also a hero, because without the "Lone Assassin" mythology, the USA might easily have plunged into a Civil War during the Cold War which would have ignited a World War.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Oh pleez, Paul. . I think you're going way too far in this analysis.

What about the 58,000 people whose names are engraved on the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C.? (And the 1 million Asians who died in that conflict?)

Are we supposed to believe that somehow their deaths too, somehow are invested with some "meaning" because "they" too, functioned as a buffer of sorts, and prevented World War 3?

Sorry, but I can't buy into that kind of analysis.

At all.

I'll tell you what I believe--and this arises from my belief that the autopsy was falsified; and furthermore, that it was the falsification of Kennedy's wounds (and the attendant "lone guilt" of Oswald) that provided the foundation for that false autopsy. Once I made those discoveries--and I'm going back now to the all of 1966--I felt that there was a pirate flag, flying over the White House. (And I wrote exactly that in Best Evidence). So that's how I felt about my government.

In short, I believed then--and still believe--that the Johnson presidency was illegitimate, and the subsequent escalation of the Vietnam War represents a complete departure from anything Kennedy would have done, or was intended by him.

Lee Oswald, and the narrative of the "lone assassin," provided the "political narrative" for the operation of the line of succession. The false life Oswald lived, and his supposed guilt as "the assassin" provided the basis for creating the appearance that the assassination of President Kennedy was a quirk of fate, and for their then being a stable political transition from Kennedy to Johnson.

That's what this is all about, and nothing less.

DSL

6/18/13; 8:50 PM PDT

Los Angeles, California

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Also, Raymond, although I've offered a primary motive for Oswald above, namely, that Oswald was motivated by efforts to do well in an undercover operation for Guy Banister, e.g. pretend to be an FPCC officer to fool the Cuban Embassy clerks in Mexico City to admit him into Cuba to meet Castro -- there is a secondary motive I'd like to clarify.

The secondary motive for Oswald in his obsessive cooperation with Guy Banister was to atone for his crime of attempting to kill the resigned General Edwin Walker for his role in the Ole Miss racial riots in September 1962.

Thank you Paul. Seems you -- and you alone-- have figured out Lee Oswald's motives.