major JFK author dies...and crickets. Can someone explain?

[Vince Palamara]

Was Harry Livingstone that despised or something? Wow- give the man his due. He was a major figure on the case- three major best-sellers (who doesn't own his books?) and a big influence on the medical evidence side.

I mean, it is what it is (and I understand it is 2015, not 1992- perhaps the case isn't as fire hot as it once was)...just curious as to why no one responded, good or bad, to my two posts about Harry's passing. Not mad in the least...just curious.

It IS ironic, though- he was a lifelong bachelor who alienated the research community...AM I answering my own question here? Did he turn people off that much that people are saying a silent "who cares?"

There was a little reaction to my posts about his passing on Facebook...all positive, but not gargantuan or anything of the size one would expect from the passing of a (for example) Weisberg, John Judge, etc.

Thoughts (if you have them)?

Edited June 6, 2015 by Vince Palamara

[Roger DeLaria]

I'm sorry to hear about his passing, he was an important researcher, imo.

High Treason was one of the first books I read when I started looking at the assassination, along with Crossfire. I recently purchased The Radical Right and The Murder of John F. Kennedy, and am looking forward to getting into it. Definitely looks to be a good examination of what JFK was up against.

[Vince Palamara]

High Treason, High Treason 2 (his best, IMO), and The Radical Right are the best. Killing The Truth and Killing Kennedy (his 1995 book, NOT the O'Reilly junk with the same title!) have their moments.

[Pat Speer]

I never met Harry, but heard a lot of bad things about him. Although his conclusions were often off-base, he broke new ground and had a lot of new info in his books. May he rest in peace.

[Ron Ecker]

I have some of his books. I agree that they contained some new info. I also felt they were repetitive (how many books do you need to write about it? Let's see, "Killing Kennedy," used that title, so how about "Killing the Truth"?), like he was milking money out of this tragedy. But I could be wrong. Anyway, RIP.

[Gayle Nix Jackson]

It is odd, but just last week I was asking people privately how to get in touch with him. I had heard many bad things about him when I was friends with Robert Groden. In retrospect, I now understand why. Nonetheless, someone had told me to purchase his "Killing the Truth" book in my quest to find my grandfather's original film. Two people suggested there is a passage in this book that would make one think maybe Groden had the original. I bought it. I must say, I laughed as I read it as to his observations in regards to David Lifton, Mary Ferrell, Harold Weisberg, etc. and at times agreed with him as I read it. I wondered how the JFK community (if you can call it that) reacted to this. Then, near the end of the book, I saw that he had mentioned my name in tandem with Madeline Brown's. I never met this man. Nor did I ever meet Madeline Brown. That's when I started asking how to get in touch with him. I heard several more stories about his actions, each of them worse than the one before. Of course, none of these people knew how to contact him. I really wish I could have talked to him. I had no idea he had written so many books and I truly want to read his first one as I do believe it would shed light on his actions. I'm no psychologist, but if the first book is autobiographical as has been suggested, it would explain a lot about this man. With all this said, I am sad that anyone should die alone and with no family and friends. I hope he has passed on to a better place.

[Vince Palamara]

good comments. Ok, THAT does explain it, then. I guess the bad side of Harry caught up to him. That said, he did do a lot of good- HT and HT2, in particular, have valuable information.

[Don Jeffries]

Vince,

I agree with you, but find it even more amazing that he died in February and we are just hearing about it now. If you hadn't reported it, would we have ever known? I guess that speaks to how many other researchers he was in contact with.

The research community, such as it is, is becoming more dysfunctional by the day. Seemingly every author who writes about this subject is scrutinized and ultimately rejected by the majority of those who call themselves researchers, regardless of whether they actually have produced any original research or not. Livingstone's personality seems to have been on a par with so many others connected to this case. He would have fit in perfectly on the JFK assassination forums.

I read several of Livingstone's books. As someone mentioned on another forum, he would have been served well by having a good editor. His books are awkwardly written, and therefore sometimes challenging to read. But he certainly produced some valuable research. It's no surprise that he was engaged in feuds with several other researchers. This so-called community has always been more about feuding than about presenting a united front.

[Pat Speer]

Beyond some of the dark stuff about Livingstone told me personally, or found in the Weisberg Archives, there's an old newspaper article on him that helped convince me he was not a happy camper.

From a 6-11-80 article on Livingstone by Maureen Williams found in the Bangor Daily News:

(I know this seems a cheap shot, but this article was on Livingstone at a time virtually no one knew who he was, written in his local paper. The article, it follows, was his idea, or at least written with his full cooperation. And yet, look what it reveals.)

"The federal government has stipulated that certain sensitive material concerning the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 cannot be released to the public and media until the year 2039. One man who claims to be living in secrecy and fear for his life in eastern Maine, claims to have gotten some of that material through an underground source with connections in the Pentagon. Harrison Edward Livingstone, one of hundreds of private citizens who are involved in researching the assassination, carries his completed but rough manuscript of his book with him wherever he goes...He has kept on the move in recent years in several states, because he said he believes he's a 'hunted man.' In one of those states, he says, his car was fitted with an explosive device. In July 1979, a plane was to carry a team of reporters of the Baltimore Sun to Dallas, where they were to rendezvous with Livingstone. The plane was accidentally rammed by a jet fuel delivery truck on the airport apron. Livingstone says this was no accident. The incident caused the occupants to be confined in the plane for three hours, but what is stranger is that neither the newspaper or Livingstone could locate the investigative team for two days. In July and November 1979, the Baltimore Sun published two stories, containing purported new information and a lot of speculation, which Livingstone claims to have stimulated. 'But nobody read it...the wire services probably didn't pick it up, and one of the stories ran on a Sunday features page,' Livingstone said. Livingstone is convinced that some of the government's official autopsy photographs have been forged by an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency so they would be consistent with the so-called 'single-bullet, single-gunman' theory. Livingstone said that on July 30, 1979, he traveled to Dallas where he interviewed various physicians who attended the dying president at Parkland Hospital. In tape-recorded and transcribed interviews, Livingstone said, medical doctors Adolph Giesecke, Robert McClelland, Malcolm Perry, Charles Baxter, Fouad Bashour, Jacqueline Hunt, and Marion Jenkins, indicate that the official government photo shown them may have been fake, because it shows an entrance wound in the occipital-parietal section of the president's head. Livingstone says they all told him that when the president was wheeled into Parkland's emergency room for initial medical treatment, the wound they saw in the back of his head looked like an exit wound...Robert Groden of Hopelawn, N.J., a photographic consultant to the House Assassinations Committee, said 'My visual inspection of the autopsy photos and X-rays reveals evidence of forgery in four of the photographs..."

(The article then proceeded to quote Jack White on the possibility the photos had been faked, and Dr. Cyril Wecht on the probability there was more than one shooter. It then reported:)

"On the other hand, Dr. Paul C. Peters, professor and chairman of the Division of Urology, University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas, told the NEWS that he has never seen any of the official government autopsy photos. He was one of the many doctors and nurses who tried to revive the dying President 17 years ago. But after studying the forensic observations of Dr. John Lattimer, a retired Columbia professor, he believes that the gaping hole he saw in the right rear of the felled President's head should not be considered a true exit wound, but a 'tangential' wound, caused by a shallow bullet entry at the back of his neck."

Well, where do we begin? Hmmm... Livingstone had either presented himself, or had allowed himself to be presented, as a man on the run from dark forces--all because he had copies of the autopsy photos. He then hid that he'd received these copies from Robert Groden, by claiming he'd gotten them from some mysterious figure in the Pentagon. This allowed, as well, for Groden to serve as an additional source for the reporter. Well, this was pretty sneaky, no?

Edited June 6, 2015 by Pat Speer

[Mark Knight]

Interesting, too, that no obituary for Harry Livingstone has surfaced to this point.

[Vince Palamara]

It is puzzling that there is no obituary.

WOW- Pat Speer was not kidding about the Harold Weisberg collection online and Harry Livingstone:

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/L%20Disk/Livingstone%20Harrison%20Edward%205-93/Item%2029.pdf

http://jfk.hood.edu/index.shtml?search.html

[Vince Palamara]

some of the things written by Harold (about Livingstone and others) are so volatile that this tagline is included at the bottom of each page of a book Harold privately worked on and never published:
"For personal use only, not for distribution nor attribution. © 2004 Harold Weisberg Archive"

[Roger DeLaria]

I was in a local used bookstore this afternoon and picked up a new, crisp hardcover of High Treason 2. I'm looking forward to getting that as well.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Was Harry Livingstone that despised or something?

Thoughts (if you have them)?

Hi Vince:

I knew Harry fairly well over a number of years. In fact he mentions me in one of his books. My impression is that he was motivated by a strong animosity to David Lifton, and Lifton's (perfectly logical) theory that JFK's body was altered.

My problem with Harry is pretty much the same problem I have with the entire research community: In Killing Kennedy he writes,

"It doesn't matter whether Oswald was innocent or guilty. It doesn't even matter if he was part of the conspiracy."

I see much the same attitude here and everywhere else among JFK researchers. A lack of moral clarity is the reason why the JFK research community has been going nowhere.

Lee Oswald was innocent, but nobody cares.

[Vince Palamara]

Raymond, I remember well Fredonia, NY and the Third Decade conference almost 24 (!) years ago. Bob Cutler, George Michael Evica and Harry are now deceased (I wonder if Jerry Rose is still with us?)

Harry alienated a lot of people there by ripping on David Lifton.