The Tippit Case in the New Millenium

[Michael Clark]

1 minute ago, David Von Pein said:

First of all, explain what the hell this is supposed to mean, Ten-Four?....

"David, you are implying that Tippit's murder played no part in the failure to protect Oswald."

Spell it out slowly now. (Remember, I'm just a mindless hick LNer from the Hoosier State.)

Ostentation, playing dumb.... you can try to pick-up fools elsewhere.

[David Von Pein]

26 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

...you can try to pick up fools elsewhere.

Why would I look elsewhere when there's a roomful of CTers right here to choose from.

Edited May 5, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Michael Clark]

12 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

OK. ....

David, 

Lets take a few steps, posts, back, regarding the videos.

will you offer your opinion on your feelings and understandings regarding Tippit's character, integrity, intelligence and the like. Of course this question probes your understanding in relation, or contrast to commonly stated assessments of him, as a person. Of course I am assuming that you are aware that the above mentioned assessments of Tippit are often assessed unflatteringly.

 

[David Von Pein]

Michael,

Yes, I've seen some discussions about how Tippit was supposedly not such a good husband/father, etc. (i.e., that he was cheating on his wife, Marie, by having an affair with a waitress). And that part about him "cheating" on his wife is apparently true, and Dale Myers talks openly about Tippit's affair with the waitress in his book, "With Malice" (pages 35-36 and 305-306).

But even if we acknowledge that Officer Tippit had his faults and cheated on his wife, I can't see how those facts have any relevance at all to the events in Dallas on November 22-24. Where's the tie-in? I see none.

Edited May 5, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Michael Clark]

4 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Michael,

Yes, I've seen some discussions about how Tippit was supposedly not such a good husband/father, etc. (i.e., that he was cheating on his wife, Marie, by having an affair with a waitress). And that part about him "cheating" on his wife is apparently true, and Dale Myers talks openly about Tippit's affair with the waitress in his book, "With Malice" (pages 35-36 and 305-306).

But even if we acknowledge that Officer Tippit had his faults and cheated on his wife, I can't see how those facts have any relevance at all to the events in Dallas on November 22-24. Where's the tie-in? I see none.

David, I was not really referring to those things. This is kind of important to my point, about which I made myself rather clear, back at the Mrs. Tippit posts. I don't have handy, nor do I think I need to refer to, assessments of Tiipits intelligence and character, which tend towards the negative. I am not talking about him as a husband, or family man. Are you aware of those appraisals? If so, do you kind of ascribe to those assessments? 

Again, as mentioned above, I get the feeling that he was much smarter, more capable, more intelligent and savvier than for which he is often given credit.

What do you think?

[James DiEugenio]

This is the kind of person that Dale Myers is.  The following is taken from McBride's reply to Myers' critique of his book. Please read carefully to really comprehend what Myers is saying:

Myers conveniently, and falsely, tries to discredit Edgar Lee Tippit by claiming that he was suffering from "a dash of dementia" when I interviewed him and therefore cannot be trusted. Mr. Tippit told me he had never been interviewed before. In one of the end notes to the first edition of With Malice, published while Edgar Lee was still living, Myers wrote, "Little is known about Tippit's parents, Edgar Lee and Lizzie Mae Tippit." That situation could have been corrected if Myers, who claims he has been researching the Tippit case since 1978, had ever interviewed Mr. Tippit, but the second edition also shows no sign that happened. Perhaps Myers was reluctant to find out what Edgar Lee had to say. As a source for the allegation that Mr. Tippit was demented, Myers cites Joyce Tippit DeBord, a sister of J. D. whom he reports having interviewed on July 11, 2013. That was ten days after Myers ordered a copy of my book. So he apparently felt the belated need to quickly dig up a family source willing to help him discredit Mr. Tippit and his revealing interview.

The worst thing about this is not that Myers never talked to the man's father.  Not that he tried to smear the man after he read McBride's book to see what a harpoon it sank into this See No Evil  Hear No Evil thesis.

Its this: McBride interviewed the father in 1992.  That would be 21 years prior to Myers trying to smear his mental faculties. And BTW, this is not at all an anomaly for the  man. Myers has a history of doing this kind of thing.  

Edited May 5, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

More on Myers' book.

IMO, this critique of With Malice is even more trenchant  than Mike Griffith's review, which Myers got bent out of shape about.  

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/myers-dale-with-malice-part-1

Edited May 5, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

More on Myers.  Again, read this carefully to fully understand what the guy was doing before Lifton exposed him. Its from my article "Dale Myers Gets Perturbed."

Last year, when Reclaiming History came out, Myers began to praise the book on his web site. And he and Todd Vaughn also began to attack writers who criticized it. Yet, I could find no instance at this time period when Myers admitted he had been a direct and paid participant in that literary exercise. And in fact, he still terms Lifton's important information on this point as speculation and rumor. In my view, this comes close to what people on the web term as "sock puppetry" . This means for example, in an e-mail forum you praise a work you are responsible for, but you do not reveal in your e-mail identity that you are the writer, or in this case, co-writer.

This weird and unbecoming behavior reached its apogee after David Lifton appeared on Black Op Radio in the summer of 2007. At that time, with host Len Osanic, Lifton revealed that Vincent Bugliosi was not the sole author of Reclaiming History He named Fred Haines as one of the co-authors of the inflated volume. He then erred and named Patricia Lambert as another. Myers used this mistake to jump all over Lifton using Bugliosi's secretary Rosemary Newton as his bullhorn. This is utterly fascinating of course. Why? Because up until this point, Lifton had been kind to Myers about the issue by not naming him as a ghostwriter. Even though he knew about his role. But the ungracious and ungrateful Myers was still concealing it. And at the same time he was trying to belittle Lifton by implying that he didn't know what he was talking about! (Consider all that for a moment.)

Well, understandably, that was it for Lifton. He then wrote a rewrite of his previous article on the issue. And this time he named Myers. In his response to me, Myers says that Lifton "discovered" these details by reading the acknowledgments section of Reclaiming History. It's writing stuff like that which really makes me wonder about Myers. The details divulged by Lifton about the contracts Haines and Myers signed are nowhere -- and I mean nowhere -- to be found in Reclaiming History. And it's this specificity, which could only be known by an insider, that impressed me enough to write about it since I think it is an important issue in any serious critical discussion about that volume.

Now, one of the things Lifton has stated is that when Myers signed his first contract to contribute to the tome, he was taken aback by how bad Reclaiming History was. Considering the condition of the book when it was later published, that must have been pretty awful. (Although in Myers' upside down world, you never know.) I really wish Myers would talk about the state of the book when he got it. And which specific parts -- with page numbers -- he wrote or seriously contributed to. Also, if all those vicious, insulting and puerile pejoratives which litter the book were his or Bugliosi's. Or, in that category, if he encouraged the prosecutor to go down that vituperative road or if he tried to soften that cheap approach. (From the stuff Myers' spews today I seriously doubt it was the latter. On the JFK case, he's our equivalent to Bill O'Reilly.) If he can't answer these questions, then we know Lifton is right about the second contract. Which provided for the terms of their literary divorce. Which I suspected was the case since last year.

Edited May 5, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, Michael Clark said:

I get the feeling that he [Tippit] was much smarter, more capable, more intelligent and savvier than for which he is often given credit.

What do you think?

I really don't have an opinion one way or the other concerning the topic of whether Tippit was "more intelligent and capable and savvier" than some people have said. But, in any event, even if it's true, that seems like a mighty thin foundation on which to build a conspiracy plot.

Edited May 5, 2018 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

52 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

McBride interviewed the father in 1992.  That would be 21 years prior to Myers trying to smear his mental faculties.

But, Jim, the subject of the elder Tippit's "mental faculties" wasn't even an issue UNTIL 2013. It was only THEN, in 2013, that it became an issue after McBride's book came out. (And, btw, Edgar Tippit was 90 years old in 1992.)

Quoting Dale Myers....

"According to McBride, J.D. Tippit and another officer were ordered to track down Oswald in Oak Cliff just fifteen minutes after the assassination – before police could possibly have known about Oswald’s link to the assassination. This, according to McBride, is proof positive that Tippit was part of a police plot to kill Kennedy and then murder his alleged assassin.

 

The sole basis for McBride’s claim is his December 1992 interview with J.D.’s ninety-year-old father Edgar Lee Tippit. McBride describes Mr. Tippit as “vigorous” and “very sharp” with a memory “that seemed very good,” although I’m not sure how McBride could gauge the sharpness of the elder Tippit’s memory given this was his only interview of him.

 

The reality is that Mr. Tippit’s family had already begun to notice the onset of dementia by 1990, which was full blown only a few years later. Edgar Lee Tippit’s father – J.D.’s paternal grandfather – also suffered from the same affliction." -- Dale Myers; Nov. 2013

 

http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-good-bad-and-ugly-new-and-updated.html

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

This might be the coup de grace as far as Myers is concerned. But I have to set it up a bit.  

Myers is replying to an article I did on his friend and colleague Gus Russo.  In that article I related that someone came up to me after a seminar in Dallas where I had briefly discussed the work that investigators Russo and Myers had done for the 1993 PBS/BBC production "Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?"  Someone came to  me after and told me they had worked in television, and he said the idea that the show's LHO did it thesis was not formulated beforehand was not accurate. This is how TV worked.

With that in mind, please read the following two excerpts taken from Myers' blog spot:

9/24/2008 

“Nonsense. Investigative programs like Frontline have two phases: fact gathering and program editing. I’ve been in the television business since 1984 and can’t think of a single instance where a legitimate documentary program was scripted in advance of gathering material. Under the circumstances, how could Gus Russo (or anyone else, including producer Mike Sullivan) know “the slant” going into a program like that? It’s total B.S., pure and simple. And frankly, it’s common sense, which Mr. DiEugenio seems to be lacking in great abundance."

 

Dale Myers quoting Gus Russo  7/25/2013 upon the death of producer Mike Sullivan 

“When we were mapping out how we were going to run down all of the conspiracy theories, Mike suggested we start with finding out who pulled the trigger in Dallas first and then work backward from there to find out if anyone else was involved. It was a brilliant idea and saved us a lot of time following false leads. Conspiracy theorists today would do well to follow Mike’s suggestion.” (emphasis added)

As the reader can see by the three examples above, especially the last, Myers has a penchant for being rather sparse with facts according to the argument he wants to make at a certain time. Anyone watching the 1993 show can see that Sullivan impressed upon them they were going after an Oswald did it agenda from the mapping out phase.  Which precedes the script stage.  So his phrase "total BS pure and simple" is nothing but cheap boilerplate meant to disguise what Russo later revealed the agenda really was.  And Meyers apparently forgot what he wrote five years earlier.

Its always nice when these guys impeach themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Here is another takedown of the Myers book on Tippit.  This one is by Michael Griffith.

https://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/tippit.pdf

If you have not been exposed to his writings, you really should do so.  He is one of the few critics who I agree with the vast majority of the time he puts his pen to paper.  He works in relative obscurity for some reason. Therefore its hard to find his material, apparently he has a hard time being hosted for some reason.  But once you do, he is very much worth reading.

John McAdams hates him.  Which is a great recommendation.

[James DiEugenio]

Please note the following from my previous posts abut Myers's tactics:

1.On Myers and Bugliosi: Also, if all those vicious, insulting and puerile pejoratives which litter the book were his or Bugliosi's. Or, in that category, if he encouraged the prosecutor to go down that vituperative road or if he tried to soften that cheap approach. (From the stuff Myers' spews today I seriously doubt it was the latter. On the JFK case, he's our equivalent to Bill O'Reilly.)

2. On Edgar Tippit: As a source for the allegation that Mr. Tippit was demented, Myers cites Joyce Tippit DeBord, a sister of J. D. whom he reports having interviewed on July 11, 2013. That was ten days after Myers ordered a copy of my book. So he apparently felt the belated need to quickly dig up a family source willing to help him discredit Mr. Tippit and his revealing interview.

3. On me when I wrote that he and Russo and  Sullivan had and agenda in their PBS special :"It’s total B.S., pure and simple. And frankly, it’s common sense, which Mr. DiEugenio seems to be lacking in great abundance."

Dale Myers spares no one in his vicious personal attacks on critics of the WC.  Even though he himself used to be one of those critics, and we have him on tape saying the things he nows chalks up to nuttiness.  On this point he has a take no prisoners attitude.  Now, Ward wrote that I should not somehow accuse him of that because its "tribalism".  But then what is Myers guilty of? Cannibalism? I was making a statement of fact.  Dale Myers migrated over to the other side.  You know, Dan Rather, the late Peter Jennings, PBS.  And he has now nothing but bitter invective and insults for those who he used to be in league with.  In fact, he has turned on them with an almost personal vendetta.  Anyone who could have been a part of the steady stream of smears and cheap putdowns that make up the over 2600 pages of venom in Reclaiming History really has a reservoir of personal bitterness inside him.  So try to explain how Ward can never mention any of that, but somehow thinks me saying Myers is not on our side is somehow "tribalism".

[Gene Kelly]

Paul

The thread derailment began early on Thursday with these comments:

There is no safe hiding place for the conspiracy theorists in the Tippit case. Oswald left his calling card at the scene, and was positively identified by multiple witnesses (either doing the shooting or fleeing the area immediately afterward) ... No amount of conspiracy spin will exonerate Lee Oswald for J.D. Tippit's slaying ... Just the fact that Oswald was in the area of the crime, brandishing a pistol and fighting with police, within 35 minutes of Officer Tippit being shot is very powerful circumstantial evidence of his guilt right there.

That's when the waters began to be muddied. And the name-calling began ("conspiracy theorists").  And the ad hominem attacks.  With nothing of substance or interest offered since.

Muddy Waters

[James DiEugenio]

Wait a minute Gene.  I am trying to get us back to the Tippit case.

I think my observations about how Myers played loose with the facts in the three instances above are kind of valuable.  Since I do think they serve as a guide to his work.

Which, through the two reviews I posted, the reader can check himself.