Mark Shaw's "Denial of Justice" Kilgallen/JFK Presentation at Commonwealth Club

[Douglas Caddy]

Mark Shaw's "Denial of Justice" Kilgallen/JFK Presentation at Commonwealth Club of San Francisco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vUA4TSYLyI

[Joe Bauer]

Here I am posting again...but I must.

What a dynamic presentation by Mark Shaw.

I hope every member on this forum clicks on the link to this provided by Doug Caddy.

Yes, most here already know the story and it's details. But Shaw is one of the best presenters I have seen.

Just too inspired here to stay off the forum and not comment.

[Guest]

Lest we forget the UFO angle:

In a May 22, 1955 report from London, syndicated by the INS, Kilgallen stated, "British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of Cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified."

The "official of Cabinet rank" was Lord Mountbatten, who was rather a dubious journalistic source:

Back in February, 1955, Mountbatten, who was often referred to as Prince Charles's "honorary godfather" and mentor because of his close relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh, made an official report about a strange encounter his bricklayer Fred Briggs allegedly had with a flying saucer and an alien creature.

The report, which was uncovered after Mountbatten's 1979 death at the hands of the IRA, describes how a silver spaceship landed in the grounds of his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire.

The flying saucer hovered above the ground before a man dressed in overalls and a helmet descended from the bottom of the craft, according to the documents.

Fred was then reportedly knocked off his bike and held on the ground by an "unseen force."

Draw your own conclusions.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

Because I'm a fair and open-minded intractable Lone Nut fundamentalist zealot, I watched the video from start to finish.  I also have a longstanding interest in Kilgallen's death.  I remember her vividly and my father absolutely detested her on "What's My Line?"  Just a few quick notes:

• Shaw believes the Mafia alone was responsible for the assassination of JFK and the death of Kilgallen.  (Losing your enthusiasm already?)
• What Kilgallen was going to expose (per Shaw) were the ties between Carlos Marcello, Jack Ruby and Oswald.
• Melvin Belli knew about the JFK assassination in advance.
• Jack Ruby obviously knew about the assassination in advance because he was sitting at an advertising desk in the Dallas Morning News from which the TSBD could be observed.  (By this logic, everyone in Dealey Plaza knew about the assassination in advance.)
• Kilgallen chose Shaw and guided his efforts from the beyond.
• The smoking guns re Ruby are to be found right there in his trial transcript.  (Be sure to watch at least the last ten minutes of the video as these are revealed.)
• Shaw, who is truly self-aggrandizement personified, sent his book and a heartfelt letter to Caroline Kennedy, which he inexplicably reads at the end.  She didn't respond.
• Shaw would have you believe he resurrected Kilgallen from oblivion.  I've been reading about her supposed "mystery death" for decades in a variety of contexts, including the "knew too much about UFOs" and "knew too much about Marilyn Monroe" angles.

The death of Kilgallen is indeed mysterious, even suspicious.  The death scene seems so unlikely that it is either (1) real, in the same weird way that Umbrella Man is real, or (2) the work of operatives so clumsy that they must have been in a fog of vodka and Seconal themselves.  If these were Mafia operatives, I'd echo what Santos Trafficante replied when asked what he'd say if he were told that Ruby were a Mafia hit man:  "I'd say the Mafia needs a new personnel director."

Kilgallen was indeed obsessed with the JFK assassination.  She was indeed closely aligned with Mark Lane.  The FBI was indeed interested in her source of the secret Ruby transcripts; they did indeed send agents to her home and she did indeed refuse to cooperate.  But none of this will get you where Shaw wants to take you.

Shaw says that Bugliosi simply dismissed Kilgallen by claiming her supposed private interview with Ruby never happened.  In fact, Reclaiming History has considerable discussion of Kilgallen.  Here is what Bugliosi actually said about the interview, which seems pretty fair to me.

Bill Alexander, the Dallas assistant district attorney who was the lead trial prosecutor at the Ruby trial, told me that the story that Kilgallen had a private interview with Ruby during the trial was "pure bull--. The sheriff's office never let any of the reporters talk to Ruby."

When I asked Hugh Aynesworth, veteran investigative reporter for the Dallas Morning News and Newsweek magazine who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, Warren Commission, and Ruby trial, what he knew about Kilgallen's supposed interview with Ruby, he said, "I know it didn't happen, and there was never any belief by the press corps in Dallas that it did."

I asked Aynesworth whether Kilgallen herself had ever claimed to anyone or in any of her articles to having had a private interview with Ruby. "No," he said, "never, not in any of her articles on the case, all of which I believe I've read, or to any of us who covered the trial. This allegation surfaced for the first time after Dorothy's death when her New York hairdresser supposedly told [gossip columnist] Walter Winchell that Dorothy had told her she spoke to Ruby and was going to blow the case wide open." Aynesworth, being a local reporter, knew the judge ("We were drinking buddies"), the DA, and the sheriff, and said if anyone had been allowed to speak with Ruby alone, it would have been him (he was the first member of the media to be granted an exclusive interview with Marina), but he added that no one in the media was allowed to speak with Ruby. "I and everyone else was turned down. The best we could do was shout questions to Ruby when he was being brought to the courtroom from the lockup." When Sheriff Bill Decker (now deceased), whose office had custody of Ruby, heard of Kilgallen's alleged claim to her hairdresser that she had spoken alone to Ruby, Aynesworth said Decker told him, "Hugh, it didn't happen. These New York folks just make up stories."

Aynesworth said that the late district attorney Henry Wade also told him it didn't happen. Aynesworth said the only person outside of Ruby's family and close friends who did get into Ruby's cell was a Los Angeles film producer who "somehow snuck in with Earl" (Ruby's brother) and provided the audio equipment for Earl questioning Ruby for a documentary.

Aynesworth said if the authorities had ever granted any reporter an interview with Ruby, "like flies on a horse-dropping, they would have had to let all the rest of us in the media talk to him. It didn't happen," he reiterated.

However, in her biography of Kilgallen, author Lee Israel says that Ruby's co-defense counsel, Joe Tonahill, wrote her on January 12, 1978, that sometime in March of 1964, Kilgallen requested a private interview with Ruby. She told Tonahill she had a message to give to Ruby from "a mutual friend," who Tonahill was led to believe was a singer from San Francisco.

Tonahill made arrangements with Judge Joe B. Brown, who Israel writes was "awestruck by Dorothy," for the interview to take place in a small office behind the judge's bench. Kilgallen and Ruby spoke alone for about eight minutes. Israel wrote that "Dorothy would mention the fact of the interview to close friends, but never the substance. Not once, in her prolific published writings, did she so much as refer to the private interview."

In any event, Jones's story about Kilgallen having a story about the case from her interview with Ruby that would blow it wide open is wholly uncorroborated and very suspect. 

***

Finally, assuming that Kilgallen did have a private interview with Ruby, it took place at the Ruby trial in Dallas during March of 1964. But wait awhile, folks. Didn't Miss Kilgallen die in November 1965, one year and eight months later? You mean to tell me a gossip columnist, or any columnist, would wait twenty months to break a sensational story? They wouldn't even wait twenty minutes, would they? Wouldn't they report it immediately so they wouldn't be "scooped" by some other reporter? Yet her biographer confirmed what Hugh Aynesworth said, that Kilgallen never wrote any article about her alleged interview with Ruby.

[Douglas Caddy]

10 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Lest we forget the UFO angle:

In a May 22, 1955 report from London, syndicated by the INS, Kilgallen stated, "British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of Cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified."

The "official of Cabinet rank" was Lord Mountbatten, who was rather a dubious journalistic source:

Back in February, 1955, Mountbatten, who was often referred to as Prince Charles's "honorary godfather" and mentor because of his close relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh, made an official report about a strange encounter his bricklayer Fred Briggs allegedly had with a flying saucer and an alien creature.

The report, which was uncovered after Mountbatten's 1979 death at the hands of the IRA, describes how a silver spaceship landed in the grounds of his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire.

The flying saucer hovered above the ground before a man dressed in overalls and a helmet descended from the bottom of the craft, according to the documents.

Fred was then reportedly knocked off his bike and held on the ground by an "unseen force."

Draw your own conclusions.

Yes, "Lest we forget the UFO angle"....because Dorothy was on top of this forbidden topic by more than six decades before The New York Times released its UFO scoop:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/insider/secret-pentagon-ufo-program.html

 

Edited December 21, 2018 by Douglas Caddy

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Yes, "Lest we forget the UFO angle"....because Dorothy was on top of this forbidden topic by more than sixty decades before The New York Times released its UFO scoop:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/insider/secret-pentagon-ufo-program.html

 

Yes, she was.  I don't discount her courage and intrepidness.  She had no way of knowing that Mountbatten was anything less than credible.  And, who knows, perhaps he did have some inside knowledge, even if the incident with his bricklayer is a little hard to swallow.