Edward Jay Epstein's curious defense of Jeffrey Epstein

[Ron Ecker]

There's a lot to like in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, but for me the best thing in it is Janet Leigh. I'll always be in love with her. My favorite sequence in PSYCHO is when she's driving a car and just stares into the camera for like five minutes (while there's voice-over narration). As Roy Orbison said, "Oh, Pretty Woman."

 

 

[Andrew Prutsok]

I don't think you should be making judgements about people based on their associations. The recent President of the United States is good friends with at least five known pedophiles. That does not make him a pedophile. Hell, I bet lots of people count five pedophiles among their closest associates.

[James DiEugenio]

The point is that Epstein has a history of covering up certain high profile crimes e.g. the JFK case, and the extermination campaign by Hoover against the Black Panthers.

He also has a tendency to attack certain people who are trying to swim against a corrupt tide e.g. Snowden and Garrison.

This fits into that dual profile. 

BTW, Whitney Webb, who has done a lot of work on this case, predicts that Maxwell will probably beat the rap.

[Richard Booth]

16 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

The point is that Epstein has a history of covering up certain high profile crimes e.g. the JFK case, and the extermination campaign by Hoover against the Black Panthers.

He also has a tendency to attack certain people who are trying to swim against a corrupt tide e.g. Snowden and Garrison.

This fits into that dual profile. 

BTW, Whitney Webb, who has done a lot of work on this case, predicts that Maxwell will probably beat the rap.

Indeed, Edward Jay Epstein has a history which is far more than having been friends with a few pedophiles. Regarding Andrew's comments, It would be missing the point to believe my insinuations about E.J. Epstein are solely based on people he knows, to the contrary my suspicions are based on his long history.

Let's look at some of his other pals: James Angleton, Ray Rocca, Scotty Miler, Peter Bagley. Would this cast of characters have all spoken to a genuine historian who has no agenda, would this group of people all so willingly provide interviews to someone who isn't an asset?

Following Andrew's logic, he might well be expected to counter that probably a lot of people know the entire CIA counterintelligence staff circa '63.

[Andrew Prutsok]

2 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

Indeed, Edward Jay Epstein has a history which is far more than having been friends with a few pedophiles. Regarding Andrew's comments, It would be missing the point to believe my insinuations about E.J. Epstein are solely based on people he knows, to the contrary my suspicions are based on his long history.

Let's look at some of his other pals: James Angleton, Ray Rocca, Scotty Miler, Peter Bagley. Would this cast of characters have all spoken to a genuine historian who has no agenda, would this group of people all so willingly provide interviews to someone who isn't an asset?

Following Andrew's logic, he might well be expected to counter that probably a lot of people know the entire CIA counterintelligence staff circa '63.

I was being facetious. Who knows, let alone is friends with, 5 pedophiles?

[Ron Ecker]

On 3/28/2021 at 6:06 PM, Richard Booth said:

Also consider that Edward Jay Epstein was an assistant to Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita, a book about a pedophile. 

 

I still remember the opening sentences of the book. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." Pretty good writing, I thought, for a Russian writing in English. I never read the book but I remember that opening from looking at it in a bookstore. Back in those days I couldn't afford to be buying novels. I saw the movie, in which Sue Lyon as Lolita was necessarily older than the girl in the book. Saw where Sue died a couple of years ago at the age of 73. How time flies.

 

  

[Ron Bulman]

4 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

I was being facetious. Who knows, let alone is friends with, 5 pedophiles?

I actually chuckled, thinking it was a bit sarcastic.  I hope Richard doesn't take it the wrong way, I find his posts insightful. 

[Richard Booth]

18 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

I was being facetious. Who knows, let alone is friends with, 5 pedophiles?

Sometimes context is hard to tell online, I thought you were being serious. My apologies for misinterpreting your point.

[Richard Booth]

 

15 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

I still remember the opening sentences of the book. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." Pretty good writing, I thought, for a Russian writing in English. I never read the book but I remember that opening from looking at it in a bookstore. Back in those days I couldn't afford to be buying novels. I saw the movie, in which Sue Lyon as Lolita was necessarily older than the girl in the book. Saw where Sue died a couple of years ago at the age of 73. How time flies.

 

  

I have not read the book, but I believe that it must be some sort of impressive work considering all of the laudatory critical reviews. I know that it would probably be myopic to simply write the thing off as "a book about a pedophile."  Still, no matter how well crafted it must be, or what level of intellectual depth it must contain, I have to say, I don't think I'd want to read it.  

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Richard Booth said:

 

I have not read the book, but I believe that it must be some sort of impressive work considering all of the laudatory critical reviews. I know that it would probably be myopic to simply write the thing off as "a book about a pedophile."  Still, no matter how well crafted it must be, or what level of intellectual depth it must contain, I have to say, I don't think I'd want to read it.  

         I read Lolita for a college course on the modern novel back in the 70s.  At the time, I knew almost nothing about the shocking prevalence of pedophilia-- and I was not alone in that regard.   Public consciousness of child abuse and pedophilia in the U.S. was limited prior to the 1980s-- even in the psychoanalytic community, where Freud's classic misinterpretations of child sexual abuse as mere "fantasy" were still widely accepted.

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

         I read Lolita for a college course on the modern novel back in the 70s.  At the time, I knew almost nothing about the shocking prevalence of pedophilia-- and I was not alone in that regard.   Public consciousness of child abuse and pedophilia in the U.S. was limited prior to the 1980s-- even in the psychoanalytic community, where Freud's classic misinterpretations of child sexual abuse as mere "fantasy" were still widely accepted.

It was the same in the UK if not worse, there was almost zero awareness of it going on. Some of the teacher behaviours we observed as kids at school would undoubtably result in court cases and prosecutions today. As children you just made jokes about the topic, thinking it was funny, unaware of the sinister reality of it all. Looking back you feel lucky nothing happened to you. One friend I played football with for years had been sexually assaulted and left face down in a shallow pool unconscious with about 7 different bone breaks. He was saved and the guy caught and sentenced. His life will never be normal. Its just sickening. He’s been in and out of prison, he was a straight A student. Watching the 90’s film Sleepers really put it all in perspective. 
 

BBC turned a blind eye to Jimmy Saville’s behaviour, it all came out after he died. A whole host of politicians got away with it too. Freuds grandson too, Clement Freud (allegedly) abused and raped underage girls. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Richard Booth]

On 3/28/2021 at 5:13 PM, Joseph McBride said:

I read that Richard Condon was supposedly influenced

in part by Roy Cohn in creating the monstrous mother

figure who controls the Joe McCarthy character in

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, my favorite novel.

Hi Joseph,

Loved the film of The Manchurian Candidate. I haven't read the novel but one of these days I will. It's among the many books I should read that I'm late to the party on, what with life getting in the way as it does so often. Speaking to that, I recently read your book, Into the Nightmare. I very much enjoyed the book and found it had a number of details that were, to me, important.  

After reading the book, one thing stood out to me the most that I would like to ask you about. Since you are here I thought I might ask you.

Preface

One Tippit witness, Mrs. Donald Higgins, is mentioned in passing on page 474 (Kindle version). You write "The ten witnesses who were in the vicinity of the shooting but did not identify Oswald to authorities, besides Robert Brock and, initially, Benavides and Reynolds, included Frank Wright, Doris Holan, Mrs. Donald Higgins, L. J. Lewis, Jimmy Burt, Francis Kinneth, and Elbert Austin."

This is the only mention of Mrs. Higgins in the book.

However, I later found a fantastic essay by Jim DiEugenio, "The Tippit Case in the New Millennium" (4/28/2018) which cogently summarizes some of the central important pieces of information about the Tippit shooting known today, with an analysis of where the case "stands today" in light of the existing research as of the time that essay was published. In that essay, Jim writes about witness Mrs. Higgins who convincingly pinpoints the time of the Tippit shooting at 1:06 PM. In addition, this witness was described in great detail in Barry Ernest's book "The Girl on the Stairs" -- my Kindle copy published in 2010. Ernest writes about how he came to interview Mrs. Higgins and her convincing anecdote regarding when she heard the Tippit shooting and how she was able to pinpoint the time time.

Question

My question is this: Why did you not include any details about what Mrs. Higgins heard and saw in your book, given she was so close to the scene, she heard the shots, and she was able to pinpoint the time of those shots with such specificity? Given your book was in large part about the Tippit shooting I would expect what Mrs. Higgins had to say as being important enough to talk about. 

I wonder if you found what she had to say as unconvincing, possibly mistaken, had reason not to believe her? Or were you unaware of what she said she heard when you wrote the book? 

The only quibble I have with the book was leaving out what Mrs. Higgins said she remembers, with a minor complaint also being the number of times it was suggested to the reader how close a person was to Jack Ruby's apartment (I felt this particular fact was raised too many times).

These are minor quibbles, and I have to say I really enjoyed your book and appreciate the fine work you've done, to include all the many hours you spent going through documents. After having finished the book last week, this was the central question I had about the work.

 

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks much for the kind words on my book, Richard. I did not

say much about Mrs. Higgins because I could not verify 

her claim about that time being mentioned on local TV.

I tried to include verifiable information. What she said

about the TV station seemed possible but perhaps unlikely.

Meanwhile, run, do not walk to get your copy of Condon's novel.

Nabokov's LOLITA is a great novel, by the way. Graham Greene

championed it past the censors and helped it get published

in both the UK and the US.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Greg Doudna]

On 3/30/2021 at 4:29 PM, Joseph McBride said:

Thanks much for the kind words on my book, Richard. I did not

say much about Mrs. Higgins because I could not verify 

her claim about that time being mentioned on local TV.

I tried to include verifiable information. What she said

about the TV station seemed possible but perhaps unlikely.

Meanwhile, run, do not walk to get your copy of Condon's novel.

Nabokov's LOLITA is a great novel, by the way. Graham Greene

championed it past the censors and helped it get published

in both the UK and the US.

The most interesting detail re Mrs. Higgins is her emphatic statement, according to Barry Ernest who interviewed her, that the killer of Tippit, whom she saw running, "definitely was not the man they showed on television [Oswald]" (Girl on the Stairs, pp. 86-87). This was a witness who was not questioned by the FBI, the Dallas police, or the Warren Commission (p. 85). Why was she certain of that? Could she elaborate? Ernest does not report followup questions and no one else seems to have followed that up either with witness Mrs. Higgins. As for Mrs. Higgins' claim to have heard a TV announcer mention the time at 1:06 which she correlated to the time she heard the shots outside, the interpretation which makes the best sense to me seems to be that she heard the known time-check at 1:03 by TV station WFAA: a WFAA announcer on camera at 1:03 "did look off camera and make a similar statement three minutes earlier" (Myers, Without Malice, p. 721). Mrs. Higgins: "I was watching the news on television and for some reason the announcer turned and looked at the clock and said the time was 'six minutes after one'. He said it just like that, 'six minutes after one'..." (Ernest, p. 86). Rather than throwing out Mrs. Higgins' entire memory of the time-check based on the three-minute discrepancy, an alternative is that she estimated the timing of the shots, in the immediate time afterward as she processed what had happened, by remembering it seemed to her to have been three minutes later than the time-check, which over time became in her memory changed into the announcer had announced 1:06 at the moment of the shooting, not 1:03 not at the moment of shooting as was actually the case. By this interpretation this would be a case of malleability of memory retrospectively, a confusion, rather than a memory invented out of whole cloth of hearing the time-check on TV which was her basis for putting the shooting (rightly or wrongly) at 1:06. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[Joseph McBride]

It's possible, though it doesn't entirely pass my smell test

as a reporter, partly because it seems too convenient (and Myers as a source is dubious). I tried

to check every claim against other evidence. Tippit's last two transmssions to the dispatcher was at

1:08, so it is unlikely he was shot at 1:06. The likelihood is that he was shot at 1:08 or within

the next minute. Larry Ray Harris and Greg Lowery, two

very thorough Tippit researchers, agreed with me.