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Jim DiEugenio vs Fred Litwin


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Jim D., I read the four parts of David Reitzes on the Clinton and Jackson witnesses of Oswald in Clinton and Jackson, and except for the part about a Klan conspiracy (intent to fabricate testimony in concert maliciously), I came out convinced that there is nothing substantial, nothing there, to Oswald or Ferrie or Clay Shaw in Clinton. Witness identifications which start out as highly uncertain and then over time become positive identifications is a first strike against. Witness identifications not documented in the first instance until starting years after the fact instead of attested brought to authorities' attention soon after the assassination is a second strike against. Not a Klan conspiracy, I doubt the Klan issues had much to do with those Oswald identifications, simple malleability of human memory and mistaken identifications given the passage of years of time is sufficient to account for it. 

And the third strike against--I have problems in the idea that the man in Jackson wanting a job in Jackson, being sent to the state hospital, who talked to some people there and then went to try to register to vote in Clinton in the black Cadillac, was Oswald. It is just obviously some local, not Oswald who did not even live there. Neither Marina nor anyone else in Oswald's circle ever heard of Oswald wanting to work in a mental hospital in Jackson when he did not even live there--this just seems nuts to me. There is nothing in Oswald's address book about that. The job-seeker, whoever he was, said he was a vet who had spent time in Guantanamo, Cuba, and talked about how good of an electrician he was--that does not sound like Oswald. To me this is like the alleged Sports Drome shooting range sightings of Oswald, or the Shasteen barbershop claims, or Russo seeing Oswald at a David Ferrie party--I think those were mistaken identifications too. For some reason stories of UFO sightings coming in clusters come to mind. 

Then in addition to the four parts of David Reitzes, this article of Patricia Lambert, a review of Mellen, had this of interest from her (Lambert's) interview of Dr. Frank Silva, the psychiatrist at the East Louisiana State Hospital: 

Dr. Silva was scrupulously precise, painstaking even, in emphasizing that at the time of the assassination he did not relate Lee Harvey Oswald to the man he met at the hospital. He made no connection between that man and the president's [alleged] assassin. '[Oswald's] face was not familiar,' Dr. Silva said. 'I don't think anybody [at the hospital] remembered him, not anybody that I knew.' When the assassination happened, no one said this is the guy who came here. 'No one said anything.' 'If you had shown me a picture of this guy, Lee Oswald [as seen] on television and in magazines, and said had you ever seen this guy, I would have said no, I've never seen him.' (. . .)

Eventually, Dr. Silva (in Baton Rouge) also heard what later would be known as 'the Clinton scenario,' and two elements of it fit the man he met at the hospital. That's when Dr. Silva began to think the man at the hospital 'could very well [have been Oswald].' Dr. Silva became almost, but not entirely, convinced he was Oswald. 'And now,' he said, 'I can even visualize [Oswald's] face as the face of the person I spoke to. But of course it is a secondary recollection. It's not a direct recollection.' 'Of course, I've seen so many pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald, that it would be very easy for me to say [the man] had a T-shirt on...But, you know, after 30 years you just [unwittingly] fabricate things on something... It is something that is tangential and you see almost from the corner of your eye, then you begin to say this is what it was'.

All that troubled Dr. Silva. At one point, clearly searching, working to get it right, trying to excavate the steps that led to his 'secondary recollection,' Dr. Silva pinpointed its precise origin. 'I know [the man at the hospital] said that somebody had thought there were jobs there and he had applied...and they had told him he needed to register to vote.' 'I remember that part. And it's probably the reason I put this person and Lee Harvey Oswald together.' (. . .) But no one knew better than Dr. Silva that he had no real memory of Oswald, only images of him created after the fact. As evidence of the mind's vulnerability to suggestion those images are enlightening. As evidence of Oswald's presence at the hospital, they are meaningless. Dr. Silva knew that too. His final word on the man he met at the hospital, which he said more than once in slightly different ways, was this: 'Whether he was Oswald or not, I don't know.' 'I cannot say'.

Irvin Dymond, Clay Shaw's lead trial attorney, who believed Clinton to be 'a complete fix,' told me that Jim Garrison didn't engage in fraud in the ordinary sense--meaning that he didn't invent evidence out of whole cloth. He 'took what came their way,' Dymond said, and worked with it. What came their way in the hill country north of Baton Rouge was a former military man, identity unknown, interested in Cuba and Castro, who showed up at East Louisiana State Hospital looking for work. That man could have been anyone. Nothing about him was singular (. . .)

A good deal has been written in recent years about false memories. Dr. Silva's experience raises that issue and is instructive. The man at the hospital was real. The later recollection of Oswald, by Dr. Silva's own analysis, coalesced from what he heard about Oswald and the images of him he saw on television. Fortunately, Dr. Silva was too aware and knowledgeable to represent that later recollection as fact. Few are aware, however, or that knowledgeable (. . .)

The three alleged conspirators appearing together in public and Oswald applying for work at that hospital defy belief. Garrison understood that Oswald's actions required a rational explanation. He came up with this: Oswald's 'sponsors' (read plotters) wanted Oswald to work 'a few weeks' at this mental facility, Garrison claimed, so that later, 'with a switch of cards from 'employee' to 'patient,' they could 'have the right psychiatrist' there testify that he had been 'treating' Oswald, thus completing a picture of him as a wandering mental case. That explanation is either silly or deranged, depending on one's generosity; either way it is light years removed from rational thought.

'At that time,' Dr. Silva said, 'there was a doctor [at the hospital whose name Dr. Silva couldn't remember], a real nice guy who had white white hair' whom Dr. Silva 'always connected with the theories about Shaw.' (Shaw's hair was quite gray.) This doctor 'was not a psychiatrist,' Dr. Silva said, he was 'internal medicine or something like that,' and he was at the hospital 'because he was in between jobs or something, and he had a contractor relationship with the hospital.' 'I have the feeling,' Dr. Silva said, 'there was somebody in the hospital that was going to drive [the man] to get registered, and I have the feeling it was this [white haired doctor]'.

(Patricia Lambert, "The Good Witness: Dr. Frank Silva and 'Lee Harvey Oswald'", https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/silva.htm)

That makes more sense to me than that it was Oswald, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, etc., all three of them in the same car, in Clinton that day.

Edited by Greg Doudna
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On 5/26/2021 at 10:49 AM, Greg Doudna said:

Latest Fred Litwin post: "Did Rose Cherami ever work for Jack Ruby?" https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/did-rose-cherami-ever-work-for-jack-ruby. Pretty compelling of no evidence and not very likely. If someone objects to citing Fred Litwin on this, all I can say is why have JFK pro-conspiracy researchers not done this spadework first in discrediting this story.

People under stress may exaggerate circumstances in order to have their revelations believed.  Cherami may have moved in some of the same entertainment and criminal circles as Ruby and his dancers, and then claimed she was upscale enough to have worked for him.  A rumor among strippers that Oswald and Ruby were "bed partners," heard a couple of times by Cherami while passing through those circles in 1962-1963, may have generalized into a relationship that had lasted "for years," told by someone unaware of Oswald's life outside Dallas.

One thing to consider: claiming a homosexual relationship between any two alleged JFKA conspirators would not be anyone's first thought in 1963, as lie or truth.  The concept was unheard of until Garrison began digging up secluded pea patches in New Orleans and found Oswald's involvement with Ferrie and Shaw suspect.

And, yes, there are 40-year old strippers in sub-par shape out there to this day, always in the dankest of dives.  Somebody said.

Edited by David Andrews
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Greg:

Anyone who takes Dave Reitzes seriously on  New Orleans and Garrison is simply not knowledgeable or discriminating. And I have said this many, many times.  People think they know New Orleans and they do not.

I am surprised that you don't know that Reitzes is a pure hatchet man, in the vein of the late John McAdams.  Bill Davy literally took him apart over his review of his book.  And you have to read this to understand who Reitzes was and is.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/davy-disappoints-a-rebuttal

If that is the kind of person you rely on and trust, then fine Greg.  Incidentally, the reply Reitzes made to this demolition was three times as long, and one of the most incoherent pieces of saliva drooling I have ever read. Dave did not like being shown up for the clown he is and he simply went epileptic.

 Reitzes does very weird things with the evidence and then when you ask him where he got certain things, he does not reply.  I know since I asked him myself.

As per Litwin, please Greg, please.  Denny already addressed this adequately. Anyone who will trust Litwin after I demolished his book and his methodology, I mean what can I reply? The man who leaves out Ferrie trying to locate evidence connecting him to Oswald in the week after the assassination. And his lying about it?  Oh yes, and Garrison was looking for Bertrand in 1963. When he did not even know about Bertrand at the time. And somehow, Fred forgot about Finck's testimony at the Shaw trial. Litwin is the guy who actually rewrites CIA memos right in front of the reader. He magically conjures evidence to explain how witnesses knew Shaw was Bertrand before Garrison arrested him. He then tries to discount Phil Dyer by saying that well, Shaw had a civil case going on so Clay would not say what he did.  What Fred leaves out is that the case went to the Supreme Court and Phil never said squat about it. The only reason we know about Phil is because Doug Caddy knows the guy. 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Further with Mr. Litwin Greg.  And I find it hard to understand how you can brush this under the rug.  Maybe you don't know it, or forgot it. Here is an excerpt from my review of his first book on the JFK case.

"After distorting what I wrote, Litwin then applies another smear: he says I have no paperwork, witnesses, not anything to back up such a sensational claim. As noted above, I don’t recall making the claim he says I made. But each claim I do make is backed up with credible evidence. In that book, concerning the subject of evidence manipulation, I only go as far as the record establishes. And that record is not something I created or embellished. It’s there in the record for all to see. The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today has over 1800 footnotes in it, many more than the book under review. Litwin does not want the reader to know that, so he air-brushes it out.

But let me use one example to show just how untrustworthy Litwin is. On the subterfuges around CE 399, here is the evidence I outline.

Witnesses:

  • O. P. Wright, security chief at Parkland Hospital who gave the bullet to the Secret Service
  • Bardwell Odum, FBI agent who allegedly showed the bullet in question to witnesses at Parkland Hospital
  • Josiah Thompson, who interviewed witnesses at the hospital in November of 1966
  • Gary Aguilar, who interviewed Odum in November, 2001
  • John Hunt, who examined Robert Frazier’s 11/22/63 work product

Paperwork:

  • Interview of Wright in Six Seconds in Dallas
  • Interview of Odum in The Assassinations
  • Complete absence of FBI 302 reports on Odum’s alleged interviews about the bullet
  • Frazier’s work product as shown in Hunt’s essays
  • Receipt for transfer of Magic Bullet from Secret Service to FBI on 11/22/63
  • Blow up pictures of the Magic Bullet at the National Archives

This is having no witnesses or paperwork? Most people would say it is a surfeit of witnesses and paperwork. I could do the same with other examples from my book. But an important point to understand is this: Litwin does make reference to my book, which means he had it in some form."

 

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Litwin said two things about me in the above referenced part of his book.  That I said all the evidence in the case is faked. He supplies no footnote for that.  And I do not recall ever  writing that.  For example, I have never written that I think the Z film is faked. Nor have I ever argued for body alteration.  

I have said that I think CE 399 is planted.  And I supply much evidence for that, see above. So Fred performed two smears on me in one passage.  He said something I do not ever recall writing, and he then wrote I have no witnesses or paperwork for what I actually did write. 

I took Fred's two JFK books apart piece by piece.  i wrote over 60 pages demolishing both of them. In every way one can think of: errors of omission, of commission, using false character assassination, taking ersatz charges out of context--how anyone can use a racist rightwing loon like Gremillon as a source is simply fruity. How Fred tried to play the anti semite card against JG when JG never used it.  Yet he had no complaints about John McCloy declining to bomb the German death camps, or helping Klaus Barbie escape after the war.

This last tells what you need to know about Fred.  Litwin is a small scale Canadian version of Sean Hannity. He has no real interest in the JFK case. He is a Culture Warrior.  And I proved this in my review of his very first book. What he did with W's disastrous invasion of Iraq is a magic trick that I don't even think David Copperfield could perform, or even attempt.  After 58 years, that is the last kind of thing we need in this case. 

Greg, when I first encountered you, I  thought you were a genuinely interested party in all this. After all these many months, that you can even consider people like Litwin and Reitzes as credible authors is really dispiriting.

 

PS. i won't even deal with Lambert.  As Malcolm Blunt discovered, she wrote the CIA and asked for their help. And what she did to Dischler was inexcusable. She actually described the picture taken during the sign up a powerful brainwashing tool. 

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Mr. DiEugenio,

I know you are a busy guy demolishing Litwin, McAdams, Aynesworth, Lambert, Posner and Reitzes. As well, in a boastful way, telling everyone who cares to read, of your conquests of truth.

Well that brings me to some very simple questions.

Do you actually believe this stuff about Cheramie being hooked up with Sergio Aracacha Smith/Emilio Santana? And do you really believe the Margaret Hoover's "Silver Slipper" trailer ad was a direct link to the "Silver Slipper" near Eunice, LA? And the Oswald-Shaw incident in Clinton? 

Bottom line, can you look everyone in the eye here on this forum, and state this was the honest to god truth, these stories are factual? In other words, will you stake your reputation on it?

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BTW, the reason Fred had to make a fool of himself over my work on CE 399 is pretty simple.

If you expose CE 399 as the orphan it is, then the case against Oswald unravels.

The question then becomes, who planted the Magic Bullet?

The second question then becomes:  how many bullets did the FBI really have that night?

Both of these mean that not only was there a conspiracy, but the cover up was likely planned in concert with it.  

This is why both the WC and HSCA had to adopt CE 399.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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BTW, the same thing applies with the new work on Malcolm Perry.

Who was that guy who told him to shut up after the press conference? It implies that the cover up was enacted in advance.

This is something that I have always suspected was the case: that the cover up was planned with the conspiracy. Its something that I will probably not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, but I think you can do it by the weight of the evidence.

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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Oh, I see I left out something in my witness list.

In Oliver Stone's upcoming documentary, Dave Mantik is on screen talking about the late John Hunt's work.

He said that before Hunt got to NARA, he held CE 399 in his hand, before the Archives took the rotational, blow up pictures.

Dave says that Todd's initials were not on it.

In a real investigation, not the farce that the WC was, or Litwin is, the question would be:  Why did the FBI misrepresent the exhibit in its own documents?

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On 6/1/2021 at 10:06 AM, Steve Roe said:

Bottom line, can you look everyone in the eye here on this forum, and state this was the honest to god truth, these stories are factual? In other words, will you stake your reputation on it?

Why should Jim or anyone on this forum have to stake their reputation on anything discussed here? Are you going to stake your reputation on what you have said? If so, what will you do when you are proven wrong? I know what you will do, the same thing you always do when proven wrong, you keep posting because you and the other WC supporters will never accept that there was a conspiracy.

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