Phil Nelson on Joan Mellen's "Faustian Bargains" book

[Douglas Caddy]

https://lbjthemasterofdeceit.com/2021/10/07/reframing-history-with-more-myths-mellens-faustian-bargains-wrong-on-many-levels/

[Ron Bulman]

What should one expect?  Unfortunately he is more well publicized than any realistic authors on the subject.

Mellen's book and the account of the Liberty in particular is a milestone in looking for the Truth about LBJ.  Or American History.

Well worth the the price, if your seeking it.

[James DiEugenio]

 Walt Brown kept this evidence wrapped up for years on end.

Joan's expert would not even work with the copies that Jay Harrison had. And her expert had first class credentials. He supervised the certification programs for the IAI. Neither of Jay's experts were certified at the time of their work on the Wallace print. Plus, her expert used better and more current technology.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-faustian-bargains

 

Phil Nelson went after me for not reading Judy Baker's book.  WIthout referring to: which one? She has at least three out there.

He then says that somehow because Hunt referred to The Big Event, then Baker must be correct.  Nelson does not even know that what eventually got out there was Hunt's second version.  I know the guy who Kevin Costner had working on the case. He told me that what Hunt eventually said was not what he told him.  And he worked with Hunt for months on end.

When I tried to talk to Joan about Nelson's book on The Liberty incident versus hers, she about hung up on me. She was insulted by the question.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

I'm been looking at Joan's book on the Liberty incident this week. Very in-depth and striking - and seeing Richard Helms briefly shown in a good light (or at least better than horrible) was unexpected.

[David Andrews]

Two takeaways from Nelson's excerpt:

• A scurrilous and unfounded attack on Joan Mellen as an alleged disinfo artist.
• Based on my total Mac Wallace reading, Wallace was a sloppy and emotional assassin.  If he shot Henry Marshall, he did it with a small caliber rifle instead of a handgun, causing him to shoot Wallace so many times before killing him that a verdict of suicide was only possible in Johnson-controlled Texas.  His Kinzer killing was so open, he bought himself a murder charge: surely some better time and place could have been found.  So - is this guy a potential TSBD shooter?

Edited October 12, 2021 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

Dave:  I don't think that is Morrow, its Nelson.

What is incredible about Nelson is that in his first book on LBJ, he just accepted the fingerprint and also the thing about Johnson ducking before the shots went off. Did not cross check them at all.

Years later, Joan did.  Unfortunately, this was after the Nigel Turner episode on TV with Barr McClellan,  and Walt Brown talking about how he would take the print into court.

Both of these pieces of evidence would be blown out of court.  The print with Joan's expert, Mr. Garrett, and Groden showed in his book Absolute Proof that LBJ did not react before the shots went off.  But this is how intent Nelson was and is in incriminating LBJ.  No cross checking, no quality control at all.

I thought Faustian Bargains was a pretty good book. 

[David Andrews]

On 10/9/2021 at 12:47 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Dave:  I don't think that is Morrow, its Nelson.

 

My mistake, now amended.  Morrow has been pimping this book hard for so long in his newsletter, with his own parallel commentary, that I mislabeled him as the source.

Edited October 12, 2021 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

Let me add, this is one of the reasons i have so much disdain for Nigel Turner.

That guy put out so much bad information on this case, that he might have turned the Kennedy assassination into a a mine field of live bombs.

And this was after the ARRB came out. I mean, really, Barr McClellan, the Brown and Harrison "Wallace fingerprint", Tom Wilson, the Pitzer case, Baker, Liggett.  I mean where did it all end? With a lawsuit of course. 

There was so much good stuff he could have put on and this is what he came up with?  For the most part it was cheap sensationalism. I did not think much of the Men Who Killed Kennedy original five part series, but it was better overall than what came after.

[Gene Kelly]

Jim

Nigel Turner's series (TMWKK) caught a lot of people's imagination at the time (mine included) and was good television.  Unfortunately, many of the "stories" go nowhere, when you earnestly explore them. They become distractions that harm the credibility of legitimate investigation, tantamount to disinformation.  These sensational anecdotes (mainly narrated by Gary Mack and Robert Groden) sent many interested readers down disappointing rabbit holes (e.g., McClellan, the Wallace fingerprint, Corsican assassins and the French Connection, Pitzer's suicide and Daniel Marvin, JVB's affair with LHO, Madeleine Brown and the Murchison meeting, LBJ and his confidant Billie Sol Estes, Liggett the mortician from hell, sewer shooters, Charles V. Harrelson and The Tramps, Badgeman and Gordon Arnold, the prescient Joseph Milteer, et al). All of it reminds me of the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit":

Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall,
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call.
Call Alice
When she was just small.
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go

Nigel Turner was censured by  the British Parliament, and there was an attempt to revoke Central Television’s franchise based on making inaccurate broadcasts in British law. The Turner series ultimately set the legitimate JFK research community back or at least confused the playing field considerably (imho). It also served to give those who seek the true story a bad name, and served as grist for conspiracy theorist critics. Historian Stanley Kutler describer the series thus:

Their work is a parody of assassination theories and beliefs; surely, this is history as a joke the living play on the dead. Such programs reflect our desperate desire to embrace a conspiracy rather than the crucial question of truth.  Assassination conspiracy theories and books expounding them proliferate. But film is special. A conjurer's sleight-of-hand and verbal misdirection are ready ingredients for manipulating a mass audience. 

Some viewers saw TMWKK as a public relations success for the research community, with impact analogous to Oliver Stones JFK in that it revived interest in the case. On the positive side of the ledger, it exposed some interesting evidence and prompted viewers to question the facts versus blindly accepting the official narrative. Some interpreted the red herrings contained within TMWKK as disinformation, a mix of fact and fiction intended to cloud/confuse.  Stated differently, far-fetched ideas draw outlandish personalities, thus leading the public further away from the truth. Others had mixed feelings about the series. John Simkin for one stated that the series contained some fascinating interviews, albeit far too subjective, characterizing it as more like tabloid journalism than historical accounts.  He also made the point that the series lacks a political dimension (e.g., the connections between the assassination and JFK's foreign policy) which surely resonates today.

Gene

[David Andrews]

The best segment of TMWKK was the interview with Dr. Evalea Glanges of Parkland, about the limo windshield bullet hole.  Still survives on YouTube.

[James DiEugenio]

If I recall correctly, if you add in the original five part series, with all the ones that came after, I think there were  12 of them total. (Although Wikipedia says there were nine, they skip over some of them.)

When you end up featuring someone like Barr McClellan as your main talking head, and he says, "I know Lyndon Johnson did  it," and then you read his book--I mean Yech. He has Oswald on the sixth floor!

And then it turns out that the alleged sine qua non of the book and  that particular segment, the Wallace fingerprint, is not a match, I mean give us all a break.  And the thing is, Turner had the funds to do a double check on this issue.  The second print expert--neither were accredited at the time--withdrew his affirmation from Jay Harrison, since the quality of the exemplars they were analyzing was questionable.  So questionable that Garrett, who supervised accreditation, would not work with them. He demanded a better basis for analysis, and proved them wrong.

Nigel Turner turned the JFK case into the equivalent of a National Enquirer installment series. And every once in awhile NE gets something right. But its like a broken clock being right twice a day.

Do you know what Milicent Cranor told me about Tom Wilson? "Jim, Tom Wilson could not find steel in PIttsburgh."  John Costella said about the same to me.

Allan Eaglesham did the best work on Pitzer.  He concluded he was not murdered.  And in all likliehood he did not film the autopsy.

No comment on Judy Baker.

And my God that Morningstar, BIlly Sol Estes stuff about altering the body in Texas. When I found out that Estes started that story, i just started giggling. 

The more I regurgitate this stuff, the bigger headache I get.  Not to mention that in the first series, his so called Steve Rivele hit team also ended up being a custard pie.  This guy wasted a really wonderful opportunity to do some valuable work on the JFK case.  Especially on the 40th anniversary. What does he do?  He gives us McClellan, Baker and Liggett.  Recall, this is well after the ARRB had closed down.  But that is the kind of sensationalism Turner was interested in.  The true facts of what happened to JFK were secondary to him.

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[David Andrews]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Allan Eaglesham did the best work on Pitzer.  He concluded he was not murdered.  And in all likliehood he did not film the autopsy.

 

My memory is that Eaglesham was more of an agnostic on Pitzer, and in his Dark Corners website leaned toward murder.  That site seems now MIA on the web.

[James DiEugenio]

No he ended up doubting it. 

And in opposition to Marvin.

Its a shame his site is down.  He did some good work on some important issues.

Edited October 13, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

Gene and Jim, thank you for the enlightening (for me) comments.  Any more details would be sugar on the spice.

I saw Jefferson Starship in I think 1975 in Tarrant County Convention Center (across the street from where JFK spent his last night on earth).  I'm pretty sure we were on mescaline that night.  I do remember after Commander Cody and the Lost planet Airmen set the Starship/Airplane stared there's with dim blue overhead lights.  With someone in an oversized/tall white bunny rabbit suit hopping onto the stage then around it before the band members began filtering onto it as the song began.

Grace Slicks eyes are wild, I've read she was.

   What I really remember was laughing my ass off as the white rabbit hopped around the stage as  I understood the upcoming song.

Edited October 13, 2021 by Ron Bulman

[Pete Mellor]

 but, they were Jefferson Airplane when I saw them in U.K. @ Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music June 1970.

As is often the case, it was damp and when Grace took hold of her mike she got a belt.  Her language was shocking too!