Interesting new book (10/29/21): RECLAIMING REALITY: VINCENT BUGLIOSI AND THE DALLAS CONSPIRACY

[Vince Palamara]

Reclaiming Reality: Vincent Bugliosi and the Dallas Conspiracy: Donges, Gregory S.: 9781634243780: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Vince Palamara]

"This book achieves several things. It provides a point-by-point refutation of Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History; it demonstrates, once and for all, that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused; it provides the most detailed and comprehensive list yet of all the points that, taken together and with irrefutable logic, prove that a conspiracy was involved in the events of November 22, 1963 in Dallas; and it demonstrates the deep involvement of various levels of government in the conspiracy, and the nature of such involvement. In the course of the above, the Warren Report is also refuted."

[James DiEugenio]

Did you read it VInce?

[Vince Palamara]

53 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Did you read it VInce?

Not yet---I have it on order. It technically comes out in two days, but it is in the mail already. It appears to be a good, pro-conspiracy book from the description.

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

"This book achieves several things. It provides a point-by-point refutation of Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History; it demonstrates, once and for all, that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the crimes of which he was accused; it provides the most detailed and comprehensive list yet of all the points that, taken together and with irrefutable logic, prove that a conspiracy was involved in the events of November 22, 1963 in Dallas; and it demonstrates the deep involvement of various levels of government in the conspiracy, and the nature of such involvement. In the course of the above, the Warren Report is also refuted."

Huh?  James DiEugenio already wrote that book.  🤥

 

[Pat Speer]

I'm curious as to whether this guy ripped off Jim, and just repeated his points and called them his own. I'm also curious as to whether he read my article on VB and his book, and took all my research regarding Bugliosi's deceptive use of footnotes, and then called it his own.

I've had high school kids email me and tell me they copied a chunk of my website and submitted it as a term paper. That's one thing. But to publish a book claiming to demonstrate something, once and for all, that is largely based on other people's work, and then not give them credit...that's pretty low.

Or perhaps I'm getting paranoid in my old age. No one would ever publish a book based on other people's work and then fail to give them credit, would they?

[Anthony Thorne]

10 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

No one would ever publish a book based on other people's work and then fail to give them credit, would they?

I'm sure this has happened many times. One just off the top of my head - McFarland published a hardcover history of the Black Lagoon horror movies. It was taken off the market after readers found the author had simply ripped off historian Tom Weaver for hundreds of pages.

Hopefully this volume has more to offer than just ripping off Jim and yourself.

 

[Pat Speer]

2 minutes ago, Anthony Thorne said:

I'm sure this has happened many times. One just off the top of my head - McFarland published a hardcover history of the Black Lagoon horror movies. It was taken off the market after readers found the author had simply ripped off historian Tom Weaver for hundreds of pages.

Hopefully this volume has more to offer than just ripping off Jim and yourself.

 

Yes, I hope so. For the record, I was being sarcastic. From the very beginning, the JFK research community has been fighting about who first came up with this or that, and why did this guy publish so and so's research and ideas and not give him credit. Weisberg hated Mark Lane because he felt Lane had ripped him off.  I, myself, have come across images I've created in published books, where I received no credit. At one point, I came across a post on the McAdams forum, where a guy was pushing a video he'd created about Michael Baden testifying with his exhibit upside down. The problem was that the part showing Baden with his exhibit upside down came from my video, with its graphics, etc. I confronted the guy and said if you're gonna make a 5 minute video in which 1 minute was taken directly from my video, you should at least give me and my director friend Brad credit, rather than make out it was your own discovery, and your own work. At such point this guy said it was greedy people like me who were the reason the case remained unsolved. The irony, of course, was that I didn't ask for money or even hint that I wanted any. It was just irritating that he made out he'd discovered something that I'd discovered, and didn't even take the time to hide that the footage proving his "discovery" came directly from my video.

[Joe Bauer]

I would think that Bill O'Reilly and Roger Stone did some pretty liberal "borrowing" in their simplistic JFK books although I haven't read either except for a few published excerpts.

So often, this practice is done by just rewording certain aspects of other people's research.

"Reclaiming History" also seems to have many such passages from what parts of it I have read.

Bugliosi's most original work in RH is his 500 times repeated phrases of JFK conspiracy believers as kooks, nuts, whackos, loons, fruit cakes, buffs, etc.

He is at least creative in coming up with so many different derogatory and scary social outcast terms for conspiracy believers.

RH is a virtual dictionary for derogatory conspiracy believer names and terms.

O'Reilly made at least 1 million dollars for his JFK book. Bugliosi probably as much. Stone probably half a mil.  All off other researcher's hard work backs.

Heck, so many here could ( and have ) easily write better and true original research JFK books but without those well promoted celebrity names, they wouldn't even get published.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Denny Zartman]

I just finished reading it. The main text runs 225 pages, so compared to most JFK books it's short. But it's fairly dense with information and was an interesting read. I don't think there was any serious overlap between this book and Jim's original "Reclaiming Parkland." It's the same subject, but there's no discussion at all about the HBO and Tom Hanks deals. Jim was mentioned once in reference to an interview Jim had done with a witness, but from what I saw there was no direct citation or mention of the book "Reclaiming Parkland." The most recent book in the "Suggested Reading" section appears to be a 2008 edition of a book from 1995.

Honestly, "Reclaiming Reality" seems most influenced by Jesse Ventura's book than anything else.

The author Gregory Donges seems smart and thorough, and it certainly appears that he started writing it soon after the release of "Reclaiming History." Even after noting Bugliosi's death at the beginning, the rest of the book refers to Bugliosi in the present tense.

Chapter One is "Dealey Plaza", and runs from pages 11 to 66.

Chapter Two is titled "The Patsy", covers Oswald in general and the Tippit shooting, and runs from pages 67 to 90.

Chapter Three is the longest section of the book "Indications of Conspiracy" 91 to 195, featuring 32 individual indications of conspiracy, according to the author.

Chapter Four is titled "The Plot" and runs from pages 196 to 225. Then there are three pages of illustrations, then endnotes, suggested further reading, and an index.

The usual suspects of Angleton, Dulles, and Helms are identified, but Donges appears to believe there might have been a group above Angleton and Dulles, a "Star Chamber" of sorts - perhaps the Council of Foreign Relations and/or the Bilderberg Group.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Denny Zartman

[Denny Zartman]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

RH is a virtual dictionary for derogatory conspiracy believer names and terms.

"Reclaiming History" is simply a badly written book. The good news is that hardly anyone in the world has ever (and will ever) read the entire thing. I tried to read it from the beginning, but that introduction just went on and on, attacking all the critics again and again and again and again instead of getting to the point. Say what you will about "Case Closed", at least Posner was not jabbering on for hundreds of pages grinding his own personal axe.

"Reclaiming History" would have some use as a one-stop guide to all possible Lone Nut arguments, but even that has dubious value. Whenever cornered by a piece of evidence, Bugliosi repeatedly falls back on circular logic: Anything that can't be explained in a way consistent with Oswald's guilt can be explained in a way consistent with Oswald's guilt because... we know Oswald's guilty.

On and on and on. Around and around.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Denny Zartman
typo

[Anthony Thorne]

6 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

Donges appears to believe there might have been a group above Angleton and Dulles, a "Star Chamber" of sorts - perhaps the Council of Foreign Relations and/or the Bilderberg Group.

I started work on a long post for the board last year digging back into the CFR history of both Dulles and McCloy, but only got halfway through putting it together before being  pulled aside by a different project. But there are a lot of records available of various war and post-war CFR groups and commissions (such as when the CFR put together a group to do a paper on armaments spending) where the membership is listed, Dulles and McCloy are members, McCloy is leading the group, and Dulles is working under him. I found multiple examples of this, and once you go though a couple of decades of papers showing McCloy as the boss and Dulles as the guy working for him, it tends to put the make-up of the Warren Commission in a different light.

Pat, I half figured you were probably being sarcastic, but wasn't up to speed with the history of plagiarism you detailed.