Serious issues with DiEugenio's new book, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass

[Steve Roe]

Recently I purchased the Kindle version of DiEugenio's new book. I saw many dubious claims repeated that have debunked (the Todd initials, overnight airmail to Chicago, Oswald's 3 Qtr. USMC pay, etc.). The citations of source material, most of them from other conspiracy books, is really bad. As I plow through this book, there will be more articles pointing out DiEugenio's claims, and stories mentioned in his book. 

Author Fred Litwin steps forward today with this doozy of a whopper concerning DiEugenio's citing of Dick Russel's book as a source. 

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/anatomy-of-a-james-dieugenio-citation

Does the truth matter? Or is this business as usual with baseless conspiracy stories?

 

[Micah Mileto]

There is value in citing secondary sources that discuss primary sources - secondary sources can be used to show that a discussion exists, not whether the points being made are correct.

[Tom Gram]

There’s some good stuff in Litwin’s article regarding William Bishop. I agree he sounds nuts, but he did have ties to training camps and other sketchy goings-on with CIA-connected Cuban exiles. I wouldn’t use him as a sole source, but with his background I don’t think he can be completely written off if he independently corroborates other information - and that’s how Jim used the Dick Russell citation. 

Despite what Litwin says, Jim does not cite Russell’s book as the sole source for Oswald at the camp. He cites Davy first, whose citation goes to Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum is pretty credible any way you swing it; and yes the film doesn’t exist but disappearing evidence isn’t exactly uncommon in this case e.g. the Church Committee INS/Customs material. Honest question: Do you know of any evidence suggesting that the film shown to Tanenbaum was the same one Morrow showed to Playboy? 

Speaking of questionable citations, Litwin quotes the following passage from his book: 

In the summer of 1963, about twenty anti-Castro Cubans trained at a small camp. There were only a couple of rifles to practice assembly and disassembly, and no actual shooting occurred. Food was scarce, the men complained bitterly, and after a little more than a month, the Cubans were all sent back to Miami.

I’m assuming that Litwin’s source for this is FBI informant Arnesto Rodriguez, who told something similar to the above to Warren DeBrueys on 8/14/63 that was included in a report from 10/3/63. Rodriguez said that the Cubans were angry with Ricardo Davis for deceiving them and not giving them money and enough equipment. 

Davis subsequently lied to DeBrueys and said he brought the Cubans from Miami to work in the lumber business in Guatemala - and that after the FBI seized dynamite near their “lumber” training camp, the Cubans became disenchanted and returned to Miami. 

Carlos Bringuier was told however that the camp was really abandoned because the MDC thought that it was penetrated by a Castro agent. Bringuier of course also said that Oswald knew about a training camp outside of New Orleans.  

I think the official line on Camp Belle Chase was that it shut down after the Bay of Pigs. However, the CIA (under Army cover) was recruiting exiles in New Orleans for military training well into 1962, at least. Here’s where it gets interesting: the FBI stumbled on one such operation in Spring ‘62, which eventually culminated in the CIA getting the Justice Department to shut down any FBI investigation of the CRC in New Orleans in August ‘62. The FBI decided that the only information disseminated from then on about the CRC would come from informants. Their primary informant on the CRC, and source of the information that led to the shut-down, was Arnesto Rodriguez, (in one of his contacts with the FBI while he was still a PSI). DeBrueys himself specifically wrote in a report that any information on CRC military activities provided by Rodriguez would not be put into report form to cover for the CIA. Basically, Rodriguez became the official need-to-know liaison between CIA sponsored exile training activities and the FBI in New Orleans. 

In addition to being an FBI informant, Rodriguez was a contact of the CIA DCD, a member of the secretive CIA-connected military committee of the CRC, and of course has some questionable connections to Lee Harvey Oswald himself. Also, some of the logistics and people involved in the stories about the ‘63 MDC camp match what the FBI (and Army Intel) stumbled on in ‘62, so it’s pretty reasonable to question the CIA’s denial of any involvement - and the credibility of Rodriguez’s information, IMO. 

Overall, the stuff from Rodriguez, and the MDC camp in general (IMO), reeks of being a cover story for the real training activities taking place in the area.

Either way, Litwin’s impossibly categorical claim about the camp, based on information from a single extremely dubious source, is honesty worse than Jim claiming that Oswald was at the camp, IMO.

Jim at least cites corroborative sources, and his main source is a top attorney for an official investigative body who claims he saw Oswald on film and that the film subsequently disappeared. Litwin on the other hand just states something as a fact that: 1) cannot possibly be known with any level of certainty; and 2) is directly disputable based on the credibility and background of his sole source. 

Edited July 9, 2022 by Tom Gram

[W. Tracy Parnell]

4 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Tanenbaum is pretty credible any way you swing it

He is? How about this from Dan Hardway:

Real Hillbilly Views: The Prosecutor's Tale

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

He is? How about this from Dan Hardway:

Real Hillbilly Views: The Prosecutor's Tale

Fair enough, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing that essay. So there is a precedent for Tanenbaum making stuff up. I agree then that his claims about the training camp film are dubious. My criticism of Litwin still stands though. Any use of Tanenbaum (and Bishop) regarding the training camp film should come with a caveat. As per my comment above, any use of Rodriguez should too. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Tom Gram

[Ron Bulman]

3 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Fair enough, I did not know that. Thanks for sharing that essay. So there is a precedent for Tanenbaum making stuff up. I agree then that his claims about the training camp film are dubious. My criticism of Litwin still stands though. Any use of Tanenbaum (and Bishop) regarding the training camp film should come with a caveat. As per my comment above, any use of Rodriguez should too. 

Did anybody actually read the article?  I started to.  It's disinformation, meant to distract.

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Did anybody actually read the article?  I started to.  It's disinformation, meant to distract.

What the heck? Do you know who Dan Hardaway is? He wrote that because he couldn't stand Tannenbaum telling a tale in which h he was this big hero fighting against the evil CIA, when the reality was far more nuanced. 

Tannenbaum is a novelist, in which he has occasionally modeled characters after himself. He told the story he wanted to be true, in which he was some sort of martyr for truth and justice. It wasn't quite like that. 

Top researchers who know them both would take Hardaway's word over Tannenbaum's. But it's not just Hardaway's word, is it? And Tannenbaum has never responded to the article, has he? 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Did anybody actually read the article?  I started to.  It's disinformation, meant to distract.

Assuming you are talking about Litwin and not Hardaway - lone assassin literature shouldn’t be flatly ignored just because the analysis is biased. Plenty of conspiracy research is biased too. If anyone finds quality documents or says something that is objectively correct or legitimately compelling it should be acknowledged. Litwin used primary sources to call into question the credibility of William Bishop, and Tracy did the same by linking an essay by Dan Hardaway, who’s as far from a lone nutter as it gets, to question Tanenbaum’s. I did the same thing in this thread with Arnesto Rodriguez. 

That said, some counter-debunking never hurts, especially when the author does literally the same thing they are criticizing another author for doing, which is what Litwin did in this case. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

19 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I’m assuming that Litwin’s source for this is FBI informant Arnesto Rodriguez

Litwin's source is "a series of memos from Al Oser regarding his search for the training camp." See his book, page 396.

[Tom Gram]

8 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Litwin's source is "a series of memos from Al Oser regarding his search for the training camp." See his book, page 396.

That’s quite the citation. I have all the Garrison papers, and will try to find this alleged “series” from Oser, but really, can it get any more vague? Who cites anything like that unless they don’t want people checking their sources? 

Anatomy of a Fred Litwin citation: 1) be as vague as humanly possible, 2) selectively cite nonspecific “memos” from Garrison’s investigators as gospel in a book designed to discredit Garrison’s investigation.

[Steve Roe]

59 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

That’s quite the citation. I have all the Garrison papers, and will try to find this alleged “series” from Oser, but really, can it get any more vague? Who cites anything like that unless they don’t want people checking their sources? 

Anatomy of a Fred Litwin citation: 1) be as vague as humanly possible, 2) selectively cite nonspecific “memos” from Garrison’s investigators as gospel in a book designed to discredit Garrison’s investigation.

Quote

 

Assistant District Attorney James Alcock started questioning Bringuier about a Cuban training camp across Lake Pontchartrain.

In the summer of 1963, about twenty anti-Castro Cubans trained at a small camp. There were only a couple of rifles to practice assembly and disassembly, and no actual shooting occurred. Food was scarce, the men complained bitterly, and after a little more than a month, the Cubans were all sent back to Miami.

Garrison wanted to find what was left of the camp. He told Merriman Smith of UPI that “a group of local perverts in and around New Orleans eventually infiltrated this group and after a short period of time took over control.” He believed that Ferrie, Oswald, and Arcacha were there, and Garrison told reporter Hoke May that the “troops … went to Dallas” when they left the camp.

Propinquity was also at play: Clay Shaw’s mother lived in Hammond, Louisiana, fairly close to where Garrison believed the camps to be. His staff then spent weeks trying to find the camp; he hoped to find 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano shells that would prove Oswald had been there.

They eventually found the camp. 

 

LITWIN, FRED. On The Trail of Delusion: Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser (pp. 166-167). NorthernBlues Books. Kindle Edition. 

He has a memo from Oser to Garrison about locating the camp (near Slidell). 

[Pamela Brown]

On 7/9/2022 at 9:58 AM, Steve Roe said:

Recently I purchased the Kindle version of DiEugenio's new book. I saw many dubious claims repeated that have debunked (the Todd initials, overnight airmail to Chicago, Oswald's 3 Qtr. USMC pay, etc.). The citations of source material, most of them from other conspiracy books, is really bad. As I plow through this book, there will be more articles pointing out DiEugenio's claims, and stories mentioned in his book. 

Author Fred Litwin steps forward today with this doozy of a whopper concerning DiEugenio's citing of Dick Russel's book as a source. 

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/anatomy-of-a-james-dieugenio-citation

Does the truth matter? Or is this business as usual with baseless conspiracy stories?

 

There may be yet another possibility...distraction...

[David Boylan]

12 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Assuming you are talking about Litwin and not Hardaway - lone assassin literature shouldn’t be flatly ignored just because the analysis is biased. Plenty of conspiracy research is biased too. If anyone finds quality documents or says something that is objectively correct or legitimately compelling it should be acknowledged. Litwin used primary sources to call into question the credibility of William Bishop, and Tracy did the same by linking an essay by Dan Hardaway, who’s as far from a lone nutter as it gets, to question Tanenbaum’s. I did the same thing in this thread with Arnesto Rodriguez. 

That said, some counter-debunking never hurts, especially when the author does literally the same thing they are criticizing another author for doing, which is what Litwin did in this case. 

Bishop did have some interesting connections of course. His CIA DCD contact was Col. Manny Chavez aka "Chavitts" in some docs. Chavez debriefed Cuban refugees along with Luis Rodriguez (Army Intel) under Justin Gleichauf. Chavez had shared a desk with David Morales for 4 months in 1960 when Chavez was first contacted by Bishop. Chavez would later work on the AMWORLD program working with Manuel Artime and Rafael Quintero on security issues.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=46704#relPageId=6

 

As far as Arnesto Rodriguez, his brother was Emilio Rodriguez aka AMIRE-1. That's as close to JMWAVE that you can get.

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Steve Roe said:

LITWIN, FRED. On The Trail of Delusion: Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser (pp. 166-167). NorthernBlues Books. Kindle Edition. 

He has a memo from Oser to Garrison about locating the camp (near Slidell). 

Steve, I'm pretty sure I found the memo from Oser. It is not a series of memos, nor does it describe anything that went on in the camp. The issue is Litwin's statement: 

There were only a couple of rifles to practice assembly and disassembly, and no actual shooting occurred. Food was scarce, the men complained bitterly, and after a little more than a month, the Cubans were all sent back to Miami.

I don't know how Oser would have come to the conclusion that no shooting occurred - his memo on the camp's location is directly contradictory to that:

Oser memo:

 

Also, the material developed by Garrison's office on the camp bears no resemblance whatsoever to Litwin's assertion:

Interview With Ricardo Davis:

 

Transcript of secretly recorded interview with Carlos Quiroga (Corroborates Bringuier's WC Testimony):

 

...

 

There are so many stories on this camp, and the only story that's remotely similar to what Litwin says is from Arnesto Rodriguez:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=129451#relPageId=8.  (I'm out of space for attachments, Rodriguez is NO 1213-S)

Even then, there's nothing about food being scarce, or there being only a couple rifles (Rodriguez said they only had broomsticks..right). The HSCA gave two more stories about why the Cubans left the camp (X-VII-73), and the Church Committee wrote that the owners of the camp were the same people involved in procuring the bombs and dynamite that were seized nearby. 

Unless I'm missing something here, which is possible, I feel pretty comfortable stating the following:

1.) Litwin's citation to "a series of memos by Alvin Oser" does not reflect what he wrote about the camp, and actually directly contradicts it. There also appears to be only one memo - unless Litwin can produce any more of this alleged series.  

2.) The information on the camp developed by Garrison's office, in which Alvin Oser worked, directly contradicts what Litwin wrote.

3.) The HSCA, Church Committee, and even WC (through Bringuier) developed information on the camp that directly contradicts what Litwin wrote. 

4.) The only somewhat corroborative source, Arnesto Rodriguez - essentially a hearsay witness to Warren DeBrueys - is not cited, has dubious credibility on this topic, and even he provided information that directly contradicts what Litwin wrote.  

I will retract if Litwin can produce a series of memos from Alvin Oser that support his claims about the camp. I won't be on the edge of my seat, cause the bit about "no actual shooting" looks to be just plain wrong. 

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Tom Gram

[Ron Bulman]

13 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Assuming you are talking about Litwin and not Hardaway - lone assassin literature shouldn’t be flatly ignored just because the analysis is biased. Plenty of conspiracy research is biased too. If anyone finds quality documents or says something that is objectively correct or legitimately compelling it should be acknowledged. Litwin used primary sources to call into question the credibility of William Bishop, and Tracy did the same by linking an essay by Dan Hardaway, who’s as far from a lone nutter as it gets, to question Tanenbaum’s. I did the same thing in this thread with Arnesto Rodriguez. 

That said, some counter-debunking never hurts, especially when the author does literally the same thing they are criticizing another author for doing, which is what Litwin did in this case. 

Yes, I was referring to the Litwin article.  I've read a lot of junk over the years and have come to the point I don't see how any open-minded person who has done much reading on the subject can still conclude Oswald acted alone.  So, sometimes I get to a point reading some articles, or posts, I think why waste my time.

BTW for Pat, I am familiar with both Dan Hardway and the former mayor of Beverly Hills.  The former's questioning of the latter's version not withstanding, I admire the work of both.