How Oswald was Framed for the Murder of Tippit

[Tom Gram]

8 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Note DM's dishonest interview reporting technique of presenting paraphrased content as if literal quotation. His many interviews are worthless as reported.

I asked this in another thread, I think to Greg D., but do you know if Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews? This “paraphrased quote” business does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of Myers’ reporting. 

Myers has supposedly conducted hundreds of interviews with witnesses, witness family members, and other key persons involved in the case. Other JFK researchers get crucified for not making that type of research available for peer review. Myers should be held to the same standard, but for whatever reason his persistent anti-transparent behavior has been largely ignored, other than his refusal to release the parameters of his single bullet animation.

Sure he has done some valuable work, but the real value of Myers’ research is the unfiltered raw data: witness interview tapes, 3D modeling data, dictabelt calculations, etc. etc. etc. Myers as far as I know has never released any of that material to the public. Why not?

Basically, I agree that Myers’ interviews are worthless as reported; and until he starts exposing his work to real scrutiny by other researchers, I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that he’s withholding information to protect his own credibility.  

Edited September 17, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

I asked this in another thread, I think to Greg D., but do you know if Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews? This “paraphrased quote” business does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of Myers’ reporting. 

Myers has supposedly conducted hundreds of interviews with witnesses, witness family members, and other key persons involved in the case. Other JFK researchers get crucified for not making that type of research available for peer review. Myers should be held to the same standard, but for whatever reason his persistent anti-transparent behavior has been largely ignored, other than his refusal to release the parameters of his single bullet animation.

Sure he has done some valuable work, but the real value of Myers’ research is the unfiltered raw data: witness interview tapes, 3D modeling data, dictabelt calculations, etc. etc. etc. Myers as far as I know has never released any of that material to the public. Why not?

Basically, I agree that Myers’ interviews are worthless as reported; and until he starts exposing his work to real scrutiny by other researchers, I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that he’s withholding information to protect his own credibility.  

Mostly right on above Tom. The lack of release of interview recordings and/or transcripts is a good point (I know of none). That such transcripts for at least some interviews exist is verified because I have seen a Myers footnote refer to a page number and date of a witness interview transcript. But the instance of Myers claiming that a published direct quotation, between quotation marks, attributed to Jack Tatum, in both editions of With Malice, were not words spoken by Tatum at all but a gloss of Myers' own which inadvertently became part of the published quotation, is troubling.

I do not think Myers intentionally fabricated that Tatum quotation that Tatum never said. But I have asked myself, how does an error like that happen (and how isolated is that error given that one came to light). 

My best guess at what happened with that non-Tatum quotation quotation--the mechanism or causal explanation--I draw from something I learned long ago from observation during a brief stint as an intern doing radio news production, in the news business. It is a common phenomenon reported by people who have been interviewed for newspaper stories: reporters will interview, and reporters have a "storyline"--a hook, a setup, the interesting information, the second opinion or opposing opinion if available, the wrapup.

Time after time, persons interviewed for a story in the local paper will read their own quotations in the newspaper and turn to whoever is nearby and say, "I didn't say that. That reporter misunderstood me!" These were not reporters trying to get it wrong, and in most cases these were "friendlies", reporters sympathetic to the persons and stories they were reporting. What was going on was the reporter asks questions, listens to the answers, takes written notes (if not a recorded interview). Then writing up the story the reporter writes what the reporter thought the person said or meant. Puts quotation marks around it. Often the reporter is not expert on a topic of a story apart from a surface briefing, and things can easily be gotten wrong.

(Incidentally, I learned that reporters at least in the circles I moved did not usually run stories by the persons interviewed to verify accuracy of quotations before going to press. Sometimes they would but more commonly not. Reason? Partly it was time deadlines and the hassle. But also all reporters learned that when they did that, people would think they were being asked for permission or approval, want to change things, etc. and that was not the reporter's view, the reporter only wanted verification of accuracy. Misunderstandings, hurt feelings ... simple solution, try to get the quotes right, but send it to press without running it by the people quoted. Then in the occasional case a person howled misquotation, run a correction and clean it up afterward. 🙂)  

Myers' quotation of Tatum saying something Tatum did not say only came to light because Myers had gone into print emphatically denying that Tatum had said what Myers had published Tatum quoted as saying, and a reader brought it to attention and Myers confessed the published quotation was incorrect. If Myers had not had a lapse of memory and forgotten he was contradicting his own published interview, that invented quotation of Tatum likely never would have come to light, preserved in print for all time.

What it suggests to me is that that interview of Tatum may not have been recorded. 

It is difficult for me to understand how an error of that nature would happen if it involved Myers working from a tape recording and transcription from a tape recording.

But it is easy to understand if Myers was writing up that Tatum interview from a combination of written notes and memory, "creating" verbatim quotations from that raw material. Or, worse, adding in words within the quotation marks at a possibly years-later stage of writing his book as something he thought Tatum had said too. 

That does not mean Myers' reporting of interviews is worthless. I think Myers' interviews in With Malice are valuable in content and probably in the top 10% percentile of accuracy and credibility as far as reported interviews in the JFK field go.

But from the Tatum misquotation, some of Myers' reported interviews appear to me not to have been recorded. The reporting of interviews that were unrecorded in With Malice then become, as I judge it, approximately of equivalent degree of accuracy and credibility as FBI interview writeups which, as I understand it, normally were not recorded but written up from memory or notes soon after the interviews. (In other words, usually accurate except when they aren't.) 

Would Myers be willing to disclose which interviews utilized in With Malice were recorded and which were not? As in a list A of one class, and a list B of the other class?

I'm not going to ask him. The last time I asked him something he misunderstood my question as if I was asking something totally else and blasted me for it. I have a weak stomach to go through that again. 

[Michael Kalin]

On 9/13/2023 at 10:20 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Bill you hammer Michael Kalin pretty unmercifully for errors, including ones he made in the past not the topic of current discussion, and indeed you are strong on details. Just remember that when you hit someone too hard when they are down audiences start sympathizing with the one being hit, irrespective even of the issue. Here the tables may be turned. I think you missed it on this one, and perhaps may acknowledge a little humility and that no one, not even yourself, is immune from an occasional mistake.

I missed this until now, but not to worry, the hammer blows were struck with a feather duster.

Sorry for leaving my participation in the Estes/Crafard thread hanging, but I've been frying bigger fish. I'll get back to it in a day or two.

[Michael Kalin]

13 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I asked this in another thread, I think to Greg D., but do you know if Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews? This “paraphrased quote” business does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of Myers’ reporting. 

Myers has supposedly conducted hundreds of interviews with witnesses, witness family members, and other key persons involved in the case. Other JFK researchers get crucified for not making that type of research available for peer review. Myers should be held to the same standard, but for whatever reason his persistent anti-transparent behavior has been largely ignored, other than his refusal to release the parameters of his single bullet animation.

Sure he has done some valuable work, but the real value of Myers’ research is the unfiltered raw data: witness interview tapes, 3D modeling data, dictabelt calculations, etc. etc. etc. Myers as far as I know has never released any of that material to the public. Why not?

Basically, I agree that Myers’ interviews are worthless as reported; and until he starts exposing his work to real scrutiny by other researchers, I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that he’s withholding information to protect his own credibility.  

Tom, I do not know if Dale Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews. What surprised me was letting his guard down and describing his practice of mutilating statements made by people he interviews. BTW I'm curious as to just what it means to render (DM's term) a comment.

As to the dictabelts I have a question for you. Myers claims the murder occurred at 1:14:30PM, in decimal terms 14.5 minutes past 1PM. IIRC when performing such a calculation the result's precision can be no greater than that of the least precise input. If this is so it knocks the 30 seconds out of the box because all the times on the dictabelts are stamped in whole minutes. Do you have thoughts on this?

Here's a link to wikipedia on significant figures & spurious digits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

Thanks!

[Bill Brown]

On 9/17/2023 at 7:55 AM, Michael Kalin said:

Extraordinary -- if I'm getting the drift -- even after agreeing with you, Jack Myers failed to modify his article to reflect this agreement.

At this point I'm bowing out. I'll leave it to Jack Myers to explain why he ignored your advice after agreeing with you, if that is what actually happened.

So the dark cloud lifts, and the silver linings to our discussion remain:

1. The discovery that Tatum told another interviewer that "he watched as the gunman turned up the street and up an alley." Bill Brown, this should dispel your blind faith in Callaway.

2. Dale Myers belated correction to his misquote of Tatum relative to the shot "in the head."

Note DM's dishonest interview reporting technique of presenting paraphrased content as if literal quotation. His many interviews are worthless as reported.

 

"At this point I'm bowing out."

 

Good idea.

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/18/2023 at 5:57 AM, Michael Kalin said:

Tom, I do not know if Dale Myers has ever released tapes of any of his interviews. What surprised me was letting his guard down and describing his practice of mutilating statements made by people he interviews. BTW I'm curious as to just what it means to render (DM's term) a comment.

As to the dictabelts I have a question for you. Myers claims the murder occurred at 1:14:30PM, in decimal terms 14.5 minutes past 1PM. IIRC when performing such a calculation the result's precision can be no greater than that of the least precise input. If this is so it knocks the 30 seconds out of the box because all the times on the dictabelts are stamped in whole minutes.

Regarding Dale Myers' scholarship on the Tippit shooting, you might be interested in my 33-page critique of his book With Malice:

Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers' Book With Malice

[Karl Kinaski]

To put in consideration of at least two individuals involved in the killing is of help here ... Aquilla Clemons.

[Michael Kalin]

On 9/19/2023 at 9:19 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Regarding Dale Myers' scholarship on the Tippit shooting, you might be interested in my 33-page critique of his book With Malice:

Did Oswald Shoot Tippit? A Review of Dale Myers' Book With Malice

Thanks, this is interesting. I read an earlier edition years ago.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Tom Gram]

On 9/17/2023 at 6:34 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Mostly right on above Tom. The lack of release of interview recordings and/or transcripts is a good point (I know of none). That such transcripts for at least some interviews exist is verified because I have seen a Myers footnote refer to a page number and date of a witness interview transcript. But the instance of Myers claiming that a published direct quotation, between quotation marks, attributed to Jack Tatum, in both editions of With Malice, were not words spoken by Tatum at all but a gloss of Myers' own which inadvertently became part of the published quotation, is troubling.

I do not think Myers intentionally fabricated that Tatum quotation that Tatum never said. But I have asked myself, how does an error like that happen (and how isolated is that error given that one came to light). 

My best guess at what happened with that non-Tatum quotation quotation--the mechanism or causal explanation--I draw from something I learned long ago from observation during a brief stint as an intern doing radio news production, in the news business. It is a common phenomenon reported by people who have been interviewed for newspaper stories: reporters will interview, and reporters have a "storyline"--a hook, a setup, the interesting information, the second opinion or opposing opinion if available, the wrapup.

Time after time, persons interviewed for a story in the local paper will read their own quotations in the newspaper and turn to whoever is nearby and say, "I didn't say that. That reporter misunderstood me!" These were not reporters trying to get it wrong, and in most cases these were "friendlies", reporters sympathetic to the persons and stories they were reporting. What was going on was the reporter asks questions, listens to the answers, takes written notes (if not a recorded interview). Then writing up the story the reporter writes what the reporter thought the person said or meant. Puts quotation marks around it. Often the reporter is not expert on a topic of a story apart from a surface briefing, and things can easily be gotten wrong.

(Incidentally, I learned that reporters at least in the circles I moved did not usually run stories by the persons interviewed to verify accuracy of quotations before going to press. Sometimes they would but more commonly not. Reason? Partly it was time deadlines and the hassle. But also all reporters learned that when they did that, people would think they were being asked for permission or approval, want to change things, etc. and that was not the reporter's view, the reporter only wanted verification of accuracy. Misunderstandings, hurt feelings ... simple solution, try to get the quotes right, but send it to press without running it by the people quoted. Then in the occasional case a person howled misquotation, run a correction and clean it up afterward. 🙂)  

Myers' quotation of Tatum saying something Tatum did not say only came to light because Myers had gone into print emphatically denying that Tatum had said what Myers had published Tatum quoted as saying, and a reader brought it to attention and Myers confessed the published quotation was incorrect. If Myers had not had a lapse of memory and forgotten he was contradicting his own published interview, that invented quotation of Tatum likely never would have come to light, preserved in print for all time.

What it suggests to me is that that interview of Tatum may not have been recorded. 

It is difficult for me to understand how an error of that nature would happen if it involved Myers working from a tape recording and transcription from a tape recording.

But it is easy to understand if Myers was writing up that Tatum interview from a combination of written notes and memory, "creating" verbatim quotations from that raw material. Or, worse, adding in words within the quotation marks at a possibly years-later stage of writing his book as something he thought Tatum had said too. 

That does not mean Myers' reporting of interviews is worthless. I think Myers' interviews in With Malice are valuable in content and probably in the top 10% percentile of accuracy and credibility as far as reported interviews in the JFK field go.

But from the Tatum misquotation, some of Myers' reported interviews appear to me not to have been recorded. The reporting of interviews that were unrecorded in With Malice then become, as I judge it, approximately of equivalent degree of accuracy and credibility as FBI interview writeups which, as I understand it, normally were not recorded but written up from memory or notes soon after the interviews. (In other words, usually accurate except when they aren't.) 

Would Myers be willing to disclose which interviews utilized in With Malice were recorded and which were not? As in a list A of one class, and a list B of the other class?

I'm not going to ask him. The last time I asked him something he misunderstood my question as if I was asking something totally else and blasted me for it. I have a weak stomach to go through that again. 

Your explanation for Myers’ fabrication of the “verbatim” Tatum quote is plausible, but I think the FBI 302 report analogy is a bit of a stretch. Like you said, several of Myers’ citations are listed as “interview with [witness] [date] [page number]” - so unlike with 302 reports, tapes do exist for many valuable interviews. Myers has just decided to withhold those tapes and transcripts from the public. I think a better analogy here would be the Warren Report, but if the deposition transcripts were withheld by the WC. 

The Hearings tell a much different story than the WR, and reveal that the the WC lawyers repeatedly lead witnesses, failed to ask critically important questions, and were much more receptive to testimony that supported Oswald’s guilt than anything suggesting even a hint of conspiracy.

Like the WC, Myers conducts interviews with a predetermined goal and conclusion, and it’s impossible to gauge how his questioning influenced the responses of witnesses without tapes or verbatim transcripts. We also don’t know if he’s been selective in his presentation of interview content. If a witness hinted at something contradictory to Myers’ thesis, would Myers drill into that issue like a true investigative reporter or would he gloss over it and change the subject? Until Myers releases tapes or transcripts of his interviews, I don’t it’s unreasonable to suspect the latter. 

The fact that Myers occasionally reports on problematic witness statements and other contradictory evidence like the fingerprints may reflect, like the WC, a desire to project the illusion of due diligence as opposed to honest, objective reporting. Myers uses the same techniques as the WC to impugn the credibility of witnesses and dismiss evidence he doesn’t like, but the WC released their interview transcripts; and as a result we know today to not trust the WR without checking all the footnotes. Myers on the other hand expects unconditional trust in his reporting, but has deliberately withheld the requisite data to evaluate his credibility as a reporter. Why? 

We know for a fact that Myers is rabidly biased and extremely sensitive to criticism. He also has a habit of appealing to his own authority. Is it just a coincidence that Myers has repeatedly decided to shield his reporting and other work from scrutiny by other researchers? How many errors or other inaccuracies would we find if Myers released all his raw data? I bet it’d be more than a few. 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Donald Willis]

On 8/25/2023 at 1:15 PM, Bill Brown said:

 

"The purported shortcut across the front yard of the Davis residence and exit through the shrubbery is not a foregone conclusion. Many saw the killer proceed to the corner of Patton & 10th, turn left at this corner, and leave the area via the alley."

 

Nonsense.

 

No one saw the killer leave the area via the alley.

 

I don't see that anyone commented on this, so... At least two witnesses saw the killer leave via the alley--Markham and Jimmy Burt.  And there was a third witness to whom Markham showed the alley pathway, lived across the street I believe.

[Bill Brown]

50 minutes ago, Donald Willis said:

I don't see that anyone commented on this, so... At least two witnesses saw the killer leave via the alley--Markham and Jimmy Burt.  And there was a third witness to whom Markham showed the alley pathway, lived across the street I believe.

 

No.

 

Jimmy Burt said he saw the killer in the alley almost down to the next block (behind the Texaco station).  Burt did not say he saw the killer flee the shooting scene via the alley.

 

Helen Markham testified that she saw the killer flee to the corner of Tenth and Patton, south on Patton and then cross Patton over to the west side of the street.  That was the last she saw of him because she then went over to Tippit.

 

[Donald Willis]

On 9/8/2023 at 3:07 PM, Bill Brown said:

 

Obvious confusion during her testimony on exactly what Ball was trying to ask her.  But, I'm curious.  What does any of the above have to do with the fact that she identified Oswald back on 11/22/63?  What if she never testified to the Warren Commission?  Before Markham ever heard of Joseph Ball, she picked Oswald on the afternoon of the murder.

 

"Number two is the one I picked." -- Helen Markham

"Number two was the man I saw shoot the policeman." -- Helen Markham

 

Markham is quicksand.  For instance, she gave three different versions of the escape route of the shooter, or the man she thought was the shooter--up 10th (original affidavit), up Patton (WC testimony), down the alley (based first on the crime scene sketch & later on recorded interviews).   

[Bill Brown]

1 hour ago, Donald Willis said:

Markham is quicksand.  For instance, she gave three different versions of the escape route of the shooter, or the man she thought was the shooter--up 10th (original affidavit), up Patton (WC testimony), down the alley (based first on the crime scene sketch & later on recorded interviews).   

 

"up 10th (original affidavit)"

 

What she actually said was "ran west on E. 10th across Patton".  She didn't say "up 10th".

 

"up Patton (WC testimony)"

 

Which is exactly the same route taken by the killer which the other witnesses described.  This does not automatically exclude what she said in her original affidavit: "ran west on E. 10th across Patton".

 

"down the alley (based first on the crime scene sketch & later on recorded interviews)"

 

Markham's son (James) was friends with Jimmy Burt and Bill Smith.  No doubt, James Markham heard Burt and Smith's version of seeing the killer in the alley almost down to the next block.  It is not that far fetched an idea that Helen heard from her son James that the killer was seen in the alley.

 

[Ron Bulman]

I don't think he shot Tippit either.