John Simkin Thought John McAdams Was a CIA Propagandist

[David Von Pein]

2 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

No conspiracy (or cover-up) has ever been necessary in an effort to explain all of this evidence that exists in the JFK and J.D. Tippit murder cases (and in Jack Ruby's murder of Oswald as well).

"The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald's guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the leaves of individual trees. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence. .... Within a few hours of the assassination, virtually all of Dallas law enforcement already knew Oswald had murdered Kennedy. Indeed, it was obvious to nearly everyone, not just law enforcement. At 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, NBC network news anchorman Bill Ryan reported that "all circumstantial evidence points to the guilt of the suspect Lee Oswald." Exactly what happened was that obvious within hours of the shooting." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Pages 952-953 of "Reclaiming History"

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com / Reclaiming History Book Quotations

 

[Keven Hofeling]

6 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

 

And... Bugliosi said he disproved the arguments for conspiracy..

You were a freakin' lawyer. Certainly you understand that it doesn't matter what the lawyers think--as virtually all lawyers think they won their case, no matter ho weak their case--but what they jury thinks.

And the jury in this case is still out. 

 

Your retort is valid, in my view, to the extent that it recognizes that Bugliosi, to whom this was clearly "just another case," lawyered the JFKA, while Vince Salandria lived it, and offered an obvious remedy for the illness that you are continuing to articulate...

 

"...Schotz, a Boston psychiatrist, long ago suggested to Salandria that the public was encased in denial concerning the Kennedy assassination. Schotz observed that public discourse seemed to permit the notion that a conspiracy was “possible” or “likely.” A common statement on the subject is that one “feels” or “believes” that there was official misconduct and obfuscation in the crime. Like the addict or alcoholic unable to confront the seriousness of the disease, the American public would prefer not to know the truth and say it, but to remain locked in psychic and political paralysis rather than state outright that Kennedy was removed by official power, and thereby confront the monstrousness of our political-economic system. I have suggested to Schotz that he extend his penetrating insight a bit further, since to live in America, it seems to me, means to live in some state of denial, because a sensitive person could not live here, aware of the nation’s history, its murderous past, its cruel and inequitable present, without hiding in a carapace of denial. It is the hope of Schotz, Salandria, and this writer that we may all confront truth, shed denial, and build a better world...."

Christopher Sharrett
Seton Hall University
July, 1999 

 

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/titlepage.html

 

[Pat Speer]

1 minute ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Using your logic, a medical forum that excludes quackery is a propaganda forum. A science forum that excludes flat earth theory is a propaganda forum.

You are just flat wrong about this Pat.

 

That's incorrect. Quackery and the Flat Earth Theory have been rejected by the vast majority of both the experts and the public. The lone nut theory has not. 

I have been invited off and on to participate in email groups comprised of a hundred or so doctors, lawyers, professors, and historians. To these people--the people likely to be quoted by the media, and contribute to the textbooks of the future--the case is far from closed. In fact, by my estimation, the make-up of this email group is 50/50 CT/LN, with many if not most hesitant to say one way or the other. 

The jury is still out. 

 

[Keven Hofeling]

 

[Pat Speer]

37 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

By JFKA experts... who else? The majority say that there was a conspiracy and/or cover-up.

 

Uhh... WHO decides who is an expert? Academia and the media. And who have they selected as their experts? People like Gerald Posner, John Lattimer, Vincent Bugliosi, Dale Myers, John McAdams, and Lucien Haag. 

I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. No matter what you or I think about the Kennedy assassination, the conspiracy/no conspiracy question has not been answered to the satisfaction of those who will write history. 

I mean, we are but voices at the bottom of a well. The voices of men like Warren, Cronkite, Caro, Jennings, Bugliosi and Posner have had much more sway with Academia and the media than, say, Jim Garrison, David Lifton, and Oliver Stone. 

[Jean Ceulemans]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

The acoustic evidence, alone, has done that.

I don´t think John Ramsey Jr. agreed? Did he?

[W. Niederhut]

18 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Uhh... WHO decides who is an expert? Academia and the media. And who have they selected as their experts? People like Gerald Posner, John Lattimer, Vincent Bugliosi, Dale Myers, John McAdams, and Lucien Haag. 

I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. No matter what you or I think about the Kennedy assassination, the conspiracy/no conspiracy question has not been answered to the satisfaction of those who will write history. 

I mean, we are but voices at the bottom of a well. The voices of men like Warren, Cronkite, Caro, Jennings, Bugliosi and Posner have had much more sway with Academia and the media than, say, Jim Garrison, David Lifton, and Oliver Stone. 

Pat,

      This post is entirely consistent with your bizarre denial of CIA propaganda ops to promote the false WCR/LN narrative of the JFK assassination since 11/22/63.  You're living on Planet Speer.

      I'm still flabbergasted by your post this weekend opining that Posner, Bugliosi, and McAdams weren't working for the CIA propaganda establishment!

     And most of us know by now that the CIA propaganda establishment has long employed academicians to promote false narratives about U.S. military and intelligence ops.  Luis Alvarez is the most famous JFKA example.

      So, no, the true "experts" about the JFK assassination are not the WCR/LN propagandists who have been working for the CIA in the mainstream media, on the internet, and in academia.

      The true experts are the honest, independent witnesses and investigators who have worked for years, on their own dime, to debunk the WCR propaganda and solve the case-- Fletcher Prouty, Mark Lane, Sylvia Meager, Jim Garrison, Jim Marrs, David Lifton, Oliver Stone, James DiEugenio, Lisa Pease, Larry Hancock, Joseph McBride, Vince Palamara, et.al.

     

Edited Wednesday at 11:27 PM by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Proven by who? To whom? 

At least 30% of society and probably 50% of historians and academics still think Oswald did it.

So, no, the case for conspiracy has not been proven, not in a court of law, and not in the court of public opinion. 

Pat, I spent over 400 pages discrediting Bugliosi.  Much more than you did. Gary Aguilar did a long article in Federal Lawyer blistering him.

Bugliosi's book was an argument by invective and by length.  I was not intimidated by either.

The reason that 90 per cent of the public does not side with the critics is simple.  And you seem to discount it, its the MSM.

If you recall, when Stone's film came out, the figures did soar very high.

Then Random House's Bob Loomis hired Posner and gave him the biggest PR campaign I ever saw.

I called Loomis' office.  His secretary told me he was not in, he spent three days a week in Washington.

So that is that.

And BTW, facts are facts, they are not shared by both sides.  As we saw with Luis Alvarez, who cheated and then concealed that cheating.

 

BTW, William, I liked that "bumped your head" comment about Kirk.  He does that a lot I think.

[Keven Hofeling]

6 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Uhh... WHO decides who is an expert? Academia and the media. And who have they selected as their experts? People like Gerald Posner, John Lattimer, Vincent Bugliosi, Dale Myers, John McAdams, and Lucien Haag. 

I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. No matter what you or I think about the Kennedy assassination, the conspiracy/no conspiracy question has not been answered to the satisfaction of those who will write history. 

I mean, we are but voices at the bottom of a well. The voices of men like Warren, Cronkite, Caro, Jennings, Bugliosi and Posner have had much more sway with Academia and the media than, say, Jim Garrison, David Lifton, and Oliver Stone. 

Now you are articulating the home court advantage that the stenographers to power -- or better said, accessories after the fact -- enjoy by virtue of having been appointed by those who prevailed in the internecine struggle that ended with the coup d'etat  of 1963; but what sticks out most to me is how you proclaim it as if you wear it like a badge of honor.

If I were on that side of the divide I would hang my head in shame, just like Arlen Specter did...

THE LAST CONFESSION OF ARLEN SPECTER:

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/02/27/vince-salandria-jfk-conspiracy-theorist/5/

ON JANUARY 4, 2012, Vince Salandria and Arlen Specter met at the Oyster House for lunch. It was scheduled for noon, but Specter got there first and was seated; Vince came in and waited in front. Finally, after 40 minutes or so, Arlen Specter came out and found him.

They sat down. There was no one sitting near them. Specter was smiling and pleasant.

He had contacted Vince out of a random connection through mutual friends. Specter got Vince’s number and made the call, asking him if he’d have lunch.

But it was Vince who started talking, and kept talking. Specter listened.

Vince told Specter that he wanted him to know that if he had been assigned to work for the Warren Commission, as Arlen had been, and understood what he did now, that he, too, would have taken the assignment. He thought that Specter had a job to do as a lawyer.

Specter didn’t respond.

Vince said that not to do the work of the Warren Commission would have invited domestic disorder, and perhaps a dictatorship. The generals would have killed Vince, he told Specter, as quickly as Stalin would have. Specter probably saved his life.

Specter was quiet. His demeanor remained pleasant.

Vince explained what he hadn’t realized back in 1964: that the American people weren’t prepared to accept that military intelligence had assassinated the President in a coup. Vince added that his wife, a bright and rational woman, didn’t support his obsession with the assassination.

Specter listened.

Vince told Specter his rationale for the assassination—he had read correspondence between Kennedy and Khrushchev and concluded they were very fond of each other and were seeking to end the Cold War. The assassins wanted to continue the Cold War and to escalate the war in Vietnam. Vince told Specter he believed Kennedy was killed by the CIA with the approval of the military.

Specter took this in without comment.

Vince told him that he understood it was a conspiracy when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, and that no guilty government would tell us the truth about an institutional killing of the President.

Vince went on in this vein a bit longer, explaining more of his insights about the assassination. Specter asked him—the first time he had said anything in some time—whether Vince spoke frequently to Mark Lane. Vince said no, he didn’t.

Then Specter asked Vince what he remembered about their 1964 confrontation at the bar association event in Specter’s honor. Vince told him he had attended with his copy of the Warren Report. Specter wondered how long the report had been available—he thought it had been out only one week. Vince thought it was a couple of weeks. Specter seemed impressed with how quickly Vince had digested the report.

Then Specter said: “You charged me then, at that meeting, with fraud.”

That was true. As Vince laid out his case in his first article, the Warren Commission’s work was speculation conforming to none of the evidence, without the slightest credibility, with errors in logic and contrary to the laws of physics and geometry. He was charging Specter with corruption. Of perpetrating a fraud.

And now, at lunch, Arlen Specter had a request. “Instead of calling me corrupt,” he said, “can you change it to incompetent?”

Almost a half-century had passed since the Warren Commission’s work had been made public; almost a half-century since the event at City Hall at which Vince Salandria stood up and asked his pointed questions. During that time, Arlen Specter was forever being asked about the Warren Report and the Magic Bullet. He was laughed at over his theory. Oliver Stone made a movie in which Specter was mocked, and the running joke in the Specter household was that his epitaph would lead with the Magic Bullet.

He had lived with the assassination, and his role in solving it, forever. And he hadn’t stopped living with it, upholding his responsibility to explain. Arlen Specter, those close to him say, believed in that responsibility. He told friends he was looking forward to 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination, because it was an opportunity to speak about solving the murder of the President yet again, to engage the issue once more. Specter, they say, hadn’t backed off one inch.

Vince Salandria, too, had lived with the assassination for a long time, and he, too, had paid a steep price. He says now that teaching is far and away his most important life’s work, his true calling, yet he taught at Bartram High for only eight years before his conspiracy theories made him an outlier among his fellow teachers. He’d end up spending three decades as a school-system lawyer. He did well. It was work he believed in. But it wasn’t the same as teaching.

Long ago, Vince Salandria said: “No matter what comes of this work”—the assassination research he and fellow obsessives kept plugging away at—“we have involved ourselves in the worthiest cause of our lives.”

He says he still believes that. “Until we really come to grips with the true meaning of the assassination—i.e., the coup, by military intelligence services of the country—civil liberties are necessarily restricted,” he says. “Every president since Kennedy knows what happened to him and why. Therefore, every president knows he’s circumscribed in terms of what he can do and who he can oppose and how much he opposes them.”

When Arlen Specter asked Vince Salandria to change his opinion of him from corrupt to incompetent, Vince told him that he couldn’t change it. He told Arlen Specter he knew from the public record that the Senator was quite competent then—in 1964—and that he was, at all times, competent. He had never considered Specter incompetent. And he wasn’t incompetent now.

Specter had no reaction to that, just as he hadn’t reacted to anything else Vince said.

Perhaps Specter, in asking Salandria to change his opinion, was admitting that the Warren Commission got it wrong, that the Magic Bullet and a lone gunman really don’t wash. Or perhaps it was simpler than that, a moment between two men who had lived with the same profound event for so long, who played such important and different roles in our understanding of what happened and, well … did Vince’s opinion have to be so harsh? Perhaps, in other words, it was merely a personal moment. Whatever he was up to, Arlen Specter certainly opened the door a crack to yet another debate about what he really believed.

He would ask Vince another question: Do you think the Warren Commission was a setup? That is, did Vince think Earl Warren was told that Lee Harvey Oswald had to be their man before there was any investigation at all?

Yes, Vince said.

Arlen Specter had no reaction to that, either, and remained pleasant to the end, even though, Vince is sure, he’d arranged lunch in order to hear one thing: that Vince could come to a new opinion about Specter’s work for the Warren Commission. Whatever personal redemption Specter may have been seeking, he left without it.

Though he didn’t leave empty-handed. On the way out of the Oyster House, Vince handed Specter a copy of James Douglass’s book JFK and the Unspeakable, published in 2008. The book is dedicated to Vince and another conspiracy theorist. Vince told Specter it was the best work ever written on the assassination.

First appeared in the March, 2014 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

 

 

[Pat Speer]

3 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Pat,

      This post is entirely consistent with your bizarre denial of CIA propaganda ops to promote the false WCR/LN narrative of the JFK assassination since 11/22/63.  You're living on Planet Speer.

      I'm still flabbergasted by your post this weekend opining that Posner, Bugliosi, and McAdams weren't working for the CIA propaganda establishment!

     And most of us know by now that the CIA propaganda establishment has long employed academicians to promote false narratives about U.S. military and intelligence ops.  Luis Alvarez is the most famous JFKA example.

      So, no, the true "experts" about the JFK assassination are not the WCR/LN propagandists who have been working for the CIA in the mainstream media, on the internet, and in academia.

      The true experts are the honest, independent witnesses and investigators who have worked for years, on their own dime, to debunk the WCR propaganda and solve the case-- Fletcher Prouty, Mark Lane, Sylvia Meager, Jim Garrison, Jim Marrs, David Lifton, Oliver Stone, James DiEugenio, Lisa Pease, Larry Hancock, Joseph McBride, Vince Palamara, et.al.

     

Hold on a second. I denied no such thing. I believe and have stated as a fact the CIA, in line with the rest of the Johnson Administration, engaged in a PR campaign to sell Oswald acted alone and JFK researchers were wackos. 

My question is and has been if their interest is ongoing. After putting up with the likes of Fetzer--who insisted he was at the center of JFK assassination research, and who insisted the JFK assassination was but one spoke in a wheel of government malfeasance, including faking the moon landings, murdering Senator Wellstone, shooting down the World Trade Towers with laser beams, shooting a missile into the Pentagon and then pretending it had been an airplane by sneaking in some pieces of an airplane, and faking school massacres and hiring crisis actors to pretend they were witnesses and the families of the diseased--the thought occurred that the CIA could not disrupt and destroy the credibility any better than it had done to itself.

And that an ongoing effort was unlikely...

So...let's flip the script. Do you honestly believe there are people in Washington today who KNOW the truth about what happened on 11-22-63, and are actively engaged in an effort to suppress this truth? And, if so, who are they? And how did they become aware of this "truth?" 

Because my take is like Kirk's, and that there is probably no one in Washington who gives a crap. Sure, there may be a couple of people who've read a file or two that would be embarrassing if released, but do you believe there is a detailed report on what actually happened? And if so, who would write such a report? 

[Pat Speer]

6 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Pat, I spent over 400 pages discrediting Bugliosi.  Much more than you did. Gary Aguilar did a long article in Federal Lawyer blistering him.

Bugliosi's book was an argument by invective and by length.  I was not intimidated by either.

The reason that 90 per cent of the public does not side with the critics is simple.  And you seem to discount it, its the MSM.

If you recall, when Stone's film came out, the figures did soar very high.

Then Random House's Bob Loomis hired Posner and gave him the biggest PR campaign I ever saw.

I called Loomis' office.  His secretary told me he was not in, he spent three days a week in Washington.

So that is that.

And BTW, facts are facts, they are not shared by both sides.  As we saw with Luis Alvarez, who cheated and then concealed that cheating.

 

BTW, William, I liked that "bumped your head" comment about Kirk.  He does that a lot I think.

I don't discount that at all, Jim. IF the MSM were to give you or I or any number of us a week of airtime on MSNBC CNN, and Fox, I believe we could move the public perception of the assassination from 70/30 to 90/10. But we haven't had that kind of access...

And the jury is still out. 

Insisting that we've proved our case not to the public, but to other lawyers arguing the same side of the same case, is bizarre, IMO.

It would be like Von Pein clalming Bugliosi and Posner came to the same conclusion...so it must be true.

Nope. 

[W. Niederhut]

23 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Hold on a second. I denied no such thing.  

 

        For the record, folks, here is what Pat Speer posted about Bugliosi, McAdams, and Posner on Sunday, October 6, 2024 at 2:51 PM.

"Bugliosi proved he was not a CIA shill, IMO, when he wrote a book calling Bush a war criminal, and traveled around the country promoting it. 

And McAdams, IMO, was also unlikely, as he was such a blowhard on other matters, and spent so much time arguing with people like me, as opposed to pushing out material on YouTube or making TV appearances.

Well, that leaves Posner. While we can't rule him out, IMO, I think his overall footprint has been minimal."

-- Pat Speer/ October 6, 2024 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

7 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

        For the record, folks, here is what Pat Speer posted about Bugliosi, McAdams, and Posner on Sunday, October 6, 2024 at 2:51 PM.

"Bugliosi proved he was not a CIA shill, IMO, when he wrote a book calling Bush a war criminal, and traveled around the country promoting it. 

And McAdams, IMO, was also unlikely, as he was such a blowhard on other matters, and spent so much time arguing with people like me, as opposed to pushing out material on YouTube or making TV appearances.

Well, that leaves Posner. While we can't rule him out, IMO, I think his overall footprint has been minimal."

-- Pat Speer/ October 6, 2024 

 

 

Are you okay? I said that I believe the CIA engaged in a propaganda campaign against the WC critics, and have written about that. 

But I also have said that I doubt they would find it worth their time at this point (seeing as we've been so busy discrediting ourselves) AND that the current suspects--such as Bugliosi, Posner and McAdams--were probably just cranks. (Having met Bugliosi and McAdams I am 90% sure they were just contrarians but am far less certain about Posner.)

These points are not contradictory, and your pretending you caught me in a fib or whatever is strange, or worse. 

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

I believe and have stated as a fact the CIA, in line with the rest of the Johnson Administration, engaged in a PR campaign to sell Oswald acted alone...

And even if that's true .... so what?

It would simply mean that the CIA and the LBJ administration were engaged in a campaign to sell the actual truth of Oswald's lone guilt to the public (based, of course, on the actual evidence in the case, all of which indicates, beyond reasonable doubt, that Oswald was indeed the lone assassin).

And I'd like to know what the heck is wrong with trying to sell the truth?

[Bracing for the inevitable "All The Evidence Against Oswald Was Of The Faked/Manufactured Variety" firestorm from CTers.]

 

Edited Thursday at 01:17 AM by David Von Pein

[W. Niederhut]

6 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Are you okay? I said that I believe the CIA engaged in a propaganda campaign against the WC critics, and have written about that. 

But I also have said that I doubt they would find it worth their time at this point (seeing as we've been so busy discrediting ourselves) AND that the current suspects--such as Bugliosi, Posner and McAdams--were probably just cranks. (Having met Bugliosi and McAdams I am 90% sure they were just contrarians but am far less certain about Posner.)

These points are not contradictory, and your pretending you caught me in a fib or whatever is strange, or worse. 

Geez... get real, Pat.   I'm finer than frog's hair.

Bugliosi and Posner have been major sources of CIA-funded propaganda promoting the WCR/LN narrative.

We all know that.  

I was disgusted to see their propaganda tomes for sale at the Dealey Plaza book store -- and none of the accurate historiography--when I visited Dealey Plaza in December of 2019.

As for McAdams, John Simkin, himself, disagreed with your lame denial of McAdams' shilling for the CIA.