Harry Dean: Memoirs

[Ernie Lazar]

...Even though I see your point about Trejo and Harry not doing what they could to get pertinent FBI files to prove or disprove Harry's assertions, I don't see how you can draw the larger conclusion that the FBI has no secret files...

Well, Paul B., here's an update. Harry Dean has officially requested all FBI records that pertain to him. He recently passed their criteria for him to identify himself thoroughly -- and now Harry is waiting for a full listing of the those FBI files.

It will take some time, but Harry is willing to go to these lengths to demonstrate that everything he said about what he actually witnessed and reported to the FBI in 1961-1963 is true and correct.

I'll repeat that even if some FBI agents are snotty and insulting in their reports, this means little -- Harry already told us that the FBI tended to disbelieve and minimize his reports. The key is that the FBI has a record of Harry's reports.

Soon the records that the FBI is willing to release today will be in hand, and Harry will share them with the world.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

I also have a question for you Paul:

1. If we had discovered the existence of Los Angeles memos which contained comments by FBI Agents that praised Harry or which indicated that he was considered to be a valuable source of information --- then you would have been happy to accept those comments as fair-minded and accurate --- correct?

2. Why is it that you want to discredit comments made by Agents which you interpret as derogatory references to Harry? Isn't that STILL valuable evidence to consider?

3. What makes their comments "snotty and insulting"? Let me put this in a different form. What type of negative comment concerning Harry would you find ACCEPTABLE but NOT "snotty and insulting"? Can you give us an example of something which you would accept as significant and probative (even though you do not like it) -- but you would NOT dispute that it was important factual evidence to be considered?

4. Lastly, WHY do you think those Los Angeles Agents were "snotty and insulting"? What was their reason or motive?

In other words, there are MANY FBI files on other people in which Agents concluded that the person who provided them with information was NOT credible and, it was not uncommon for Agents to describe their contacts as being from "a mental case" or with somebody who was "incoherent" or "rambling" and comparable terms.

So why do you think Agents put those descriptions into their memos or reports?

If YOU were an investigator (either law enforcement or private investigator) and you interviewed someone whom you thought was NOT credible and you also confronted someone whom YOU thought was incoherent or had problems being understood (as many of Edwin Walker's friends and admirers believed about him), would you have included your observations in your report? Or do you think that type of information is totally irrelevant for an investigation?

5. BTW -- Larry Hancock posted a message here a while back in which he described Harry's comments as "inscrutable". Do you consider Larry's comment to be "snotty and insulting"?

In case you don't know this, "inscrutable" means "incomprehensible", "impenetrable" "mystifying" "difficult to fathom or understand".

In your mind, is there any substantive difference between "inscrutable" versus "incoherent" or "rambling" ?

Did Larry "insult" Harry? Were Larry's comments "snotty"?

Edited May 14, 2014 by Ernie Lazar

[Ernie Lazar]

Paul B:

In reply to this question from you: Ernie - what publicity was Harry seeking in 1963 or before?

At present, the earliest date I can locate for Harry's publicity-seeking activities was in the first week of April 1963 when Harry went to the offices of the West Covina CA Tribune and he spoke with Paul Strobel of that newspaper.

There also is a reference to an organization which Harry created called SLAM (Support Law Against Marxism) which he operated out of a Post Office Box in La Puente CA.

In addition, Harry contacted the Managing Editor of the El Monte CA Herald newspaper in April to inquire if they would be interested in publishing a series of articles concerning his experiences.

When Harry contacted California Senator George Murphy in October 1966, Harry told Murphy that he began publishing "some of my old records that I had saved" -- and he gave copies of that material to "organizations, individuals, and government officials" -- starting in January 1964.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Ernie Lazar

[Ernie Lazar]

Arthur Goldwag recently posted an article on Salon.com which is so perceptive and makes so many points which are relevant to our discussion here that I think readers should have the opportunity to read his article (copied below).

I was particularly struck by Arthur's comment regarding "faith" -- because it so succinctly describes Paul Trejo's entire approach to whatever Harry Dean presents.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2014 11:53 AM PDT

Benghazi nuts, anti-vaxxers, birthers: Do they really buy their own nonsense? Alex Jones fans, Benghazi believers and antivaxxers have real impact. They're wrong, but we need to understand them

ARTHUR GOLDWAG

Why do people believe ridiculous things, in despite of all reason and proofs to the contrary?

There are parents who allow their children to be vaccinated for whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus, even though those diseases are much less harmful than their supposed cures. Despite mountains of evidence, some Americans refuse to accept that Obama was born in Kenya and that his father was Malcolm X. And don’t get me started on 9/11.

Yes, I’m just trying to get your attention. No, I’m not an Anti-vaxxer, a Birther or a Truther. Unless you’re one of them yourself, you probably think those people are irrational, but they feel exactly the same way about you. And they’re not completely wrong, either.

The fact is, we all view the world through a distorting lens of our own interests, prejudices and presuppositions. Almost every partisan believes his or her own propaganda, which, however outrageous, is likely to contain a kernel or more of truth.

Just as snorers can’t hear themselves snore, the farthest-out claims of even the hardest-core conspiracy theorists don’t sound the least bit unhinged to their own ears. For a partial explanation of why this is so, take a look at this article at Ezra Klein’s Vox, in which Zack Beauchamp applies Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule’s theory of “information cascades” to Republican beliefs about Benghazi. They’re leveraging them for political advantage of course, but that the scandal is genuine they have no doubt. It is a bedrock tenet of GOP faith.

The key word is “faith.” Faith, in the words of the King James version, is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

But whether they are sincere or not, why should anyone care what conspiracy theorists believe?

For one thing, because their ideas — or the emotions that animate their ideas — influence real-world policy-making. As crazy as the far right’s talk about Agenda 21 may be, legislators across the country have taken up arms against it. Most elected Republican officials concede that Obama is a U.S. citizen, but they still regard his presidency as illegitimate. And who knows how far afield yet another Benghazi investigation might roam?

But there’s another less obvious and perhaps even more important reason that we should care, and that is because conspiracists aren’t the only people whose sense of reality is, let us say, highly contingent and adaptable.

History records any number of manmade horrors that beggar even the most paranoid fantasies. And whenever these atrocities have occurred, otherwise sane and high-minded people have not only failed to stop them but have refused to acknowledge that they were even happening. It’s easy enough to deny climate change, whose worst-predicted effects are relatively far off in the future. What about when the bodies are literally stacking up beneath ones’ noses?

In the early 1930s, as part of Stalin’s Five Year Plan, the farms of the Soviet Ukraine were expropriated and their harvests exported for cash, with the wholly predictable result that millions of peasants starved to death. “Foreign communists in the Soviet Union, witnesses to the famine, somehow managed to see starvation not as a national tragedy but as a step forward for humanity,” Timothy Snyder writes in his book “Bloodlands.” “The writer Arthur Koestler believed at the time that the starving were ‘enemies of the people who preferred begging to work.’….The basic facts of mass hunger and death, although sometimes reported in the European and American press, never took on the clarity of an undisputed event…. It was controversial to note that starvation was taking place at all.”

Why do people believe the unbelievable, in despite of all reason and proof to the contrary?

It’s no less important to ask, Why do people disbelieve the all-too believable?

That the citizens of totalitarian regimes, like the members of abusive cults or kidnap victims suffering from Stockholm syndrome, can internalize their leaders’ paranoid views has long been established. But denial doesn’t just occur at the margins. As behaviorists like Daniel Ariely have long recognized, human beings are “pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend.”

In his book “The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life,” the evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers notes this paradoxical feature of human consciousness:

Our sensory systems are organized to give us a detailed and accurate view of reality…. But once this information arrives in our brains, it is often distorted and biased to our conscious minds. We deny the truth to ourselves. We project onto others traits that are in fact true of ourselves—and then attack them! We repress painful memories, create completely false ones, rationalize immoral behavior, act repeatedly to boost positive self-opinion, and show a suite of ego-defense mechanisms. Why?

Trivers’ global theory is that dishonesty is such an important adaptation that we have evolved to be untruthful. And since the most convincing liars don’t even know that they’re lying, natural selection has made us gullible too, especially when it comes to the lies we tell ourselves.

As fundamentally dishonest and as innately credulous as we humans may be, we put great stock in both our sense perceptions and our common sense, which tell us, for example, that the world is flat and the sun moves around it; that anything as complex as a living organism must have been deliberately engineered; that nothing can be in two places at the same time.

The fact that all of these seemingly empirical and self-evident propositions turn out to be untrue exacts a serious toll on a lot of us. We are Homo sapiens after all: we have a deep-seated need to know, to understand. What we don’t understand doesn’t just frustrate us intellectually — it can throw us into an existential quandary.

And life throws up all kinds of things that we don’t understand. This is especially the case when the subject is economics — a realm in which truisms about the relative efficiencies of “free” versus “government controlled” markets and the virtues of surpluses versus deficits hold sway. It is no accident that so many right wing conspiracy theories turn on global theories about banking—or the covert “socialism” of liberals. But mainstream thinkers can be as willfully obtuse as the wildest conspiracists, as Paul Krugman noted in a devastating New York Times op-ed entitled “Why Economics Failed” a few weeks ago. Even policy makers and politicians who know better, he wrote, “have ignored both the textbooks and the lessons of history. And the result has been a vast economic and human catastrophe, with trillions of dollars of productive potential squandered and millions of families placed in dire straits for no good reason.”

Which brings me to cognitive dissonance, the psychological phenomenon that plays as fundamental a role in our public affairs as the enlightened pursuit of happiness was once believed to do. Cognitive dissonance is the term of art for the psychic discomfort we feel when facts come into conflict with our beliefs. To make it more tolerable, we either change our beliefs or deny the facts.

The psychologist Leon Festinger explored the workings of cognitive dissonance in a number of experiments in the 1950s, mostly carried out in laboratories with student volunteers, but most famously in the course of a field study of a flying saucer cult whose leaders had prophesied that the world would end on December 21, 1954. Festinger’s book “When Prophecy Fails,” which reads like a novel or the scenario for a bleakly comic movie, describes the various ways that the cultists responded when the prophecy was disconfirmed, shedding a powerful light on why it can be so futile, as he put it, to try “to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief.”

“Tell him you disagree and he turns away,” he wrote. “Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”

The word “rationalization” doesn’t quite do justice to the phenomenon because it implies that it occurs consciously, and that it involves the use of reason. When we act to reduce cognitive dissonance we do it instinctively and unconsciously.

I think people who care about politics need to acknowledge that a lot of our political ideas are influenced by processes to which the categories and analytical tools of political science, political philosophy and political journalism don’t really apply.

When racists deny that they are haters they are often quite sincere — they believe the hateful things they do not because they wish to give pain to others but because they want to avoid it themselves. Many of us comparatively enlightened souls — even readers of this magazine — do much the same thing ourselves.

We need to recognize that to a greater or lesser degree, we are all susceptible to distorted thinking, especially when we are trying to preserve an untenable view of ourselves, or of the people, causes and ideals we hold dear.

Here’s another passage from “Bloodlands,” about Hitler’s “Generalplan Ost,” his grand scheme to colonize Central and Eastern Europe after he crushed the USSR, relocating, enslaving or liquidating some 45 million souls.

In Hitler’s view, ‘in the East a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.’ As Hitler imagined the future, Germany would deal with the Slavs much as the North Americans had dealt with the Indians. The Volga River in Russia, he once proclaimed, will be Germany’s Mississippi.

Hitler’s take on American history can’t but generate cognitive dissonance. Most Americans prefer to see genocide as a regrettable consequence of America’s rise rather than its foundation, if they acknowledge it at all — much as Zionists violently reject the use of the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s governance of the occupied territories and the racist policies it enforces within the Green Line. The slave owner Thomas Jefferson, who fathered a brood of slave children with his dead wife’s half sister, was not uniquely hypocritical when he wrote the words “all men are created equal.”

Conspiracy theories about Vatican assassins, FEMA camps, gun grabbers, fiat money, false flags and the like are infuriating to listen to and profoundly offensive if you belong to the religion, race, ethnicity, ideology, or family that is identified as a principle of evil, but the people who believe them are in some ways canaries in the mineshaft of the state. Their very existence tells us that all is not well with the world.

No, AIDS wasn’t created in a laboratory by the CIA to exterminate black people and Michael Jackson wasn’t falsely arrested for pederasty because white people couldn’t bear his success, but American blacks do get arrested and imprisoned at far higher rates than whites and suffer much worse health outcomes, and you’d have to be insane to deny that those inequities are systemic.

No, Queen Elizabeth isn’t a drug dealer, as Lyndon LaRouche has claimed, but the interests of the city of London’s international financiers are not always well-aligned with those of the citizens of Main Street.

The Bilderberg Group might not have a secret plan to rule the world — but the billionaires, corporate executives, and politicians who attend its meetings do wield undue power.

The Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has been very much in the news over the past several weeks. Setting his racism aside, a lot of his rhetoric comes from the Sovereign Citizen Movement, which uses its eccentric understanding of the foundations of common law to delegitimize the federal government and its banking system. Sovereigns believe that if they dot every “i” and cross every “t,” then the promissory notes and bonds they create on their own behalf will erase their debts, and the presentments, indictments and warrants that they issue from their own courts will be efficacious in real courts. It’s a little like what happens in Harry Potter books, where the spells that wizards cast also work in the Muggle world.

Sovereigns don’t just talk about casting off their chains; they believe they are doing just that, and some of them are quite dangerous — the police know to proceed with caution when they pull over a car without license plates. Yet for all that, the majority of Sovereigns aren’t clinically insane. They are so profoundly disaffected that their alienation has become their creed.

True, they express their frustrations perversely and project them onto the wrong people, but that doesn’t change the fact that they feel utterly disenfranchised by their country and betrayed by its economic system. The fact that their ideas are ahistorical and ill-informed doesn’t negate their perception that unelected elites are running roughshod over them. Though they may pay lip service to free market capitalism, they recognize that the game as it is really played is rigged.

The sovereign citizen I listened to in a tiny meeting room over a grocery store in Queens a couple of weeks ago had some interesting ideas about the Rothschilds, and he was as eager to share the simple home remedies that could have rendered AIDs, diabetes and cancer a distant memory if the medical industry hadn’t suppressed them as he was to explain the law.

Sure, he made himself a broad target. But for all the ridiculousnesses that he peddles on a small scale and that the Glenn Becks, Alex Joneses and Fox Newses of the world have made into profitable industries, for all of their smallmindedness and nastiness, they should make the rest of us feel less comfortable in our complacencies, not more so.

When people with otherwise healthy brains are so determined to reject reason, it’s important that we find out what’s eating them and why. When so many people choose to believe the unbelievable it behooves us to take a closer look at the things that we unquestioningly believe ourselves.

Perhaps, like the fable of the elephant and the blind men, none of us are seeing what’s really there. Stranger things have certainly happened.

[Paul Trejo]

I also have a question for you Paul:

1. If we had discovered the existence of Los Angeles memos which contained comments by FBI Agents that praised Harry or which indicated that he was considered to be a valuable source of information --- then you would have been happy to accept those comments as fair-minded and accurate --- correct?

2. Why is it that you want to discredit comments made by Agents which you interpret as derogatory references to Harry? Isn't that STILL valuable evidence to consider?

3. What makes their comments "snotty and insulting"? Let me put this in a different form. What type of negative comment concerning Harry would you find ACCEPTABLE but NOT "snotty and insulting"? Can you give us an example of something which you would accept as significant and probative (even though you do not like it) -- but you would NOT dispute that it was important factual evidence to be considered?

4. Lastly, WHY do you think those Los Angeles Agents were "snotty and insulting"? What was their reason or motive?

In other words, there are MANY FBI files on other people in which Agents concluded that the person who provided them with information was NOT credible and, it was not uncommon for Agents to describe their contacts as being from "a mental case" or with somebody who was "incoherent" or "rambling" and comparable terms.

So why do you think Agents put those descriptions into their memos or reports?

If YOU were an investigator (either law enforcement or private investigator) and you interviewed someone whom you thought was NOT credible and you also confronted someone whom YOU thought was incoherent or had problems being understood (as many of Edwin Walker's friends and admirers believed about him), would you have included your observations in your report? Or do you think that type of information is totally irrelevant for an investigation?

5. BTW -- Larry Hancock posted a message here a while back in which he described Harry's comments as "inscrutable". Do you consider Larry's comment to be "snotty and insulting"?

In case you don't know this, "inscrutable" means "incomprehensible", "impenetrable" "mystifying" "difficult to fathom or understand".

In your mind, is there any substantive difference between "inscrutable" versus "incoherent" or "rambling" ?

Did Larry "insult" Harry? Were Larry's comments "snotty"?

Ernie, I answer by the numbers:

1. If the Los Angeles FBI had praised Harry Dean, instead of insulting him (by calling him a mental case) then our problem would be much easier -- but not significantly different.

The problem to solve is whether Harry Dean actually did -- as he claimed -- contact the FBI on the dates that he claimed he contacted him, with the information about Cubans, the FPCC and the JBS, as he claimed.

Insofar as some FBI agents insulted Harry Dean, that does not prove that Harry Dean's claims were false -- in fact, Harry Dean himself told us that some FBI agents failed to believe him.

So, with or without the FBI insults, the claims of Harry Dean can remain confirmed -- Harry contacted them on the dates in question, about the topics in question. That is the first thing history demands.

So, the answer to your first question is: No, incorrect. It makes no difference to my case whether the FBI agents were flattering or insulting. I'm interested only in the factual content and dating of the communications.

2. You're mistaken in presuming that I wish to discredit comments made by FBI Agents which are derogatory references to Harry -- on the contrary, I wish to point them out. They show that the FBI in Los Angeles was composed of human beings with weaknesses -- and that they were prone to human failings such as insulting people who wanted to help.

More than that, I wish to look beyond the insults to the facts themselves. What is the date of the contact? What is the topic reported by Harry? The opinion of the FBI agent might be interesting, or might be useless (e.g. calling Harry a mental case) but the factual content of the FBI record is vital for historiography.

3. What makes an FBI comment "snotty and insulting" is the sophomoric phrasing -- e.g. "mental case." It's the sort of thing we hear children say all the time. There is no way that this is "factual evidence," because no FBI agent is also a professional psychiatrist, who alone is qualified to offer such a medical opinion.

Now, if the FBI agent had said something with a professional tone, like, "this source of information is unreliable because he called only yesterday to say that Martians were responsible for the JFK assassination," then I would be drawn to the logical conclusion that Harry Dean is indeed unreliable.

But nothing of that kind was said by the FBI in Los Angeles. Instead, by calling Harry Dean "a mental case," that FBI agent merely showed his own unprofessional demeanor.

4. Now, WHY, in my opinion, were those FBI agents "snotty and insulting"? The only motive that is apparent is that they were personally immature individuals. To call a witness a "mental case," is not an objective observation, it is merely an insult -- pure and simple. That's obvious.

That is different, by the way, from saying that somebody was "hard to follow," like Edwin Walker. It is surely relevant when the description is meant to truly describe -- but it is totally irrelevant when the phrase is used only to insult.

5. It is true that Larry Hancock once referred to Harry Dean as "inscrutable", yet Larry Hancock isn't interested in Harry Dean. Larry Hancock isn't interested in my theory about Ex-General Edwin Walker, either.

Larry seems too quick to conclude that since RFK and JFK sent Walker to an insane asylum (which was a form of insult) that Walker was forever incompetent after that time. History tells a different story.

So, my answer is that Larry Hancock isn't a professional FBI Agent whose job is to carefully weigh information from this or that source. Larry can afford to research what is interesting to himself -- and it just so happens that Harry Dean and Edwin Walker aren't interesting to Larry.

The word 'inscrutable' connotes no childish insult; nor does it describe the details of Larry's position -- which he himself declined to offer. Larry was merely saying that he's not willing to expend the energy and patience to sort out what a complicated witness is trying to say.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited May 16, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Larry Hancock]

Paul, I have to qualify a bit more just to be clear. Actually I've followed Harry's remarks and postings from his very earliest days. I bought the first material in print about his experiences and observed some of his very first online posts about both Canadians and the LDS; I did find those remarks inscrutable and still do. Still, I've followed his remarks since that time as well as the actual FBI documents which Ernie has made available and analyzed. I also investigated Walker and his right wing associates to the extent of the material then available, as you recall I brought certain things about Walker and his involvement with Cuban exiles in Florida in the summer of 1963 to your attention. As far as not considering him competent in 1963, I'm not sure exactly how to define that, perhaps the word I would use would be effectual. I can tell you that I talked at length with one Dallas police reserve officer who gave me a tour of the places in which DPD used to observe Walker circa 1963 including a gay bar on the East side and a set of fairly secluded public restrooms. I had not really wanted to bring that up and of course its strictly anecdotal but if true I can tell you that sort of visibility/image would make him anathema to any serious tactical team going to Dallas.

I continue to monitor your posts about Harry and Walker, new information is always educational. I simply haven't found any of it to actually modify own view of how the Dallas assassination came about or what went down on the ground in Dallas. However, as you say, my analyses are my own and I'm happy to leave everyone else with their own. Beyond that, in regard to the study of the ultra-right in the 1960's, I think my and Stu's work presented in The Awful Grace of God illustrates a reasonably deep study of the groups and individuals who were truly dangerous in terms of actual attacks and assassination attempts - in contrast to those who just kept talking about such things. If you want to find a real rifle team trained and willing to go after JFK we identify them in that book. That of course is another story entirely but I thought I should at least mention that its not that I have ignored the ultra-right in my research.

-- Larry.

[Ernie Lazar]

I also have a question for you Paul:

1. If we had discovered the existence of Los Angeles memos which contained comments by FBI Agents that praised Harry or which indicated that he was considered to be a valuable source of information --- then you would have been happy to accept those comments as fair-minded and accurate --- correct?

2. Why is it that you want to discredit comments made by Agents which you interpret as derogatory references to Harry? Isn't that STILL valuable evidence to consider?

3. What makes their comments "snotty and insulting"? Let me put this in a different form. What type of negative comment concerning Harry would you find ACCEPTABLE but NOT "snotty and insulting"? Can you give us an example of something which you would accept as significant and probative (even though you do not like it) -- but you would NOT dispute that it was important factual evidence to be considered?

4. Lastly, WHY do you think those Los Angeles Agents were "snotty and insulting"? What was their reason or motive?

In other words, there are MANY FBI files on other people in which Agents concluded that the person who provided them with information was NOT credible and, it was not uncommon for Agents to describe their contacts as being from "a mental case" or with somebody who was "incoherent" or "rambling" and comparable terms.

So why do you think Agents put those descriptions into their memos or reports?

If YOU were an investigator (either law enforcement or private investigator) and you interviewed someone whom you thought was NOT credible and you also confronted someone whom YOU thought was incoherent or had problems being understood (as many of Edwin Walker's friends and admirers believed about him), would you have included your observations in your report? Or do you think that type of information is totally irrelevant for an investigation?

5. BTW -- Larry Hancock posted a message here a while back in which he described Harry's comments as "inscrutable". Do you consider Larry's comment to be "snotty and insulting"?

In case you don't know this, "inscrutable" means "incomprehensible", "impenetrable" "mystifying" "difficult to fathom or understand".

In your mind, is there any substantive difference between "inscrutable" versus "incoherent" or "rambling" ?

Did Larry "insult" Harry? Were Larry's comments "snotty"?

Ernie, I answer by the numbers:

1. If the Los Angeles FBI had praised Harry Dean, instead of insulting him (by calling him a mental case) then our problem would be much easier -- but not significantly different.

The problem to solve is whether Harry Dean actually did -- as he claimed -- contact the FBI on the dates that he claimed he contacted him, with the information about Cubans, the FPCC and the JBS, as he claimed.

Insofar as some FBI agents insulted Harry Dean, that does not prove that Harry Dean's claims were false -- in fact, Harry Dean himself told us that some FBI agents failed to believe him.

So, with or without the FBI insults, the claims of Harry Dean can remain confirmed -- Harry contacted them on the dates in question, about the topics in question. That is the first thing history demands.

So, the answer to your first question is: No, incorrect. It makes no difference to my case whether the FBI agents were flattering or insulting. I'm interested only in the factual content and dating of the communications.

2. You're mistaken in presuming that I wish to discredit comments made by FBI Agents which are derogatory references to Harry -- on the contrary, I wish to point them out. They show that the FBI in Los Angeles was composed of human beings with weaknesses -- and that they were prone to human failings such as insulting people who wanted to help.

More than that, I wish to look beyond the insults to the facts themselves. What is the date of the contact? What is the topic reported by Harry? The opinion of the FBI agent might be interesting, or might be useless (e.g. calling Harry a mental case) but the factual content of the FBI record is vital for historiography.

3. What makes an FBI comment "snotty and insulting" is the sophomoric phrasing -- e.g. "mental case." It's the sort of thing we hear children say all the time. There is no way that this is "factual evidence," because no FBI agent is also a professional psychiatrist, who alone is qualified to offer such a medical opinion.

Now, if the FBI agent had said something with a professional tone, like, "this source of information is unreliable because he called only yesterday to say that Martians were responsible for the JFK assassination," then I would be drawn to the logical conclusion that Harry Dean is indeed unreliable.

But nothing of that kind was said by the FBI in Los Angeles. Instead, by calling Harry Dean "a mental case," that FBI agent merely showed his own unprofessional demeanor.

4. Now, WHY, in my opinion, were those FBI agents "snotty and insulting"? The only motive that is apparent is that they were personally immature individuals. To call a witness a "mental case," is not an objective observation, it is merely an insult -- pure and simple. That's obvious.

That is different, by the way, from saying that somebody was "hard to follow," like Edwin Walker. It is surely relevant when the description is meant to truly describe -- but it is totally irrelevant when the phrase is used only to insult.

5. It is true that Larry Hancock once referred to Harry Dean as "inscrutable", yet Larry Hancock isn't interested in Harry Dean. Larry Hancock isn't interested in my theory about Ex-General Edwin Walker, either.

Larry seems too quick to conclude that since RFK and JFK sent Walker to an insane asylum (which was a form of insult) that Walker was forever incompetent after that time. History tells a different story.

So, my answer is that Larry Hancock isn't a professional FBI Agent whose job is to carefully weigh information from this or that source. Larry can afford to research what is interesting to himself -- and it just so happens that Harry Dean and Edwin Walker aren't interesting to Larry.

The word 'inscrutable' connotes no childish insult; nor does it describe the details of Larry's position -- which he himself declined to offer. Larry was merely saying that he's not willing to expend the energy and patience to sort out what a complicated witness is trying to say.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

My replies correspond to your numbered comments.......

1. I start by questioning your use of the word "problem" which has a negative connotation. I prefer to use the word "evidence" which is revealed in contemporaneous documents.

This is particularly important because FOIA did not even exist at the time these documents were created and the FBI employees making comments never even dreamed that their private evaluations would ever become public --- so they were free to present their unvarnished observations and evaluations without worrying about political correctness or any sort of "spin" to euphemize what they believed.

This gets back to my previous point concerning what I have described as the importance of a researcher being a neutral auditor -- and NOT a "defender" or "ally" of the person or group being studied. In order to make reasonable and fair judgments, one MUST candidly acknowledge what documentary evidence reveals -- without inserting one's own personal subjective opinions or interpretations.

I do not agree with your observation that describing Harry as a "mental case" was an "insult" -- in the context of what we are discussing. Nor do I agree with your attempt to obfuscate this matter by claiming that only a medical professional should be allowed to make such an observation or evaluation.

That comment is contemporaneous primary source documentary evidence regarding how FBI employees interpreted their interactions with Harry--- not just in terms of the information he gave to the FBI but in terms of Harry's behavior and demeanor when he presented his "information".

I previously suggested that everyone review the file of George Edward Demmerle -- because his background is so amazingly similar to that of Harry.

In February 1967, Hoover responded to a request from SAC New York City to develop Demmerle as an informant.

Hoover replied:

"In view of the derogatory information developed on Demmerle, it is felt that he presents too great a risk of possible embarrassment to the Bureau, and, therefore, authority to use his services as a PSI [Potential Security Informant] is denied. Demmerle should be tactfully apprised that his services are not desired. Of course, there is no objection to your continuing to accept any information he might voluntarily offer just as in the case of any other citizens. However, he should not be given any encouragement to furnish such information to your office."

The "derogatory information" Hoover referred to is almost identical to what the FBI developed about Harry's background, i.e. a rap sheet reflecting AWOL from military service, criminal arrests and convictions, and a period of psychological counseling at a New York mental health institution. Demmerle ALSO joined radical left groups and, subsequently, he joined the Minutemen and JBS. Demmerle did not finish high school and his employment history reflects that he worked on construction-related jobs.

Demmerle continued to provide FBI-NYC with information -- even after he was informed that his services were not required. But the primary difference between Demmerle and Harry is that there is a clear paper trail showing what the FBI in New York City did with Demmerle's information --- because FBI-NYC thought it was valuable so they serialized it into numerous different FBI files on many different occasions. The NYC Agents who dealt with Demmerle did not come away from their contacts with him thinking that he was a "mental case" or "incoherent" or "rambling" or that he had difficulty getting to the point of why he contacted them.

"THE PROBLEM TO SOLVE" --- is not merely what you claim it is. Your comment is just step #1 in a multi-step process.

As previously noted, many thousands of people contacted their local FBI offices every year. They ALL could accurately claim to have contacted the FBI on the dates they claim and about the subjects they claim.

Step #2 is to determine what was the evaluation which the FBI made of the information they received? For example, did they already have it from other sources -- so it just duplicated what they already knew?? OR did it contradict what they had received from other sources?

And if contradictory, step #3 would be to determine if the FBI thought the contradictory information deserved further investigation, i.e. was it actionable?

And step #4 is: after the FBI decided that information received was accurate and valuable, what did they do with it?

I AGREE with your observation that just because an FBI Agent made a derogatory statement regarding Harry does NOT mean that information he provided was false---but I would like more specific details from Harry to explain your statement that: "in fact, Harry Dean himself told us that some FBI agents failed to believe him."

However, where we disagree, is that you want to totally disregard the significance of derogatory judgments made by professional investigators in our nation's primary internal security agency instead of just keeping their evaluation in mind and trying to understand the basis for their judgments.

2. Making a derogatory judgment is not, as you claim, a sign of some sort of "weakness". YOU have made derogatory judgments about all sorts of people in your eBook. Does that mean YOU have "weaknesses" which you do not want to acknowledge? And those "weaknesses" totally discredit your writings or conclusions?

3. My only comment here is to repeat that you are using emotionally charged words to characterize the evaluations made by several different FBI Agents instead of trying to understand the basis for their pejorative evaluations. The fundamental flaw in your reasoning here is that you think nobody can ever make reasonable fact-based derogatory judgments about someone after having multiple interactions with them (in person, in writing, or on the phone). This has NOTHING to do with being a trained medical professional. As I noted previously, if you worked at a McDonald's restaurant, you would recognize the customers whom YOU decided had some sort of mental or cognitive problem. It is NOT a "medical opinion". That is YOUR inability to recognize what was being presented.

AND JUST FOR THE RECORD: Let us recall that YOU concocted a FALSE psychiatric analysis of Harry's 11/63 letter to Hoover and you attributed all sorts of BOGUS motivations to FBI employees who supposedly "forged" the long-version to make Harry look bad in some way (according to your FALSE analysis). So for you to now complain about a FBI Agent offering his evaluation of his contacts with Harry is very odd indeed -- just because he used a general descriptive term (NOT A MEDICAL TERM).

With respect to this comment by you:

Now, if the FBI agent had said something with a professional tone, like, "this source of information is unreliable because he called only yesterday to say that Martians were responsible for the JFK assassination," then I would be drawn to the logical conclusion that Harry Dean is indeed unreliable.

Actually, if you think about this dispassionately for a second, that is PRECISELY what was done. The "mental case" comment you are referring to was a handwritten observation on one of Harry's frequent letters to FBI-Los Angeles. The comment was written by the senior Agent in Los Angeles in charge of Cuban matters. AFTER reading Harry's letter (and considering what it said), then he made his professional conclusion about the substantive value of what Harry presented.

That Agent did not (as you claim) show "his own unprofessional demeanor". In fact, when that very same Agent interviewed Harry in person or when he wrote the memos about Harry which were sent to FBI HQ (with SAC authorization) -- he DID NOT describe Harry as a "mental case". Instead, he just factually summarized what Harry wrote or said (and those summaries accurately match what is in the copies of Harry's letters that we now can see).

This is where you entire argument becomes absurd. Had Agent McCauley mis-represented what Harry wrote in his letters or had he mis-quoted something in them to make Harry look "crazy" -- THEN you might argue that McCauley (or the other Agents) were "unprofessional".

But nothing of that kind was said by the FBI in Los Angeles. Instead, by describing Harry Dean as "a mental case," or by using other derogatory descriptive terms FBI agents merely revealed their exasperation with Harry -- because of the quality (and frequency) of unsolicited "information" (actually Harry's speculations and anecdotes) which Harry was presenting.

4. Strange how you never consider ANY options other than the one(s) which support your own personal bias.

5. Why does it matter if Larry is "interested" in Harry or your theory? The point is that Larry Hancock is a well known JFK-researcher whose judgments are respected and based upon "carefully weighing information"". And based upon what Larry has seen in this thread (and elsewhere), regarding Harry's story ---Larry made a conclusion.

Walker was not mentally incompetent but he was often incoherent -- whether you think of that as an "insult" or not is immaterial since many of Walker's friends and admirers came to the same conclusion about him!

I'll go out on a limb here and say that (contrary to what you wrote), I think that if pressed to give us a more fulsome answer, Larry's position regarding Harry is closer to mine than to yours -- and Larry probably would use descriptive terms which even you would then conclude were "insults".

Edited May 16, 2014 by Ernie Lazar

[Thomas Graves]

I also have a question for you Paul:

1. If we had discovered the existence of Los Angeles memos which contained comments by FBI Agents that praised Harry or which indicated that he was considered to be a valuable source of information --- then you would have been happy to accept those comments as fair-minded and accurate --- correct?

2. Why is it that you want to discredit comments made by Agents which you interpret as derogatory references to Harry? Isn't that STILL valuable evidence to consider?

3. What makes their comments "snotty and insulting"? Let me put this in a different form. What type of negative comment concerning Harry would you find ACCEPTABLE but NOT "snotty and insulting"? Can you give us an example of something which you would accept as significant and probative (even though you do not like it) -- but you would NOT dispute that it was important factual evidence to be considered?

4. Lastly, WHY do you think those Los Angeles Agents were "snotty and insulting"? What was their reason or motive?

In other words, there are MANY FBI files on other people in which Agents concluded that the person who provided them with information was NOT credible and, it was not uncommon for Agents to describe their contacts as being from "a mental case" or with somebody who was "incoherent" or "rambling" and comparable terms.

So why do you think Agents put those descriptions into their memos or reports?

If YOU were an investigator (either law enforcement or private investigator) and you interviewed someone whom you thought was NOT credible and you also confronted someone whom YOU thought was incoherent or had problems being understood (as many of Edwin Walker's friends and admirers believed about him), would you have included your observations in your report? Or do you think that type of information is totally irrelevant for an investigation?

5. BTW -- Larry Hancock posted a message here a while back in which he described Harry's comments as "inscrutable". Do you consider Larry's comment to be "snotty and insulting"?

In case you don't know this, "inscrutable" means "incomprehensible", "impenetrable" "mystifying" "difficult to fathom or understand".

In your mind, is there any substantive difference between "inscrutable" versus "incoherent" or "rambling" ?

Did Larry "insult" Harry? Were Larry's comments "snotty"?

Ernie, I answer by the numbers:

1. If the Los Angeles FBI had praised Harry Dean, instead of insulting him (by calling him a mental case) then our problem would be much easier -- but not significantly different.

The problem to solve is whether Harry Dean actually did -- as he claimed -- contact the FBI on the dates that he claimed he contacted him, with the information about Cubans, the FPCC and the JBS, as he claimed.

Insofar as some FBI agents insulted Harry Dean, that does not prove that Harry Dean's claims were false -- in fact, Harry Dean himself told us that some FBI agents failed to believe him.

So, with or without the FBI insults, the claims of Harry Dean can remain confirmed -- Harry contacted them on the dates in question, about the topics in question. That is the first thing history demands.

So, the answer to your first question is: No, incorrect. It makes no difference to my case whether the FBI agents were flattering or insulting. I'm interested only in the factual content and dating of the communications.

2. You're mistaken in presuming that I wish to discredit comments made by FBI Agents which are derogatory references to Harry -- on the contrary, I wish to point them out. They show that the FBI in Los Angeles was composed of human beings with weaknesses -- and that they were prone to human failings such as insulting people who wanted to help.

More than that, I wish to look beyond the insults to the facts themselves. What is the date of the contact? What is the topic reported by Harry? The opinion of the FBI agent might be interesting, or might be useless (e.g. calling Harry a mental case) but the factual content of the FBI record is vital for historiography.

3. What makes an FBI comment "snotty and insulting" is the sophomoric phrasing -- e.g. "mental case." It's the sort of thing we hear children say all the time. There is no way that this is "factual evidence," because no FBI agent is also a professional psychiatrist, who alone is qualified to offer such a medical opinion.

Now, if the FBI agent had said something with a professional tone, like, "this source of information is unreliable because he called only yesterday to say that Martians were responsible for the JFK assassination," then I would be drawn to the logical conclusion that Harry Dean is indeed unreliable.

But nothing of that kind was said by the FBI in Los Angeles. Instead, by calling Harry Dean "a mental case," that FBI agent merely showed his own unprofessional demeanor.

4. Now, WHY, in my opinion, were those FBI agents "snotty and insulting"? The only motive that is apparent is that they were personally immature individuals. To call a witness a "mental case," is not an objective observation, it is merely an insult -- pure and simple. That's obvious.

That is different, by the way, from saying that somebody was "hard to follow," like Edwin Walker. It is surely relevant when the description is meant to truly describe -- but it is totally irrelevant when the phrase is used only to insult.

5. It is true that Larry Hancock once referred to Harry Dean as "inscrutable", yet Larry Hancock isn't interested in Harry Dean. Larry Hancock isn't interested in my theory about Ex-General Edwin Walker, either.

Larry seems too quick to conclude that since RFK and JFK sent Walker to an insane asylum (which was a form of insult) that Walker was forever incompetent after that time. History tells a different story.

So, my answer is that Larry Hancock isn't a professional FBI Agent whose job is to carefully weigh information from this or that source. Larry can afford to research what is interesting to himself -- and it just so happens that Harry Dean and Edwin Walker aren't interesting to Larry.

The word 'inscrutable' connotes no childish insult; nor does it describe the details of Larry's position -- which he himself declined to offer. Larry was merely saying that he's not willing to expend the energy and patience to sort out what a complicated witness is trying to say.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

My replies correspond to your numbered comments.......

1. I start by questioning your use of the word "problem" which has a negative connotation. I prefer to use the word "evidence" which is revealed in contemporaneous documents.

This is particularly important because FOIA did not even exist at the time these documents were created and the FBI employees making comments never even dreamed that their private evaluations would ever become public --- so they were free to present their unvarnished observations and evaluations without worrying about political correctness or any sort of "spin" to euphemize what they believed.

This gets back to my previous point concerning what I have described as the importance of a researcher being a neutral auditor -- and NOT a "defender" or "ally" of the person or group being studied. In order to make reasonable and fair judgments, one MUST candidly acknowledge what documentary evidence reveals -- without inserting one's own personal subjective opinions or interpretations.

I do not agree with your observation that describing Harry as a "mental case" was an "insult" -- in the context of what we are discussing. Nor do I agree with your attempt to obfuscate this matter by claiming that only a medical professional should be allowed to make such an observation or evaluation.

That comment is contemporaneous primary source documentary evidence regarding how FBI employees interpreted their interactions with Harry--- not just in terms of the information he gave to the FBI but in terms of Harry's behavior and demeanor when he presented his "information".

I previously suggested that everyone review the file of George Edward Demmerle -- because his background is so amazingly similar to that of Harry.

In February 1967, Hoover responded to a request from SAC New York City to develop Demmerle as an informant.

Hoover replied:

"In view of the derogatory information developed on Demmerle, it is felt that he presents too great a risk of possible embarrassment to the Bureau, and, therefore, authority to use his services as a PSI [Potential Security Informant] is denied. Demmerle should be tactfully apprised that his services are not desired. Of course, there is no objection to your continuing to accept any information he might voluntarily offer just as in the case of any other citizens. However, he should not be given any encouragement to furnish such information to your office."

The "derogatory information" Hoover referred to is almost identical to what the FBI developed about Harry's background, i.e. a rap sheet reflecting AWOL from military service, criminal arrests and convictions, and a period of psychological counseling at a New York mental health institution. Demmerle ALSO joined radical left groups and, subsequently, he joined the Minutemen and JBS. Demmerle did not finish high school and his employment history reflects that he worked on construction-related jobs.

Demmerle continued to provide FBI-NYC with information -- even after he was informed that his services were not required. But the primary difference between Demmerle and Harry is that there is a clear paper trail showing what the FBI in New York City did with Demmerle's information --- because FBI-NYC thought it was valuable so they serialized it into numerous different FBI files on many different occasions. The NYC Agents who dealt with Demmerle did not come away from their contacts with him thinking that he was a "mental case" or "incoherent" or "rambling" or that he had difficulty getting to the point of why he contacted them.

"THE PROBLEM TO SOLVE" --- is not merely what you claim it is. Your comment is just step #1 in a multi-step process.

As previously noted, many thousands of people contacted their local FBI offices every year. They ALL could accurately claim to have contacted the FBI on the dates they claim and about the subjects they claim.

Step #2 is to determine what was the evaluation which the FBI made of the information they received? For example, did they already have it from other sources -- so it just duplicated what they already knew?? OR did it contradict what they had received from other sources?

And if contradictory, step #3 would be to determine if the FBI thought the contradictory information deserved further investigation, i.e. was it actionable?

And step #4 is: after the FBI decided that information received was accurate and valuable, what did they do with it?

I AGREE with your observation that just because an FBI Agent made a derogatory statement regarding Harry does NOT mean that information he provided was false---but I would like more specific details from Harry to explain your statement that: "in fact, Harry Dean himself told us that some FBI agents failed to believe him."

However, where we disagree, is that you want to totally disregard the significance of derogatory judgments made by professional investigators in our nation's primary internal security agency instead of just keeping their evaluation in mind and trying to understand the basis for their judgments.

2. Making a derogatory judgment is not, as you claim, a sign of some sort of "weakness". YOU have made derogatory judgments about all sorts of people in your eBook. Does that mean YOU have "weaknesses" which you do not want to acknowledge? And those "weaknesses" totally discredit your writings or conclusions?

3. My only comment here is to repeat that you are using emotionally charged words to characterize the evaluations made by several different FBI Agents instead of trying to understand the basis for their pejorative evaluations. The fundamental flaw in your reasoning here is that you think nobody can ever make reasonable fact-based derogatory judgments about someone after having multiple interactions with them (in person, in writing, or on the phone). This has NOTHING to do with being a trained medical professional. As I noted previously, if you worked at a McDonald's restaurant, you would recognize the customers whom YOU decided had some sort of mental or cognitive problem. It is NOT a "medical opinion". That is YOUR inability to recognize what was being presented.

AND JUST FOR THE RECORD: Let us recall that YOU concocted a FALSE psychiatric analysis of Harry's 11/63 letter to Hoover and you attributed all sorts of BOGUS motivations to FBI employees who supposedly "forged" the long-version to make Harry look bad in some way (according to your FALSE analysis). So for you to now complain about a FBI Agent offering his evaluation of his contacts with Harry is very odd indeed -- just because he used a general descriptive term (NOT A MEDICAL TERM).

With respect to this comment by you:

Now, if the FBI agent had said something with a professional tone, like, "this source of information is unreliable because he called only yesterday to say that Martians were responsible for the JFK assassination," then I would be drawn to the logical conclusion that Harry Dean is indeed unreliable.

Actually, if you think about this dispassionately for a second, that is PRECISELY what was done. The "mental case" comment you are referring to was a handwritten observation on one of Harry's frequent letters to FBI-Los Angeles. The comment was written by the senior Agent in Los Angeles in charge of Cuban matters. AFTER reading Harry's letter (and considering what it said), then he made his professional conclusion about the substantive value of what Harry presented.

That Agent did not (as you claim) show "his own unprofessional demeanor". In fact, when that very same Agent interviewed Harry in person or when he wrote the memos about Harry which were sent to FBI HQ (with SAC authorization) -- he DID NOT describe Harry as a "mental case". Instead, he just factually summarized what Harry wrote or said (and those summaries accurately match what is in the copies of Harry's letters that we now can see).

This is where you entire argument becomes absurd. Had Agent McCauley mis-represented what Harry wrote in his letters or had he mis-quoted something in them to make Harry look "crazy" -- THEN you might argue that McCauley (or the other Agents) were "unprofessional".

But nothing of that kind was said by the FBI in Los Angeles. Instead, by describing Harry Dean as "a mental case," or by using other derogatory descriptive terms FBI agents merely revealed their exasperation with Harry -- because of the quality (and frequency) of unsolicited "information" (actually Harry's speculations and anecdotes) which Harry was presenting.

4. Strange how you never consider ANY options other than the one(s) which support your own personal bias.

5. Why does it matter if Larry is "interested" in Harry or your theory? The point is that Larry Hancock is a well known JFK-researcher whose judgments are respected and based upon "carefully weighing information"". And based upon what Larry has seen in this thread (and elsewhere), regarding Harry's story ---Larry made a conclusion.

Walker was not mentally incompetent but he was often incoherent -- whether you think of that as an "insult" or not is immaterial since many of Walker's friends and admirers came to the same conclusion about him!

I'll go out on a limb here and say that (contrary to what you wrote), I think that if pressed to give us a more fulsome answer, Larry's position regarding Harry is closer to mine than to yours -- and Larry probably would use descriptive terms which even you would then conclude were "insults".

Excellent post, Ernie!

My two cents: By cleverly and politely suggesting that Larry is too lazy to expend the energy and time necessary to understand Harry, Trejo limits the word "inscrutable" to only one of its meanings, i.e. "very difficult to understand." But it also can mean "impossible to understand," and I suspect that that is what Larry meant when he used it to describe Harry's story.

Regardless, just how much time and enery does Trejo expect us to invest in such a project (understanding Harry's story), and wouldn't it, by definition, require us to make some very subjective inferences and biased guesses in order to make it "internally consistent" and "comprehensble" to ourselves, thereby invalidating the "results" and turning us into True Believers, just like Trejo?

--Tommy

Edited May 16, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Trejo]

...

Regardless, just how much time and enery does Trejo expect us to invest in such a project, and wouldn't it, by definition, require us to make some very subjective inferences and biased guesses in order to make it "internally consistent" and "comprehensble" to ourselves, thereby invalidating the "results" and turning us True Believers, just like Trejo?

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, my first response is that I'm nothing like a True Believer with regard to Harry Dean. One should recollect that before his connection with me, Harry Dean was still accusing the Mormon Church of complicity in the JFK murder. I convinced Harry to drop that speculative detour, and to focus entirely on his eye-witness account.

It's not a matter of being a True Believer, but of objectively evaluating which eye-witnesses to believe and which to doubt.

Nothing that anybody has written in the past fifty years has caused me to find any cracks in Harry Dean's eye-witness account. There have been plenty of insults -- but none with any staying power.

Good evidence stands on its own merit.

My second response, Tommy, is that the time and energy we spend on the JFK assassination is always based on our personal commitment and free will.

If the evidence is good, accept it. If not, move on. There's a ton of other evidence out there -- and you know that as well as anybody.

I'm pleased that despite the hostile attacks of Ernie Lazar against the claims of Harry Dean, that somebody as renowned as Larry Hancock will still watch this thread from time to time.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

[Thomas Graves]

...

Regardless, just how much time and enery does Trejo expect us to invest in such a project (understanding Harry's story), and wouldn't it, by definition, require us to make some very subjective inferences and biased guesses in order to make it "internally consistent" and "comprehensble" to ourselves, thereby invalidating the "results" and turning us True Believers, just like Trejo?

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, my first response is that I'm nothing like a True Believer with regard to Harry Dean. One should recollect that before his connection with me, Harry Dean was still accusing the Mormon Church of complicity in the JFK murder. I convinced Harry to drop that speculative detour, and to focus entirely on his eye-witness account.

It's not a matter of being a True Believer, but of objectively evaluating which eye-witnesses to believe and which to doubt.

Nothing that anybody has written in the past fifty years has caused me to find any cracks in Harry Dean's eye-witness account. There have been plenty of insults -- but none with any staying power.

Good evidence stands on its own merit.

My second response, Tommy, is that the time and energy we spend on the JFK assassination is always based on our personal commitment and free will.

If the evidence is good, accept it. If not, move on. There's a ton of other evidence out there -- and you know that as well as anybody.

I'm pleased that despite the hostile attacks of Ernie Lazar against the claims of Harry Dean, that somebody as renowned as Larry Hancock will still watch this thread from time to time.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

Well, Trejo, you posted this while I was still editing my original reply to Ernie, so I've taken the liberty of incorporating my edit into your post. Specifically the phrase: "(understanding Harry's story)"

--Tommy

And by the way-- Regarding one of your earlier posts on another thread, Antonio Veciana met Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of "Bishop" (yes, I know-- David Atlee Phillips) not "only days" before the assassination, but two or three months before it.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Trejo]

<BUMP>

Edited May 16, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

--Tommy

And by the way-- Regarding one of your earlier posts, Antonio Veciana met Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of "Bishop" (yes, I know-- David Atlee Phillips) not "days" before the assassination, but two or three months before it.

Well, Tommy, two or three months amounts to 60 or 90 "days".

So there.

--Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

Paul, I have to qualify a bit more just to be clear. Actually I've followed Harry's remarks and postings from his very earliest days. I bought the first material in print about his experiences and observed some of his very first online posts about both Canadians and the LDS; I did find those remarks inscrutable and still do. Still, I've followed his remarks since that time as well as the actual FBI documents which Ernie has made available and analyzed. I also investigated Walker and his right wing associates to the extent of the material then available, as you recall I brought certain things about Walker and his involvement with Cuban exiles in Florida in the summer of 1963 to your attention. As far as not considering him competent in 1963, I'm not sure exactly how to define that, perhaps the word I would use would be effectual. I can tell you that I talked at length with one Dallas police reserve officer who gave me a tour of the places in which DPD used to observe Walker circa 1963 including a gay bar on the East side and a set of fairly secluded public restrooms. I had not really wanted to bring that up and of course its strictly anecdotal but if true I can tell you that sort of visibility/image would make him anathema to any serious tactical team going to Dallas.

I continue to monitor your posts about Harry and Walker, new information is always educational. I simply haven't found any of it to actually modify own view of how the Dallas assassination came about or what went down on the ground in Dallas. However, as you say, my analyses are my own and I'm happy to leave everyone else with their own. Beyond that, in regard to the study of the ultra-right in the 1960's, I think my and Stu's work presented in The Awful Grace of God illustrates a reasonably deep study of the groups and individuals who were truly dangerous in terms of actual attacks and assassination attempts - in contrast to those who just kept talking about such things. If you want to find a real rifle team trained and willing to go after JFK we identify them in that book. That of course is another story entirely but I thought I should at least mention that its not that I have ignored the ultra-right in my research.

-- Larry.

Thanks, Larry, for the clarification.

Of course, the problem with following Harry's remarks from the earliest days is that it became almost impossible to distinguish Harry's orignal story from the version spread so widely by W.R. Morris.

To illustrate this problem, our own sister site, the SPARTACUS Education site, still spreads the W.R. Morris revisions of Harry's original story about the JBS, Loran Hall, Edwin Walker and Larry Howard. To this very day!

When wading through the bizarre fabrications of W.R. Morris (who was a professional fiction writer), no wonder we can encouter the "inscrutible."

Furthermore, it's been a half-century, and commentors had continually confronted Harry Dean with the misconceptions they obtained from W.R. Morris,and this wore Harry down, decade after decade. One requires a lot of patience -- and a lot of background -- to interview Harry Dean.

Harry's views about the Canadians does harmonize with those who suspect the British version of the Masons -- but of course that's void of evidence here. Also, Harry did most recently renounce his former suspicions of the LDS, and that was promising, IMHO.

As for your works on Walker, Larry, I do appreciate them -- very much. I'm surprised that you consider him to be virtually untouchable by a JFK murder team -- because of his homosexuality -- when actually this did not prevent that same murder team from using such assets as Clay Shaw or David Ferrie (among others) in New Orleans.

I will say this -- I've always learned a lot from your works. I strongly recommend your books, Someone Would Have Talked (2020) and Shadow Warfare (2014), because I've learned so much from them.

Still, I haven't obtained any information from them that makes me discount a central role for Ex-General Edwin Walker in the plot to murder JFK.

Now, Larry, you say that your book, The Awful Grace of God (2013) can possibly disclose "a real rifle team trained and willing to go after JFK," then of course I must obtain a copy as soon as possible.

I realize that you haven't ignored the ultra-right in your research, Larry -- yet the fact that Edwin Walker was obsessed with Lee Harvey Oswald since April 1963 is information that is extremely new (and based on Walker's personal papers).

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<BUMPED>

[Thomas Graves]

--Tommy

And by the way-- Regarding one of your earlier posts, Antonio Veciana met Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of "Bishop" (yes, I know-- David Atlee Phillips) not, as you said, "only days before" the assassination, but two or three months before it.

[edited by T. Graves]

Well, Tommy, two or three months amounts to 60 or 90 "days".

So there.

--Paul Trejo

Dear Word Twister Trejo,

Not only do we not see eye to eye, but we're not even on the same page as you've once again replied to a post while I was unfortunately still editing it.

Note my correcting of what you said from "days before" to the more accurate "only days before".

It's interesting that you didn't correct me in your reply. I totally understand why you didn't, because doing so would have weakened your "rebuttal" even more.

Although the time period "two or three months" is indeed comprised of days, it is also comprised of seconds, minutes, hours, and, oh yeah I almost forgot, weeks.

My point is that 60 to 90 days (two or three months) do not equate to your "only days before." One quarter of a year (ninety days) or even two months (60 days) isn't "only days before."

An intellectually honest person would have said "several weeks before" or "a couple of months before."

He wouldn't say "several days before," nor "days before," and especially not your ridiculous "only days before."

Gosh, you know, maybe I'm being way too hard on you. You could have (under) exaggerated it even more than you did.

You could have said "only hours before."

And when I called you on that, you would probably leave out the word "only" again and remind me by saying, "Well, Tommy, two months is made up of hours. So there."

So there.

All The Best Regards,

--Tommy

PS I'm truly starting to feel sorry for you because I'm coming to realize that you just can't help it.

You just can't stop twisting words and facts to suit your purpose, that is. You've been doing it for so long that it's become "second nature" to you. Totally unconscious....

But then again, perhaps I should give you the benefit of the doubt. You may not have even known (or remembered?) that Veciana met Oswald with "Bishop" (David Atlee Phillips) in August or September of 1963, two or three months before the assassination (November 22, 1963) !

In other words, maybe you're just too lazy or too busy putting out your "Unified Field Theory" fires on this forum (and pedantically lecturing us with assassination factoids) to do much basic fact checking before you post, and you make up for your lack of knowledge and inaccuracies by always "giving yourself the benefit of the doubt," i.e. by always under-exaggerating or over-exaggerating, and / or twisting and spinning words and phrases and even "facts," when necessary.

So which is it, Trejo-- Unconscious "second nature" word and fact twisting on your part, or conscious laziness (and its attendant "approximizing" remedial words and phrases, which, ironically, always work out to your "benefit," if only temporarily, as in this case)?

You know, you really should read an article about cognitave dissonance.

Here's a good one:

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/13/benghazi_nuts_anti_vaxxers_birthers_do_they_really_buy_their_own_nonsense/

Edited May 17, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Larry Hancock]

Paul, I think I must have missed this along the way. Could you run past me the information from Walkers files circa April 63 of his interest in Lee Harvey Oswald...that would

be appreciated.

Also for yet more clarification:

"As for your works on Walker, Larry, I do appreciate them -- very much. I'm surprised that you consider him to be virtually untouchable by a JFK murder team -- because of his homosexuality -- when actually this did not prevent that same murder team from using such assets as Clay Shaw or David Ferrie (among others) in New Orleans."

....my remark had nothing to do with Walkers homosexuality per se but everything to do with the fact that it was reportedly well known among elements of the DPD including its subversives unit - where my source served - that was because at the time they considered it a potential exposure to blackmail so they monitored those who circulated in those circles as general surveillance. My point is simply that sort of known visibility/surveillance would discourage anyone from tactical connection to Walker. In that same vein, I personally do not feel that the tactical team who carried out the attack in Dallas had any contact with either Shaw or Ferrie. What gossip either man may have heard about plans to attack Kennedy - there that gossip was widespread in many circles - either before or after is another story entirely. Gerry Hemming made an interesting comment to that effect (paraphrased) when he said that afterwards many people began to wonder if they had some connection to the attack because of remarks they had heard prior to it. Some apparently even tried to collect money from ultra right figures like Hunt whose sons had been talking about bounties on JFK, taking credit after the fact.

[Ernie Lazar]

Paul, I think I must have missed this along the way. Could you run past me the information from Walkers files circa April 63 of his interest in Lee Harvey Oswald...that would

be appreciated.

Also for yet more clarification:

"As for your works on Walker, Larry, I do appreciate them -- very much. I'm surprised that you consider him to be virtually untouchable by a JFK murder team -- because of his homosexuality -- when actually this did not prevent that same murder team from using such assets as Clay Shaw or David Ferrie (among others) in New Orleans."

....my remark had nothing to do with Walkers homosexuality per se but everything to do with the fact that it was reportedly well known among elements of the DPD including its subversives unit - where my source served - that was because at the time they considered it a potential exposure to blackmail so they monitored those who circulated in those circles as general surveillance. My point is simply that sort of known visibility/surveillance would discourage anyone from tactical connection to Walker. In that same vein, I personally do not feel that the tactical team who carried out the attack in Dallas had any contact with either Shaw or Ferrie. What gossip either man may have heard about plans to attack Kennedy - there that gossip was widespread in many circles - either before or after is another story entirely. Gerry Hemming made an interesting comment to that effect (paraphrased) when he said that afterwards many people began to wonder if they had some connection to the attack because of remarks they had heard prior to it. Some apparently even tried to collect money from ultra right figures like Hunt whose sons had been talking about bounties on JFK, taking credit after the fact.

REMARKS BEFORE JFK'S ASSASSINATION:

Larry - you probably are familiar with this -- but weeks before JFK was murdered, Herbert Philbrick (former FBI informant of "I Led Three Lives" fame) made very hostile comments about JFK. Apparently Philbrick was drunk when he reportedly declared: "We're going to get rid of Kennedy for good when he goes to Dallas next month."

This is just one of many such remarks that appear in FBI investigative documents.

Edited May 17, 2014 by Ernie Lazar