ALEXANDER COCKBURN: "OSWALD SHOT HIM"

[Charles Drago]

Today (Saturday, April 7), at approximately 11:05 AM Eastern time, on C-SPAN's "In Depth," Alexander Cockburn responded to an E-mail question about his thoughts on "Case Closed" by stating that he accepts the Warren Commission's conclusions, but doesn't really agree with Gerald Posner.

Once again we must ask ourselves two important quesations:

What sort of impact we are having on the quest for justice in the case of the unsolved, conspiratorial murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy when we cannot persuade the boldest, most progressive, liberal of intellectual lions to accept the truth?

Is it appropriate to use a given scholar's "take" on the assassination as a litmus test for his or her work in other areas?

I eagerly await your thoughts.

Charles

Edited April 7, 2007 by Charles Drago

[Jack White]

Why should anyone care about what Cockburn thinks?

He is just another establishment stooge.

Jack

[David G. Healy]

'Charles Drago' wrote:

Today (Saturday, April 7), at approximately 11:05 AM Eastern time, on C-SPAN's "In Depth," Alexander Cockburn responded to an E-mail question about his thoughts on "Case Closed" by stating that he accepts the Warren Commission's conclusions, but doesn't really agree with Gerald Posner.

Once again we must ask ourselves two important quesations:

What sort of impact we are having on the quest for justice in the case of the unsolved, conspiratorial murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy when we cannot persuade the boldest, most progressive, liberal of intellectual lions to accept the truth?

dgh: only one question needs to be asked in my mind: what the hell happened to THE historians AND the "intellectual lions of any stripe, were they ALL asleep (as it appears) or scared when it comes to the JFK assassination....

Is it appropriate to use a given scholar's "take" on the assassination as a litmus test for his or her work in other areas?

dgh: absolutely call it credibility... Manchester included

I eagerly await your thoughts.

Charles

[Charles Drago]

Why should anyone care about what Cockburn thinks?

He is just another establishment stooge.

Jack

Jack,

I don't necessarily disagree with you on Cockburn; he remains steadfastly opposed to giving due, unbiased consideration to all but the official USG 9-11 conspiracy theories, for example.

At the same time, I am not prepared to conclude that everyone who subscribes to the official, fictional accounts of the Kennedy murders is either an accessory after the fact or an establishment wittol, so to speak. I do mean to suggest that the research community, of which I humbly count myself a member, has failed in its implicit responsibility to imbed the truth as we know it into mainstream intellectual and academic communities.

You've heard my presentations in Dallas when I've attempted to make this point at some length and with numerous examples.

Charles

[Charles Drago]

Is it appropriate to use a given scholar's "take" on the assassination as a litmus test for his or her work in other areas?

dgh: absolutely call it credibility... Manchester included

I eagerly await your thoughts.

Charles

Agreed. My basic premise: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the JFK assassination who does not conclude that the crime was conspiratorial in nature is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

[John Geraghty]

My advice would be to decide which book you feel makes the strongest case for a conspiracy and then send it on to Mr.Cockburn. Speaking from experience, members of Congress tend to read books sent to them or have their staffers read them. I would think that it would be the same for journalists.

John

[Sid Walker]

My advice would be to decide which book you feel makes the strongest case for a conspiracy and then send it on to Mr.Cockburn. Speaking from experience, members of Congress tend to read books sent to them or have their staffers read them. I would think that it would be the same for journalists.

John

It is a little hard to imagine recurrent Alex Cockburn's left gatekeeping is due to information scarcity in the Cockburn household.

However, if anyone has an unwanted tome about the JFK assassination, I understand a short sharp whack over the head can occasionally achieve miracles.

This works even with the most unlikely doorstoppers. Why risk damaging a useful book on what may prove to be a steel-framed cranium, when a hardback copy of Posner's Case Closed does the trick?

A friend of a friend is an aspiring author. She was plagued with writer's block - until she suffered an accidental head injury.

Apparently it worked a treat and she has since sustained a prolific output.

Edited April 8, 2007 by Sid Walker

[Kathleen Collins]

My advice would be to decide which book you feel makes the strongest case for a conspiracy and then send it on to Mr.Cockburn. Speaking from experience, members of Congress tend to read books sent to them or have their staffers read them. I would think that it would be the same for journalists.

John

I think an interested party should send Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong to Mr. Cockburn (what a terrible name).

Kathy

[Tom Kiehl]

Mr. Drago......I could not agree more with you. This board has brought up so much Documented research. The JFK matter has turned in my belly because I knew something was wrong yet no one seemed to care. I believe I found this board while looking at something very trivial. I enjoy your posts and the other incredible minds of the researchers of the forum. I will contribute in the future because of the information everyone has provided. My advice.......simplification......and finalization.......the internet has brought us together and should be the puzzle solver in the end.....thank you .....tom

[Ron Ecker]

My basic premise: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the JFK assassination who does not conclude that the crime was conspiratorial in nature is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Well stated.

Which category would you put Vincent Bugliosi in?

Here's the Publishers Weekly review (from Amazon.com) of his uneagerly awaited tome, which unfortunately is due out too soon (next month):

Bugliosi, best known as Charles Manson's prosecutor, spent more than 20 years writing this defense of the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the slaying of President Kennedy, but his obsession has produced a massive tome that's likely to overwhelm most readers. At times, the author seems determined to present every detail his researches revealed, even if it doesn't add to the overall picture (like a footnote on Elvis sightings). Further, while Bugliosi says even serious conspiracy theorists don't claim the FBI or Secret Service were involved, he devotes chapters to each. The book's structure—it's organized by subject, such as theories about the role of the FBI, the KGB or anti-Castro Cubans—leads to needless repetition, and, for an author who excoriates conspiracy theorists, charging them with carelessness and making wild accusations, Bugliosi is not always temperate in his language; for example, twice he makes the nonsensical claim that some Warren Commission critics "were screaming the word conspiracy before the fatal bullet had come to rest." His decision to devote twice as many pages to critiquing Oliver Stone's movie JFK as to his chapter on organized crime (identified by the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassination as the likely conspirators) is a curious one, as is the choice to open the book with a dramatic re-creation of events surrounding the assassination rather than a straightforward chronology of the relevant facts. Moreover, Bugliosi does not always probe whether individuals who are the sole source for certain facts (for example, Oswald's widow, Marina) had any motive to lie. Bugliosi's voluminous endnotes are on an accompanying CD. Gerald Posner's 1993 Case Closed made most of the same points in a much more concise way. 32 pages of illus. (May)

[Charles Drago]

My basic premise: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the JFK assassination who does not conclude that the crime was conspiratorial in nature is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Well stated.

Which category would you put Vincent Bugliosi in?

Well, it cannot be argued the Bugliosi's access to the evidence has been "unreasonable" in any sense.

Not so, alas, his conclusion.

In my Constitutionally protected personal opinion, Vincent Bugliosi is fully aware of the truth of conspiracy, and has chosen to support the lone nut fiction for reasons about which I can but speculate.

Said reasons may include some or all (or none) of the following: he is a victim of blackmail; he is emotionally incapable of turning against the father state; he is paying off an old debt; he has been threatened; he is an egomaniacal contrarian; he has been hypnotized by Charlie Manson.

And before anyone makes the charge: No, I have not read the book I am condemning. Rather, I am condemning its author's baseline presumption of LHO as lone nut, and thus the book is, at best, sophistry.

Charles

[Cliff Varnell]

Is it appropriate to use a given scholar's "take" on the assassination as a litmus test for his or her work in other areas?

dgh: absolutely call it credibility... Manchester included

I eagerly await your thoughts.

Charles

Agreed. My basic premise: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in the JFK assassination who does not conclude that the crime was conspiratorial in nature is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

[Cue Everett Ulysses McGill, Coen Brother's film, "O Brother Where Art Thou?"]

"Pete, it's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." --

The view that a lone assassin shot Kennedy is an article of faith in

mainstream journalism/academia. Even those who harbor private

doubts would never risk being branded a "conspiracy theorist" by

voicing an opinion contrary to the received knowledge that Oswald

did the deed all by his lonesome.

They pass this "conventional wisdom" down from generation

to generation of reporters and historians.

In order to be an LNer one must have faith in the essential decency of the

American government, at least as it was in 1963.

Such a faith is impervious to logic.

Witness Ken Rahn, Prof at the University of Rhode Island. He goes on and

on about the "physical evidence" but refuses to discuss the implications of

the bullet defects in JFK's clothing.

If you ask an average citizen if Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy

80% will say yes.

95% of the journalists and historians will say no.

Cognitively impaired?

Hell yes -- blinded by faith.

[Ron Ecker]

I think that Camus may have said it best. ("The universe is absurd.")

[Pat Speer]

This is quite an interesting topic. To understand its implication is to see America in its naked flesh, in my opinion. There are a number of reasons for the media's resistance.

1. Laziness. The assassination story is quite complex, and to get to the bottom of it one must commit a substantial amount of time and energy. Journalists feed off eyewitness testimony. Journalists feed off expert testimony. Journalists feed off celebrity testimony. Journalists feed off spoon-fed press releases. As the purported "experts" in this case have almost all been hand-picked by the government, and as the celebrities--the Connallys and Mrs. Kennedy--went along with the government line--these cards are stacked in the government's favor. These cards dictate the media play along with the government. With one exception. When Connally insisted he was not hit by the first shot in 1966, Life Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, etc. called for a new investigation. CBS News performed this investigation, with the help of John McCloy and Ramsey Clark, and concluded the single bullet theory worked, but that the SBT occurred with the second shot. Since this satisfied the Connally problem, it satisfied the media as a whole. Of course, if they had DARED DUE THEIR HOMEWORK, they would have noticed that the mythical first-shot miss they'd accepted was at odds with the testimony of virtually every witness. A further example of this laziness came in 1969, with the announcement of the Clark Panel's findings. Every article I've found has blindly and stupidly said the finding supported the Warren Commission's conclusions, without noting that the conclusions stated that the autopsy doctors' mis-remembered the location of the head wound entrance, and were off by FOUR INCHES. Evidently, not one paper hired a doctor to review the Panel's findings and see if they made sense. As a consequence the public, by and large, was not aware of the movement of the head wound entrance. Most still are unaware of this mind-boggling development.

2. Professional Pride. Since day one, members of the media have jockeyed for position, knowing that proximity to the assassination can assure one of "credibility." Prominent newsman such as Cronkite, MacNeil, Lehrer, Schieffer, and Rather, and prominent publications such as the New York Times all gained some gravitas from their actions on 11-22. They have positioned themselves as the official "story-tellers" of the event. The problem is that it was for them ONE story, which they focused on for a short time. They did very little actual investigation. Thus, when a Mark Lane or Harold Weisberg pops up with a different story, and calls into question not only their ability to uncover the truth, but their integrity, they respond by questioning their integrity. Thus, from the beginning, the relationship between the press and the buffs has been an adversarial one.

3. National Pride. Although the media positions itself as an outsider spying on and regulating the U.S. Government, the reality is that the media is part of a system, whereby conflicting interests within the U.S. Government provide it with fuel to combat the other side. As a result, virtually every scandal within Washington comes from a leaker, a Mark Felt-type, anxious to mold the giant ball of clay. That LBJ was able to create and use the Warren Commission to DECEIVE THE PUBLIC, and that the media, in its laziness and blindness, played along willingly, is horrifying for most journalists and historians to think about. In the 1960's Warren Commissioner John McCloy made some comments about the WC feeling the need to prove to the world that the U.S. was not a Banana Republic. In his memoirs, Warren talks about how unthinkable it is that men like Hoover, Rowley, and himself all conspired to look the other way. In the post-Oliver Stone statements of men like Lehrer and Cronkite, they make similar statements about how unthinkable it is to believe the media failed to uncover a widespread conspiracy as described by Stone. These men were born and fed by a system, and it's unthinkable to them that the system failed, and that, whether or not he killed Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson ORCHESTRATED THIS FAILURE. Their institutional hubris, their failure to admit they were duped, strangles them, and prevents them from looking at the evidence for conspiracy in a rational manner.

4. Intellectual Pride. Since so many experts piled onto the Government bandwagon at the outset, and because the Warren Report was for the most part well-written and well-reasoned (with notable exceptions) journalists and historians looked at the lone-assassin myth as the "rational choice." When Harold Weisberg, Edward Epstein, Mark Lane, Sylvia Meagher, and Josiah Thompson came out with well-reasoned, scholarly, books on the assassination, however, things began to shift. Men like Arthur Schlesinger and William F. Buckley called for a new investigation. This seduction continued for a decade until finally the pressure became too great and Congress re-opened the investigation. It then fell on Blakey, etc, to bring in the best and brightest to clear up the matter. The problem, however, was that these experts were all at odds with one another. Some were, apparently coerced into selling the public nonsense. As proven in my presentation, Thomas Canning's trajectory analysis was complete GARBAGE. As demonstrated in part 1 of my video series, the medical panel couldn't even orient their exhibits correctly. As demonstrated repeatedly by others as well as myself, Dr. Vincent Guinn came to a grossly improper conclusion regarding the wrist fragments. The HSCA came to a mixed conclusion, as we know. Things were left in a quandary until JFK came along. This film was too provocative for the intellectual elite, as it called into question their intellectual integrity. Then BOOM, along came St. Posner to save their butt. Posner's well-written and seemingly well-reasoned analysis allowed them to continue pretending that Oswald did it all along so all was well. The problem was, he LIED. Still, after Posner got them off the hook, they had a built-in excuse to stop reading. He'd closed the case, after all.

In short, I can virtually guarantee that Alexander Cockburn and others like him have never read Larry Hancock's book on the circumstantial evidence, and would NEVER EVER NOT EVEN IF YOU PAID THEM wind their way through my extensive writings on the medical evidence. They are simply not interested in any evidence that suggests conspiracy. All they know at this point is that you have Arlen Specter, Dale Myers, Dr. Michael Baden, and Gerald Posner on one side--seemingly all rational men--and loud-mouths like Cyril Wecht and Mark Lane on the other, surrounded by a bunch of "come on, get a life" weirdos. I mean Oswald did it, right? Didn't the Discovery Channel prove that AGES ago?

[William Kelly]

Today (Saturday, April 7), at approximately 11:05 AM Eastern time, on C-SPAN's "In Depth," Alexander Cockburn responded to an E-mail question about his thoughts on "Case Closed" by stating that he accepts the Warren Commission's conclusions, but doesn't really agree with Gerald Posner.

Once again we must ask ourselves two important quesations:

What sort of impact we are having on the quest for justice in the case of the unsolved, conspiratorial murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy when we cannot persuade the boldest, most progressive, liberal of intellectual lions to accept the truth?

Is it appropriate to use a given scholar's "take" on the assassination as a litmus test for his or her work in other areas?

I eagerly await your thoughts.

Charles

While I agree with Jack on this one and that Alx Cock, even though a Brit posing as a freelance radical, is an establishment stooge, I happened to be watching the program and turned my tape recorder on for just the answer to the one question. This is what I got from it:

A.C. : "I have said in the past, more than once, that I tend to believe the Warren Commission, and then people who don't ... raise their ( ? Herculian ....gust... ?).... and slap their lips and say, 'what an idiot.' And I think actually that the subsequent...encourages that...including the famous magic bullet, do ratify that postion,....I would...Did Lee Harvey Oswald have any accomplances? A lot of people say now no, but if you were there on .... the afternoon of November 22nd...and you had Lee Harvey Oswald's name in your rollodex, how long before you took that name out of your rollodex and tore it up and burned the remains and put them in the trash?"

"I tend to think and always thought that Lee Harvey Oswald thought that by killing Jack Kennedy he would take the pressure off Castro, ...ah, you know? And he saw the attempts to kill Castro as something that provoked him to do it. There were a lot of various peculiar things about Lee Harvey Oswald, it's true. But, by and large, I tend to agree, I tend definately to think he shot him. I think he did. I think the way the Warren Commission describes it is correct....."

So A. Cock thinks Oswald knew about the top secret CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro and responded to them by killing JFK.

A. Cock, like N. Chomsky, is an intellectual whore who will think and theorize whatever he is paid to think.

As for Bugliosi, he knows that the correct approach to solving a crime it to keep an open mind and follow the evidence where ever it goes, and to debate the possible scinarios is just jerking everybody around for as long and hard as you can to waste time and kill real evidence.

BK